A Multisignal Wavelet Variance-Based Framework for Inertial Sensor Stochastic Error Modeling

Abstract

The calibration of low-cost inertial sensors has become increasingly important over the last couple of decades, especially when dealing with sensor stochastic errors. This procedure is commonly performed on a single error measurement from an inertial sensor taken over a certain amount of time, although it is extremely frequent for different replicates to be taken for the same sensor, thereby delivering important information which is often left unused. In order to address the latter problem, this paper presents a general wavelet variance-based framework for multisignal inertial sensor calibration, which can improve the modeling and model selection procedures of sensor stochastic errors using all replicates from a calibration procedure and allows to understand the properties, such as stationarity, of these stochastic errors. The applications using microelectromechanical system inertial measurement units confirm the importance of this new framework, and a new graphical user interface makes these tools available to the general user. The latter is developed based on an R package called mgmwm and allows the user to select a type of sensor for which different replicates are available and to easily make use of the approaches presented in this paper in order to carry out the appropriate calibration procedure.