Transforming a CD/DVD pick-up-head into an accelerometer

An accelerometer based on a commercial CD/DVD pick-up-head is proposed in this paper. A CD/DVD pick-up-head becomes an accelerometer by transforming the astigmatic measuring mechanism, the suspending wires, and the objective lens as the displacement sensor, the spring, and the seismic mass, respectively. The experiments demonstrate that this cost-effective accelerometer has excellent linearity, ultra high sensitivity of 114 V/g, and an operating frequency of 20 Hz.