Characterization and Wave Motion Simulations of MEMS Inertial Sensors using 6DOF Platform

The directional wave measurement is essential to the growing demand of offshore activities, study and understanding of the oceans. This information could be obtained through heave-pitch-roll oceanographic buoys, which uses inertial measurement units (IMU) to provide its vertical displacement and angular orientation (or lateral displacements) from accelerations and angular velocities measurements. In this work, a number of tests and simulations was performed in order to study the use of low-cost off-the-shelf MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical System) inertial sensors as Xsens MTi-G when compared to specific wave measurement systems and well established in the market (Axys Triaxys NW II) [1]. The following three steps where performed in this work: characterization of inertial sensors, Allan variance analysis and motion simulation in 6DOF platform to compare performance between sensors close to real environment.