Evaluation of a low cost solid-state accelerometer as a distance measuring sensor for vehicle positioning system

Describes an evaluation of a low cost, solid state accelerometer as a distance-measuring device. A Kalman filter was applied to reduce random noise existing in the sensor. The random bias drift of the accelerometer was found to be 2.5 mg. The accelerometer was moved back and forth eight times for a distance of 40 cm with an acceleration of 10 m/s/sup 2/ and the distance error accumulated was +1.55 cm. The bias drift rate due to temperature was 0.108 /spl mu/g/s when the accelerometer was placed at room temperature. The performance shows that the device is suitable for short duration distance measurement and may act as a complementary sensor to the GPS during signal blockage or between periodical absolute position updates.