Effective bias warm-up time reduction for MEMS gyroscopes based on active suppression of the coupling stiffness

Abstract

Bias warm-up time is the time required for MEMS gyroscopes to reach a relatively stable state with specified performance after the power supply is turned on, is a critical factor for short time-of-flight navigation applications. This paper demonstrates an effective method to improve the bias warm-up time of a custom-designed MEMS gyroscope operating in split-mode based on open-loop readout scheme with active suppression of the coupling stiffness (ASCS). A semi-quantitative mathematical model for the temperature sensitivity of the bias is established that indicates the resonant frequency of the primary mode, the frequency difference and the coupling stiffness between the primary and sense modes together with the demodulation phase error, and these are the main factors that affect bias warm-up time. Of all these parameters, the stiffness coupling variation contributes the most to the start-up warm-up time, followed by the phase error drift. The experimental result shows that the bias warm-up time decreases from 2000 to 2 s under the condition that the bias stability (1σ) falls into about 10 deg/h within an hour of testing time using closed-loop control for the coupling stiffness, resulting in a reduction of three orders of magnitude. In addition, the bias instability of the gyroscope is improved two-fold from 4 to 2 deg/h with ASCS.