On-board and/or ground-based gyroless accelerometer calibration for NASA´s Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) Mission

Several methods are presented for the on-board and/or ground-based calibration of accelerometers for the spacecraft (s/c) of the NASA Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) Mission during mission operation. This feasibility study shows that a single lumped bias (represented by 3 parameters) is sufficient to represent all nine accelerometer calibration parameters for sensor bias, orthogonal misalignment and shift in accelerometer position with respect to the s/c center of mass. In this paper, three filters/observers are evaluated and compared for this purpose: the Extended Kalman Filter, the H-infinity filter, and the Sliding Mode Observer. All methods are shown to accurately determine lumped bias, so long as the s/c inertia tensor is well known. Analytical simulations show that these methods are able to correct accelerometer readings to within 1 micro-g of true acceleration.