Abstract—This paper presents a new method of interference reduction in tilt measurement with analog accelerometers. The tilt angles are necessary for various fields, including robotics, automation, and biomedical engineering. Measuring the tilt angles, pitch and roll, with analog accelerometers allows us to overcome major limitations of digital sensors; however, the effects of electromagnetic interference should be considered. This paper introduces a new method to enhance the interference immunity for analog accelerometers. Firstly, we mounted the sensor on a special orientation; after that, we proposed new calculation formulas. The pitch angle is computed from the differential voltage between sensor signals. Therefore, the pitch angle can be immune to the interference. Both simulation and experimental results confirmed that the pitch angle was not dependent on external noise. The standard deviation of errors is 2-20 times smaller than that of conventional method. On the other hand, there was no improvement in the roll angle. By the proposed method, one tilt angle is precisely measured without utilizing shielded cables, filters and preprocessors. The existing systems can be upgraded by changing the sensor mounting orientation and computing method. This study may be useful for applications that require high resolution data, high-speed response, and minimum space.

Index Terms—accelerometer, EMI reduction, inclination, interference, pitch, tilt measurement

Cite: Hung V. Dao, Takashi Komeda, and Trung T. Nguyen, "Interference Reduction in Tilt Measurement Based on Changing the Sensor Mounting Method and Calculation Formulas," Jounal of Automation and Control Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 6, pp. 454-459, December, 2016. doi: 10.18178/joace.4.6.454-459