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Accelerometer calibration with nonlinear scale factor based on multi-position observation

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IOP PUBLISHING MEASUREMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002 (9pp) doi:10.1088/0957-0233/24/10/105002

Accelerometer calibration with nonlinear

scale factor based on multi-position
observation
Qingzhong Cai 1 , Ningfang Song 1 , Gongliu Yang 1 and Yiliang Liu 2
1
School of Instrument Science and Opto-electronics Engineering, Beijing University of Aeronautics and
Astronautics, Beijing 100191, People’s Republic of China
2
State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing Applications,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: qingzhong_cai@163.com

Received 4 April 2013, in final form 11 July 2013

Published 14 August 2013
Online at stacks.iop.org/MST/24/105002

Abstract
The calibration of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) is a key technique to improve the
accuracy of an inertial navigation system. Adding more parameters into the model and
reducing the estimation errors is essential for improving the calibration methods. Given its
advantage of not requiring high-precision equipment, the multi-position calibration method
has been widely discussed and has shown great potential in recent years. In this paper, the
multi-position calibration method is improved by introducing the accelerometer nonlinear
scale factor. The observation equations for the improved multi-position calibration method are
established based on a nonlinear accelerometer model. The particle swarm optimization
algorithm is adopted to solve the complicated nonlinear equations. In addition, Allan variance
is used to determine the optimal data collection time. The accuracy and the robustness of the
proposed calibration method are verified by the simulation test. The laboratory and field
experiment results for a navigation-grade IMU prove that the proposed method can
successfully identify the accelerometer nonlinear scale factor and improve the multi-position
calibration accuracy. The comparison of several other calibration methods highlights the
superior performance of the proposed method without precise orientation control.
Keywords: multi-position calibration, accelerometer nonlinear scale factor, inertial
measurement unit, particle swarm optimization
(Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)

1. Introduction known reference information obtained by precise orientation

Inertial navigation system (INS) is highly important in
positioning, attitude control and other navigation applications
because it is entirely self-contained and can provide high-
rate position, velocity and attitude information. An inertial
measurement unit (IMU) consisting of three orthogonal
accelerometers and three orthogonal gyroscopes is used to
provide specific forces and angular rates for INS. IMU
calibration is a process of determining the coefficients that
transform the raw outputs of inertial sensors to meaningful
quantities of interest. Traditional calibration methods are
usually performed by comparing the IMU outputs with
control which requires specialized high-precision equipment
(Chatfield 1997).
Given its advantage of not requiring precise orientation
control, the multi-position calibration method has been widely
discussed in recent years. This calibration method is based
on the fact that the norms of the measurement outputs of
the accelerometer and the gyroscope cluster are equal to
the magnitudes of the given specific force (i.e. gravity)
and rotational velocity inputs (i.e. the Earth’s rotation),
respectively (Shin and El-Sheimy 2002). The calibration
principle was first used to calibrate the biases and scale factors
of an accelerometer triad in the field of medicine (Lötters

