Oven-Controlled Inertial Sensors

Abstract:

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology has enabled substantial expansion of the inertial sensor market by decreasing power consumption, size, and cost of the inertial sensor. Furthermore, along with significant improvements in their performance in recent years, the use of MEMS inertial sensors is extended to many emerging applications, including autonomous systems, position sensing and navigation, space, and defense. However, maintaining the high performance of the MEMS inertial sensors still remains a challenge as it is not perfectly resistant to change in the surrounding temperature or other environmental effects.

To address the challenge, the present study develops oven-controlled inertial sensors (OCIS), in which inertial sensors are thermally and mechanically isolated from the surrounding environment. First generation OCIS"”single-isolation stage oven-controlled inertial sensors (SOCIS)"”successfully mitigated both thermal and mechanical effects on inertial sensors by using a glass isolation stage. Although SOCIS mitigated environmental effects significantly, further mitigations may not be achieved due to two fundamental limitations: temperature-induced stress across the isolation stage and limited design and material selections for the isolation stage. Therefore, we propose a second generation OCIS"”double-isolation stage oven-controlled inertial sensors (DOCIS)"”where silicon and polyimide aerogel isolation stages are used to mitigate mechanical and thermal effects, respectively. According to simulation results, DOCIS would successfully address the two fundamental limitations in SOCIS.