Improved Analysis for Intrinsic Properties of Triaxial Accelerometers to Reduce Calibration Uncertainty

We describe a modification of a previously described measurement–analysis protocol to determine the intrinsic properties of triaxial accelerometers by using a measurement protocol based on angular stepwise rotation in the Earth’s gravitational field. This study was conducted with MEMS triaxial accelerometers that were co-integrated in four consumer-grade wireless microsensors. The measurements were carried out on low-cost rotation tables in different laboratories in different countries to simulate the reproducibility environment encountered in inter-comparisons of calibration capabilities. We used a previously described calibration–uncertainty metric to independently characterize the overall uncertainty of the calibration and analysis process. The intrinsic property analysis suggested, and the uncertainty metric confirmed, an unacceptably large error in one combination of microsystem and low-cost rotation table. A simple modification of the analysis protocol provided a substantial improvement in the reproducibility of the protocol with all combinations of microsystem and rotation table. Later, measurements with a high-performance triaxial accelerometer using a significantly more expensive rotation table carried out at one location further validated the usefulness of this modification. The results reported here also demonstrate the existence of unidentified defects in one microsystem and one low-cost rotation table that interact with each other in ways not currently understood to produce anomalously large errors with the old protocol but not with the new protocol.