A Smart Angular Rate Sensor System

This paper reports on the development of a smart angular rate sensor system for short range navigation applications. The smart-sensor system comprises of a high-Q, in plane mode-matched silicon tuning fork microgyroscope interfaced with a CMOS ASIC. A dedicated software algorithm interfaces with the sensor and IC to electronically control the bandwidth of the micro-sensor, thereby allowing for reconfigurability. The microgyroscope along with the interface IC and dedicated control algorithm form an angular rate sensor system with a maximum scale factor of 66 m V/deg/s and bias drift of less than 0.57deg/hr.