Designing an Inertial Measuring System using System-on-Chip and Sensor Microsystems Integration

The aim of this paper is to develop a complete Inertial Measurement System using habitual sensors and components easy to find in the actual market - such as FPGAs- and a processor IP, and to implement it as a System-on-a-Chip whose purpose is to be incorporated into a moving object, for example a non-tripulated plane, or as support of a GPS in a car. To help explain the possibilities and limitations that are met during the choice of architecture and implementation of the system, a brief history and description of the nature of inertial systems is provided, as well as a summary of issues that arise during MEMS and SoC integration. The sensors that are used are two ways accelerometers and single-axis gyroscopes; the FPGA is a system core where the System-on-a-Chip is implemented including VHDL drivers to control the sensors set, store information in a memory and analyze all captured data. The System-on-Chip includes a complete communication system based on an AMBA bus developed by ARM to connect drivers with memory and with a LEON2 processor developed by Gaisler Research and use by European Space Agency, which works as a master system, as well as other peripheral communication channels.