Attitude calibration of an accelerometer array

An accelerometer-array attitude-calibration method is proposed here. Being based on the compatibility of rigid-body point accelerations, this method can be applied to determine and account for the accelerometer installation errors with a high degree of accuracy. It is assumed that the number of three-axis accelerometers in the array is redundant in order to help reduce the effect of sensor noise, thereby obviating the Kalman-filtering of the signals. Procedures are developed to calculate the angular velocity and acceleration as well as the attitude of the body, all in the body frame. It is demonstrated that even large attitude errors can be dealt with via off-line iterative applications of the scheme.