Study on ellipsoid based calibration method for bias and sensitivity of accelerometers

An ellipsoid based calibration method is presented to calibrate the bias and sensitivity of accelerometers. The mathematical model of accelerometer is established and it is proved that the locus of the outputs of accelerometer triad are on an ellipsoid surface when they are in various attitudes. During the calibration procedure a set of measurements of accelerometer triad are firstly recorded and those measurements are used to fit an ellipsoid, which is then used to calculate the bias and sensitivity of accelerometers. Simulation results show that the calibration error of the proposed method is less than 0.5% when the pitch and roll are within the range of 30° and the signal to noise ratio is 60 dB.