An Improved Calibration Technique for MEMS Accelerometer-Based Inclinometers

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 20; no. 2; p. 452
• Main Authors: Zhu, Jiaxin, Wang, Weifeng, Huang, Shiping, Ding, Wei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 13.01.2020; MDPI
• Subjects: Accelerometers; Advanced manufacturing technologies; Algorithms; Approximation; Calibration; Civil engineering; Deformation; Image processing; inclinometer; Inclinometers; Manufacturing; Mathematical models; Methods; micro-electro-mechanical system accelerometer; Microelectromechanical systems; Parameters; Performance evaluation; Sensors; Temperature effects; deformation; inclinometer; calibration; micro-electro-mechanical system accelerometer
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s20020452

Micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer-based inclinometers are widelyused to measure deformations of civil structures. To further improve the measurement accuracy, anew calibration technique was proposed in this paper. First, a single-parameter calibration modelwas constructed to obtain accurate angles. Then, an image-processing-based method was designedto obtain the key parameter for the calibration model. An ADXL355 accelerometer-basedinclinometer was calibrated to evaluate the feasibility of the technique. In this validationexperiment, the technique was proven to be reliable and robust. Finally, to evaluate theperformance of the technique, the calibrated MEMS inclinometer was used to measure thedeflections of a scale beam model. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposedtechnique can yield accurate deformation measurements for MEMS inclinometers.&nbsp.