0957-0233/13/105002+09$33.00 1 © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
et al 1998). The method was then modified to calibrate
the gyroscope triad using a single turntable to provide a
strong rotation rate signal (Skog and Händel 2006, Syed
et al 2007). Although the non-orthogonality of the gyroscope
triad and accelerometer triad can be estimated separately, the
misalignment between the two triads may not be detected
and may cause errors during navigation (Syed et al 2007).
Fong et al (2008) calibrated gyroscopes by comparing the
outputs of the accelerometer and the IMU orientation after
arbitrary motions which requires no external equipment. Based
on the multi-position calibration principle, in-field calibration
methods for micro accelerometer triads were discussed (Frosio
2009, Seong-hoon and Farid 2010, Li and Li 2012). Theoretical
formulas for solving the multi-position observation functions
were derived to avoid iterative approaches (Zhang et al
2008, Grip and Sabourova 2011). Forsberg et al (2013)
also conducted a closer investigation and comparison of
the different ways to choose accelerometer orientations for
successful calibration. An effective approach was proposed
to calibrate the misalignment between gyroscope triads and
accelerometer triads using the direction measurements of the
rotation of an axis separately derived from the triads (Zhang
et al 2011), making the multi-position method applicable
in calibrating navigation-grade IMU. Yang et al (2013)
presented a thermal multi-position calibration approach for
the accelerometer triad in high-accuracy inertial navigation.
As its performance is independent of orientation control
precision, the multi-position calibration method can obtain
the best accuracy for inertial sensors without highly expensive
equipment. This feature highlights the great potential of the
multi-position calibration method in the field of high-precision
inertial navigation.
However, the nonlinear scale factor of the accelerometer
is ignored in previous multi-position calibration methods.
The nonlinear scale factor is inherent in the output of high-
precision or low-cost accelerometers (Chatfield 1997, Wei
et al 2007). The ignored errors caused by the nonlinear scale
factor are equivalent to the effect of the random errors of
the accelerometer and affect the multi-position calibration
accuracy which depends on the quality of inertial sensors
(Zhang et al 2011). Although the nonlinear scale factor can
be estimated using the least-squares algorithm in traditional
calibration methods, the accuracy is limited by the precision
of orientation control. Thus, the present work focuses on
improving the multi-position calibration method for high-
precision INS application by considering the accelerometer
nonlinear scale factor.
When the accelerometer nonlinear scale factor is
introduced into the sensor model of the multi-position
calibration method, the sensor model becomes nonlinear,
and the observation equations become too complicated to be
solved by theoretical formulas or by Newton’s method used
in previous works (Zhang et al 2008, Grip and Sabourova
2011, Skog and Händel 2006, Frosio 2009). In the current
work, the accelerometer nonlinear scale factor is estimated by
the improved multi-position calibration method using particle
swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. In addition, according
to the multi-position calibration accuracy that depends on the
2
Q Cai et al
quality of sensors, optimal data collection time is determined
by analyzing the sensor noise using Allan variance.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the
nonlinear sensor model of the accelerometer triad and its
iterative solution process are presented. In section 3, a multi-
position scheme is designed, and the determination of the
optimal data collection time is elaborated. In section 4, the
observation equations are established, and the PSO-based
solution is carried out. In section 5, the simulation and
experiment results of the calibration as well as accuracy
verification are reported. In section 6, the conclusion is
discussed.
2. Sensor model
2.1. Nonlinear accelerometer model
To improve the accelerometer accuracy by compensation, the
nonlinear scale factor should be introduced into the sensor
model because some accelerometer calibration coefficients
change as a function of the products of specific force
components (Chatfield 1997). An accelerometer model is
generally expressed as
k1 Na = f + k2 f 2 + b + v, (1)
where Na is the actual measurement, f is the true value of
the specific force, k1 is the linear scale factor and k2 is the
nonlinear scale factor; b and v are the bias and the noise of the
accelerometer, respectively.
In an IMU, the measurement of the accelerometer cluster
can be expressed as
NA = K −1
1 ( f + K2 f + ba + v a ),
a a(2)
(2)
where NA, f , K1, K2, b and v are the vector forms of Na, f ,
a a a
k1, k2, b and v in (1), respectively. f a(2) denotes the vector with
three elements which are the square of each element in f a:
 
