Frequency Modulated Gyroscope Driving Circuit Design

The University of Waterloo (UW) has consistently been ranked as one of the top ten universities in Canada. UW operates and manages 41 research centres and institutes, including the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). A number of research groups exist within WIN including the Nano and Micro Systems Lab (NMSL). The NMSL group conducts research in state-of-the-art micro- and nano-sensing and actuation technologies. This research addresses issues in global healthcare and energy as well as being of environmental importance and contributing to fundamental sciences. One of the NMSL’s recent research aims was to develop a novel cantilever beam Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) gyroscope with frequency modulated (FM) readout, Figure 1. In order to demonstrate the concept, a prototype MEMS gyroscope was designed and fabricated using the Teledyne Dalsa MEMS Integrated Design for Inertial Sensors (MIDIS™) Process. The gyroscopes undergo coupled flexural vibrations in two orthogonal directions when subjected to base rotation around the beam’s longitudinal axis.

The gyroscope detects angular rotations as the difference between the natural frequencies of two closely spaced drive and sense modes rather than the magnitude of displacement in the sense direction.