Experimental evaluation of alternative drive-mode control electronics developed for high-performance MEMS gyroscopes

This paper presents the illustrative measurement results of a comprehensive study for understanding the effects of different drive-mode control electronic architectures on the overall performance of a micromachined capacitive vibratory gyroscope. Three different control electronic architectures have been implemented for generating either (a) square wave, (b) sinusoidal wave or (c) complex waveform driving signals for the gyroscope under test. Performance characterization of the gyroscope with these control electronics indicate that the electronics generating the sinusoidal wave drive waveform provides the lowest white noise among the others, with an angle random walk reaching down to 0.03°/hr^1/2 at least twice lower than its closest competitor. On the other hand, the bias stability of the gyroscope is observed to be almost unchanged for electronics that generate different drive waveforms indicating that the bias stability is still dominated by a noise source other than the drive-mode control electronic architectures.