f a(2) = fx2 fy2 fz2 . (3)
The accelerometers of the IMU are not strictly
orthogonally mounted; hence, all the sensor output should
be transformed from the accelerometer axes frame (denoted
as a) into an orthogonally coordinate frame called the body
frame (denoted as b). First, the Xb axis of the body frame
is defined to coincide with the accelerometer input axis Xa.
Then, the Yb axis is defined by one small angle rotation from
Ya in the XaYa plane, and the Zb axis is defined by one small
angle rotation around Xb and another one around Yb (shown
in figure 1). Therefore, the misalignment of an accelerometer
can be represented by three small angles γ yz, γ zx and γ zy in the
body frame. The misalignment matrix consisting of the three
small angles can be simplified as
⎡ ⎤
1 0 0
T ba ≈ ⎣−γyz 1 0⎦ . (4)
γzy −γzx 1
According to (2) and (4), the specific force measured by
the accelerometer cluster can be calculated in the body frame
using (5):
 −1 b (2)
f̃ b = T ba f a = T ba K 1 NA − T ba K 2 T ba f̃ − T ba ba − T ba v a .
(5)
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
Figure 1. Definition of the body frame.
As the misalignment angles and the nonlinear scale factors
are all small, equation (5) can be simplified by omitting the
second and higher order terms. With the random noise ignored,
a nonlinear sensor model of accelerometer cluster is derived
as
f̃ b = T ba K 1 NA − K 2 f̃ b(2) − bb ,
b
where b is the bias vector expressed in the body frame.
2.2. Iterative solution of the nonlinear model
Due to the existence of the quadratic term, the specific force f̃
is difficult to solve from the measurement NA using the sensor
model in (6). To reduce computation complexity for the real-
time solution, the iterative method is used in this study.
An initial approximation for iteration is first calculated by
the simplified linear model which ignores the nonlinear scale
factor term:
f̃ b(0) = T ba K 1 NA − bb .
Then, the iteration (shown in (8)) is kept to revise
the correction of the nonlinear scale factor term until the
prospective precision is reached:
f̃ b(n) = f̃ b(n−1) − K 2 f̃ b(2)
(n−1) .
Generally, the precision requirement of the solution
is met after two iterations. By avoiding the square root
computation, the iterative solution method reduces the
computation complexity effectively. In this work, the method
is used to solve the nonlinear model in calibration and
compensation.
3. Data collection for multi-position calibration
3.1. Multi-position scheme
The multi-position calibration method is based on the fact
that the modulus of the acceleration is equal to the gravity
acceleration in the static condition (Shin and El-Sheimy 2002).
To calibrate all the parameters in the sensor model, the IMU
Q Cai et al
outputs in several different orientations should be collected
while maintaining the IMU in a strictly static condition.
There are several principles for designing the multi-
position calibration orientations. Firstly, since there are 12
unknown parameters in the sensor model, more than 12
different orientations are required to ensure the stability
and robustness of the estimation (Syed et al 2007, Zhang
et al 2011). Secondly, each orientation should be designed
significantly different from the others to make sure the
observational equations are uncorrelated. Thirdly, more
symmetrical orientations as redundant observations can
restrain the effects of the extra errors which are ignored in the
sensor model, but increase the amount of computation at the
same time. It should be pointed out that the exact alignments
of the positions are not necessary because the orientation
information is not used in multi-position calibration.
Considering the effectiveness and efficiency, a 24-position
calibration scheme is designed according to the design
principles (shown in figure 2). In the first eight orientations,
the X-, Y- and Z-axes of the IMU point to the north, east and
down directions, respectively, as the initial orientation. In the
other seven orientations, the IMU rotates around the X-axis
and stops at every 45◦ rotation. The other 16 orientations are
defined with a similar IMU rotation around the Y- and Z-axes
(6) when the Y- and Z-axes point to the north, respectively.
3.2. Optimal data collection time
As the measurements of the accelerometer triad under different
b orientations make up the only information in the estimation,
the accuracy of the method depends on the accuracy of the
accelerometers themselves, which is verified by simulation
(Zhang et al 2011). To effectively improve the precision of
the multi-position calibration, the effect of the accelerometer
errors on the calibration should be reduced as much as
possible. Therefore, a reasonable data collection time should
be determined to restrain the sensor noise.
(7) An 8 h static data output of a navigation-grade
accelerometer is shown in figure 3. The curve shows
that the high-frequency noise can be averaged out by a
suitable collection time to improve the measurement accuracy.
However, a long collection time can lead to a change in the
(8) mean values of each collection because of the trend term which
will affect the calibration accuracy.
To determine the optimal data collection time, the output
noise of a navigation-grade accelerometer triad is analyzed
using the Allan variance; the results are shown in figure 4. The
data are collected in static condition for 8 h with a sampling
rate of 200 Hz. The log–log curve shows that the major error is
the quantization noise for a short cluster time and the drift rate-
ramp term for a long cluster time. When the curves reach the
lowest points, the corresponding cluster time is the optimal
data collection time which can balance the high-frequency
noise and the trend term. Although the trend term still leads to
an error of bias, the other parameters of the calibration result
can be improved using the optimal data collection time. In this
work, the optimal data collection time of the navigation-grade
accelerometer triad ranges between 160 and 300 s.
3
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
Figure 2. A 24-orientation calibration scheme.
Figure 3. Static data output of the accelerometer.
4. PSO-based multi-position calibration
4.1. Observation equations
