Towards a new generation of digital calibration certificate: Analysis and survey

Abstract

Calibration Certificates (CC) are essential for maintaining the accuracy of measurement instruments, which in turn are necessary to maintain the quality of products and services. Such certificates are mainly used in legal metrology for quality audits, accreditation and examination processes; and also in the operational metrology to adjust measurement results according to device uncertainty. Paper-based CC (PCC) or a digital copy of the paper format has been successfully used for this purpose for many decades. However, the PCC starts to fail short with the emergence of new technologies and applications that require automated creation, processing and updates of the calibration certificates. The last years have witnessed an intense effort on digital transformation in metrology and especially developing Digital Calibration Certificates (DCC). Until recently, we noticed the lack of agreement on the nature and the usage of such important new metrology artifacts as well as some repetition in the work by different researchers. To help reaching a minimum consensus on the subject, we present in this paper, a thorough analysis of the calibration certificate and the calibration process. Besides that, we aim by this work to provide an overview of the carried research on that point to help peer researchers to view the big picture and to avoid wasting their efforts in repeating same work on same ideas. Consequently, they can recognize the peer researchers and organizations working on the same topics, find available resources, identify research gaps and identify the best potential directions of their efforts as well. Finally, our paper aims also to establish a bridge between the metrological concepts and information technology concepts such that more computer science researchers can be involved in solving the problem.