What is MEMS Gyrocompassing? Comparative Analysis of Maytagging and Carouseling

North-finding based on micromachined gyroscopes is an attractive possibility. This paper analyzes north-finding methods and demonstrates a measured 4 mrad standard deviation azimuth uncertainty using an in-house developed vibratory silicon MEMS quadruple mass gyroscope (QMG). We instrumented a vacuum packaged QMG with isotropic Q-factor of 1.2 million and Allan deviation bias instability of 0.2 ^°/hr for azimuth detection by measuring the earth´s rotation. Continuous rotation (“carouseling”) produced azimuth datapoints with uncertainty diminishing as the square root of the number of turns. Integration of 100 datapoints with normally distributed errors reduced uncertainty to 4 mrad, beyond the noise of current QMG instrumentation. We also implemented self-calibration methods, including in-situ temperature sensing and discrete ±180^° turning (“maytagging” or two-point gyrocompassing) as potential alternatives to carouseling. While both mechanizations produced similar azimuth uncertainty, we conclude that carouseling is more advantageous as it is robust to bias, scale-factor, and temperature drifts, although it requires a rotary platform providing continuous rotation. Maytagging, on the other hand, can be implemented using a simple turn table, but requires calibration due to temperature-induced drifts.