According to the multi-position calibration principle, the
modulus of the computed specific force measured by the
accelerometer triad should be equal to the gravity acceleration
g, that is,
  2  2
f˜xb + f˜yb + f˜zb = g,
2
(9)
where f˜xb , f˜yb and f˜zb can be respectively calculated from the
accelerometer measurements Nax , Nay and Naz by the sensor
model (6).
An observation equation is derived by substituting a set
of accelerometer static measurements into (6) and (9). All the
calibration parameters can be estimated by the measurements
of the 24 different orientations in section 3.
Given the items of the nonlinear scale factor, the
observation equations are too complicated to be solved by
theoretical formulas. When the iterative solution method in
section 2 is used to obtain the expressions of the specific
4
Q Cai et al
Figure 4. Allan variance analysis results of the accelerometer
output.
force, Newton’s and other traditional iterative methods cannot
be used because the differential of the observation function
does not exist. Thus, a suitable solution method for solving
complicated nonlinear equations should be established.
4.2. PSO-based calibration solution
PSO is a population-based stochastic searching technique
developed by Kennedy and Eberhart (1995). As an artificial
intelligence (AI)-based algorithm, PSO has been applied to
solve various functional optimization problems, especially
in cases of non-differentiable transfer functions (Rajini
and David 2010). Compared with other AI optimization
techniques, PSO performs better in terms of success rate,
solution quality and convergence speed (Elbeltagi et al 2005),
which is used in the magnetometer calibration effectively (Ali
et al 2012). Thus, PSO is considered suitable for solving the
problem in the current study.
The PSO maintains a swarm made up of a population of
particles, where each particle represents a potential solution of
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
(a)
Figure 5. Calibration error distribution of the X-axis accelerometer nonlinear scale factor: plot (a) is for the 10 μg accelerometer triad and
(b) is for the 100 μg accelerometer triad.
an optimization problem. PSO tries to find the global optimum
solution by simply adjusting the trajectory of each individual
towards its own best location and towards the best particle of
the swarm in each generation. Each particle has four attributes
including a position vector (xi), a velocity vector (vi), the
position of the best fitness (pi) encountered by the particle, and
the index of the best particle (pg) in the swarm. The position
and velocity of each particle is updated in every generation
following (Jwo and Chang 2009, Ali et al 2012):
 method is used to estimate the parameters and the calibration
vik = w × vik−1 + c1 × ri1 × pi − xik−1
 error of this simulation can be calculated. The same simulation
+c2 × ri2 × pg − xik−1 , (10)
xik = xik−1 + vik−1 × t, (11)
where k and k−1 refer to the indices of the current and previous
generation, respectively; w is inertial weight factor, increase of
which can cause an increase of the search range; c1 and c2 are
acceleration coefficients, whose values are normally taken as
2; ri1 and ri2 are random numbers uniformly distributed within
the range [0, 1]; t is the discrete time interval and usually
set to 1. To search for the optimal calibration parameters, a
fitness function should be established based on the observation
equations. An error ei is first defined as the squared difference
between the modulus of the acceleration output and g:
 2  2  2
ei = f˜xib + f˜yib + f˜zib − g2 , (12)
where i is the orientation number.
By adding e2i in all the orientations, a nonlinear function of
the calibration parameters F (K 1 , K 2 , T ba , bb ) can be expressed
as
 24
F K 1 , K 2 , T ba , bb = e2i , (13)
i=1
where f˜xb , f˜yb and f˜zb are the specific forces derived from
the iterative method in section 2. The optimal calibration
parameters of the fitness function F (K 1 , K 2 , T ba , bb ) can be
solved using the PSO algorithm.
5
Q Cai et al
(b)
5. Simulation and experiments
5.1. Simulation result
To verify the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed
calibration method, 500 Monte Carlo simulations with
both grades of accelerometer triads are performed using
MATLAB. In each simulation, a set of data is generated with
random parameters following a uniform distribution and these
parameters are saved as true values. Then, the calibration
was carried out 500 times with different random parameters
and the calibration errors are calculated by statistical analysis.
The simulation conditions are assumed: the turntable
rotation angle errors are 2 (1σ ), and the random bias of the
two grades of accelerometer triads are 10 (1σ ) and 100 μg
(1σ ), respectively, after the white noise is averaged out.
The calibration parameters of the sensor model in the 500
Monte Carlo simulations are assumed: the bias follows a
uniform distribution U(−500 μg, 500 μg), the scale factor
error follows U(−500 ppm, 500 ppm), the misalignment angle
follows U(−6 , 6 ), and the nonlinear scale factor follows
U(−500 μg g−2, 500 μg g−2). In each simulation time, the
parameters are generated randomly and saved temporarily.
The calibration data are then generated to carry out the
proposed calibration method. Finally, the calibration errors
are calculated by comparing the results with the true values.
The statistical results of the 500 Monte Carlo simulations are
shown in table 1, and the calibration error distributions of
the X-axis accelerometer nonlinear scale factor are shown in
figure 5 as an example. All the parameters of the nonlinear
sensor model can be estimated without bias, and the errors
approximately obey the normal distribution. The calibration
precision of the 10 μg accelerometer triads is much better
than that of the 100 μg accelerometer triads, which verify that
the multi-position calibration accuracy depends on the quality
of sensors. Furthermore, we find that the variances are all in
a certain proportion to the accelerometer random bias: the
variance of the bias errors is slightly larger than the sensor
random bias, the magnitude of the misalignment angle and the
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002 Q Cai et al

