Quadrature-Error Compensation and Corresponding Effects on the Performance of Fully Decoupled MEMS Gyroscopes

This paper presents experimental data about the sources of the quadrature error in a fully decoupled microelectromechanical systems gyroscope and demonstrates the extent of performance improvement by the cancellation of this error. Quadrature sources including mass, electrostatic-force, and mechanical-spring imbalances have been compared by FEM simulations, and spring imbalance has been found as the dominant source of the quadrature error. Gyroscopes have been designed with intentional spring imbalances and fabricated with a SOI-based silicon-on-glass fabrication process, the resulting quadrature outputs of the fabricated gyroscopes have been measured, and their agreement with FEM simulations has been verified. Next, it has been experimentally shown that the electrostatic nulling of the quadrature error with closed-loop control electronics improves the bias instability and angle random walk (ARW) of a fully decoupled gyroscope up to ten times. Moreover, the quadrature cancellation improves the scale-factor turn-on repeatability about four times and linearity about 20 times, reaching down to 119 and 86 ppm, respectively. Finally, the quadrature cancellation allows operating the gyroscope with higher drive-mode displacement amplitudes for an increased rate sensitivity. With this technique, outstanding bias instability and ARW performances of 0.39°/h and 0.014 °/√h, respectively, have been achieved.

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