Novel low cost calibration methods for MEMS inertial/magnetic integrated sensors

In recent years, micro attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) is widespread applied in aerospace, automotive to determine the attitude of carrier as it is low price, small size, light weight and high reliability. This paper presents novel low cost calibration methods for micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) inertial/magnetic integrated sensors which are the key unit in the AHRS. In these methods, accelerometer and magnetometer triads are calibrated based on the fact that the norm of accelerometers and magnetometers outputs must equal that of the gravity vector and the geomagnetic field vector, respectively. Used the dot production between the geomagnetic field vector and the gravity vector as a measurement, the inter-triad misalignment is devised. By comparing the compensated measurements of accelerometer and magnetometer triads with the computed gravity vector and geomagnetic field vector in sensor body frame, we proposes a low cost method to calibrate gyroscope triad without extra equipment. Simulations are given to illustrate the proposed method, and the results show that the proposed methods are effective and useful for MEMS inertial/magnetic integrated sensors as they could be calibrated without external equipment.