In this paper, the development and performance test results of a laterally oscillating MEMS gyroscope using a novel force rebalance control strategy are presented. The micromachined structure and electrodes are fabricated using the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and anodic wafer bonding process. The high quality factor required for the resonance-based sensor is achieved using a vacuum-sealed device package. A systematic design approach of the force rebalance control is applied via a modified automatic gain control (AGC) method. The rebalance control design takes advantages of a novel AGC loop modification, which allows the approximation of the system's dynamics into a simple linear form. Using the proposed modification of AGC and the rebalance strategy that maintains a biased oscillation, a number of performance improvements including bandwidth extension and widened operating range were observed to be achieved. Finally, the experimental results of the gyroscope's practical application verify the feasibility and performance of the developed sensor.

The objective of this paper is to present a velocity-controlled vibratory MEMS gyroscope that achieves consistent output characteristics in the lateral driving dynamics of the system. Through a systematic automatic gain control loop design process, the driving mode dynamics of the gyroscope is first transformed to take account of the velocity envelope; a reference tracking integral control is then employed. For stabilized loop construction, a mathematical development and stability analysis of the feedback loop is presented, which is followed by numerical simulation using practical sensor parameters. The mechanical structure was fabricated using the conventional deep reactive ion etching process and the anodic wafer bonding method. Vacuum-packaged devices were used for the resonant gyroscope operation. An essential fabrication process for realizing the electrical connection through a thick glass substrate was possible by applying a sandblasting process and spin coating process of conductive epoxy. Finally, loop simulation and experimental results verified that the amplitude-controlled property in the driving loop is preserved under the system parameter variation which resulted in enhanced gyroscope output performance in comparison with other driving schemes.

No abstract

This paper investigates a new loop design approach of force balance control for the vibratory rate sensor application. The proposed force balance control design takes advantages of the modified automatic gain control configuration in controlling the system's oscillating dynamics at the sense mode. The adapted automatic gain control scheme and force balance strategy, which maintains a constant oscillation magnitude in the sense mode, have several advantages. First it is possible to analyze a complicated nonlinear feedback system using a linear control theory, which resulted in straightforward prediction of closed loop performance. Moreover the control system to achieve the design goals can be implemented using a relatively simple feedback configuration. An application to the vibratory rate sensor using the proposed automatic gain control configuration witnessed that the force balance control can be validated in a practical design process. Experiments using an actual micromachined rate sensor verified the feasibility of the proposed control scheme with demonstration of enhanced performance.

No abstract