Autocalibration of MEMS accelerometers

In this paper, we present a novel procedure for the on-the-field autocalibration of triaxial micro accelerometers, which requires neither any equipment nor a controlled environment and allows increasing the accuracy of this kind of microsensor. The procedure exploits the fact that, in static conditions, the modulus of the accelerometer output vector matches that of the gravity acceleration. The calibration model incorporates the bias and scale factor for each axis and the cross-axis symmetrical factors. The parameters are computed through nonlinear optimization, which is solved in a very short time. The calibration procedure was quantitatively tested by comparing the orientation produced by MEMS with that measured by a motion capture system. Results show that the MEMS output, after the calibration procedure, is far more accurate with respect to the output obtained using factory calibration data and almost one order of magnitude more accurate with respect to using traditional calibration models.