Characterization, Control and Compensation of MEMS Rate and Rate-Integrating Gyroscopes

Inertial sensing has important applications in navigation, safety, and entertainment. Areas of active research include improved device structures, control schemes, tuning methods, and detection paradigms, yet there is no standard hardware for performing this research. A powerful and flexible characterization and control system built on commercial programmable hardware is especially needed for studying mode-matched gyroscopes and rate-integrating mode gyroscopes. Mode-matching increases a gyroscope's sensitivity, while operation in rate-integrating mode greatly increases dynamic range and bandwidth. For both of these techniques however, control is challenging and the performance is sensitive to the matching of the modes.
This work proposes a system built on open and inexpensive software-defined radio (SDR) hardware and for gyroscope characterization and control. The system covers the characterization of high-Q gyroscopes, automatic tuning of gyroscopes to achieve mode-matching, mode-matched rate gyroscope control implemented in an FPGA, continuous operation of MEMS gyroscopes in a rate-integrating mode, and novel compensation algorithms to improve performance in the rate-integrating mode. Simulation results are provided from a custom simulator that runs in approximately real time as well as measurement results with a high-Q MEMS gyroscope.