Laser trackers (LTs) are widely used for large-scale dimensional metrology. Periodic LT performance evaluation is a key aspect in ensuring measurement reliability. The existing documentary standards for LT performance evaluation require scale bars and special artifacts that are often unavailable for many LT users. A network-based method is considered in this paper as a simple and effective approach to evaluate LT performance without the need for expensive artifacts or reference instruments. In this method, a set of fixed targets are measured from different locations of the LT. The reference values for the lengths between pairs of targets are determined by incorporating the geometrical error model of the LT (i.e., the LT data from each location are corrected for systematic geometric misalignments, quantities that are also obtained from the same data), thus the LT under test is itself used to calibrate the lengths in the network. Subsequently, these length values are used as references to evaluate the LT performance. We validate this method of establishing reference lengths by comparing the values for select lengths in the network against more traditional line-of-sight interferometry. We show that the uncertainties in the reference lengths obtained in this manner are sufficiently small in comparison to the maximum permissible error (MPE) specifications so that they can be used for performance evaluation. A case study using three LTs is presented in this paper. The results obtained from that case study is also verified by a simulation based on the ASME B89.4.19 standard, showing the feasibility of the proposed network-based LT performance evaluation method.

激光跟踪器（LTs）被广泛用于大规模尺寸计量。定期进行LT性能评估是确保测量可靠性的关键方面。现有的LT性能评估文档标准要求比例尺和特殊工件，而这对于许多LT用户通常是不可用的。本文认为基于网络的方法是评估LT性能的一种简单有效的方法，不需要昂贵的工件或参考仪器。在此方法中，从LT的不同位置测量了一组固定目标。通过合并LT的几何误差模型来确定目标对之间的长度的参考值（即，针对系统的几何失准校正来自每个位置的LT数据，数量（也可以从相同数据中获得）），因此被测LT本身用于校准网络中的长度。随后，这些长度值用作评估LT性能的参考。通过将网络中选定长度的值与更传统的视线干涉测量法进行比较，我们验证了建立参考长度的方法。我们显示，与最大允许误差（MPE）规范相比，以这种方式获得的参考长度不确定性足够小，因此可以将它们用于性能评估。本文介绍了使用三个LT的案例研究。从该案例研究中获得的结果也通过基于ASME B89.4.19标准的模拟进行了验证，