The Effect of Noise When Deriving Signals from Accelerometers

The effect of noise is often ignored when accelerometer signals are integrated to give velocity and displacement. The main forms of noise to be found in a system which operates in this way are identified, and analysis shows the interdependence of the magnitude of the noise, the system bandwidth and the signal-to-noise ratio of the final displacement output. It is shown that the signal-to-noise ratio is degraded significantly by the integration process; thus noise introduced before integration, by signal amplification, recording, or other conditioning is critical.