Table 1. Statistical results of 500 Monte Carlo simulations.

Calibration errors of Calibration errors of
10 μg accelerometer triad 100 μg accelerometer triad
Calibration parameters Parameter distribution Mean RMS Mean RMS
Bias, μg (bx , by , bz ) U(−500, +500) −0.6 13.8 8.4 115.2
−0.7 14.4 −11.8 124.5
0.1 13.7 −4.8 125.8
Scale factor error (ppm) (δk1x , δk1y , δk1z ) U(−500, +500) −0.3 5.1 −4.4 50.7
−0.5 5.2 −7.4 48.5
0.6 5.1 −8.6 53.1
Misalignment angle (arcsec) (γyz , γzy , γzx ) U(−6, +6) 0.1 2.4 0.2 23.7
0.2 2.5 −0.0 22.6
0.1 2.6 0.3 23.0
Nonlinear scale factor (μg g−2) (k2x , k2y , k2z ) U(−500, +500) 0.6 18.1 −10.3 155.2
1.3 18.8 13.0 161.6
0.0 18.0 7.8 165.5

Table 2. Calibration methods.

Method 1 Traditional calibration without accelerometer nonlinear scale factor
Method 2 Traditional calibration with accelerometer nonlinear scale factor
Method 3 Multi-position calibration without accelerometer nonlinear scale factor
Method 4 Multi-position calibration with accelerometer nonlinear scale factor

Table 3. Calibration results of the accelerometer parameters.

Calibration parameters Method 1 Method 2 Method 3 Method 4

Bias (μg) (bx , by , bz ) 280.2 234.5 199.1 142.8

− 1508.9 − 1462.2 − 1589.7 − 1556.9
− 480.2 − 419.5 − 541.6 − 459.9
Scale factor (μm/s/pulse) (k1x , k1y , k1z ) − 527.0729 − 527.0729 − 527.0582 − 527.0597
547.1612 547.1604 547.1596 547.1605
559.3274 559.3242 559.3425 559.3451
Misalignment angle (arcmin) (γyz , γzy , γzx ) 3.70 3.70 3.71 3.68
− 24.20 − 24.20 − 24.16 − 24.20
− 2.85 − 2.85 − 2.81 − 2.77
Nonlinear scale factor (μg g−2) (k2x , k2y , k2z ) – 49.8 – 88.9
– − 109.2 – − 68.1
– − 130.7 – − 99.4

