To guarantee navigation precision of strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS)

attitude solution for carrier is one of key technologies. We analysis strongpoint and defect of Euler algorithm

direction cosine algorithm and quaternion algorithm

firstly. Carrier attitude is compute separately according to quaternion algorithm and direct cosine algorithm

comparative deviation is obtained by contrasted these two solution deviation with theory result

therefore the validity of quaternion algorithm is proved. Increasing sampling frequency and adopting high-level compute algorithm is useful to monish compute deviation. Digital simulation and experiment results show that

the carrier attitude solution deviation is small by adopting this method

and it satisfies real-time needs for carrier self-navigation. The proposed attitude solution method offer an useful reference to strapdown inertial navigation technology applied in engineering.