MEMS Accelerometer Specifications and Their Impact in Inertial Application

Recent development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers improved their performance. Coupled with their benefits of lower cost and smaller size, enabled their increased utilization in navigation, automotive and consumer devices. However, specification and testing methodologies of these devices are not robustly defined. This work investigates and defines a set of testing methodology for MEMS accelerometers, making use of a 3D printer based testing platform and a scalable inertial sensor testing board. Specification results show that Kionix KXRB5 and Invensense MPU6000 perform the best of the devices tested. Furthermore, commonly used inertial algorithms were applied to study the impact of accelerometer choice in an inertial navigation system (INS). Across a attitude estimation and dead reckoning tests, results indicate that noise density has little impact on performance after inertial algorithms are applied. Cross-axis, bias variability and step motion specification results are better indicators of performance after inertial algorithms are applied.