nonlinear scale factor errors are both as large as the ratio of the
accelerometer random bias to the gravity acceleration, and the
magnitude of the scale factor error is almost half of the ratio,
which is the limit of accuracy of the multi-position calibration.
5.2. Experiments
A navigation-grade IMU is calibrated by the proposed
calibration method as well as by several other methods
for comparison. The IMU consists of three ring laser
gyroscopes with a bias stability of 0.01◦ h−1 and three quartz
accelerometers with a bias stability of 10 μg. The calibration
methods are compared by laboratory and field tests using the
compensation parameters of each method.
Four accelerometer calibration methods (described in
table 2) are performed using the same data collected with
the 24-position scheme described previously. The gyroscopes
are calibrated using the same data collected with a traditional
6-rotation scheme. The approach of Zhang et al (2011) is used
in methods 3 and 4 to calibrate the misalignment between the
gyroscope and the accelerometer triads. A three-axis turntable
with an accuracy (1σ ) of 5 is used to control the orientation.
In the experiment, the IMU is warmed up for over 4 h
before calibration, and the data are sampled at 200 Hz. The
calibration results of the accelerometer parameters are shown
in table 3. The accelerometer nonlinear scale factor calibration
results of the traditional method and the proposed method are
inconsistent, with a difference of about 50 μg g−2 for each
axis.
In the laboratory test, the accuracies of the calibration
results are compared using the turntable. A set of accelerometer
triad data is collected with the IMU controlled at 72 static
positions. The modulus of the specific force measured by
accelerometer triad should be equal to the gravity theoretically.
Norm errors of the specific force measurements using four sets
of parameters are shown in figure 6, with standard deviations
of 38.3, 21.8, 9.0 and 5.6 μg for methods 1–4, respectively.
Field test are performed three times using the same
calibration results to compare the results of four different
calibration methods. The IMU and a storage battery are placed

6
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
Figure 6. Norm errors of specific force measurement for static IMU.
Figure 7. Field test device.
in the trunk of the vehicle, and the GPS antenna is fixed on
the roof (shown in figure 7). In each test, the vehicle stopped
for 10 min for initial alignment and traveled for 1 h for inertial
navigation. The IMU raw data and the GPS data are collected
by a notebook computer synchronously. Four groups of inertial
navigation calculation are carried out with the same data
but with different sets of compensation parameters. To avoid
the effect of gyroscope calibration, the same gyroscope triad
parameters are used in the four groups and the misalignment
between the gyroscope and accelerometer triad is calibrated
using the approach of Zhang et al (2011).
The maximum position errors for the four methods in the
three tests are shown in table 4. Because the results of the
three tests are similar, we take the first test result for example
7
Q Cai et al
Table 4. Maximum position errors in field tests.
Test number Method 1 Method 2 Method 3 Method 4
Test 1 1.23 n milea 1.29 n mile 0.96 n mile 0.83 n mile
Test 2 1.27 n mile 1.32 n mile 1.07 n mile 1.02 n mile
Test 3 1.33 n mile 1.36 n mile 1.03 n mile 0.95 n mile
a
1 n mile (nautical mile) ≈ 1.852 km.
for detailed analysis in this paper. The trajectories of the GPS
output and the inertial navigation result using the parameters
of methods 1–4 in the first test are shown in figure 8. The
position errors of the four inertial navigation results in the
first test are compared with the GPS output in figure 9.
The field test results show that the precision of the traditional
Meas. Sci. Technol. 24 (2013) 105002
Figure 8. Trajectories of the navigation results in the field test.
Figure 9. Comparison of position errors of the navigation results in
the field test.
calibration method cannot be guaranteed because of the effect
of the turntable error and the rubber shock deformation. As
the accelerometer nonlinear scale factor cannot be accurately
calibrated by the traditional method, the navigation result
using the parameters of method 2 is no better than that of
method 1. In the multi-position calibration method, the
calibration accuracy is not affected by the turntable error or
by the rubber shock deformation, which is better than that of
the traditional method in the field test. The position precision
is improved using the proposed method which can accurately
estimate the accelerometer nonlinear scale factor without high-
precision orientation control.
6. Conclusion
In this work, an improved multi-position calibration method
is proposed by considering the accelerometer nonlinear scale
factor. The observation equations for multi-position calibration
are established based on a nonlinear accelerometer model.
An efficient approach for solving the complicated nonlinear
equations is adopted using the PSO algorithm. In addition, by
8
Q Cai et al
analyzing the accelerometer noises, the optimal data collection
time is determined using Allan variance to reduce the effect
of the accelerometer errors effectively. The 500 Monte Carlo
simulation results indicate that the accelerometer nonlinear
scale factor can be accurately and robustly estimated by
the proposed method. In the experiment, a navigation-grade
IMU is calibrated by the proposed calibration method and by
several other methods. The laboratory and field test results
show that the multi-position calibration methods outperform
the traditional calibration methods without high-precision
orientation control. The improved multi-position calibration
method can accurately estimate the accelerometer nonlinear
scale factor and improve the accuracy of multi-position
calibration.
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