Miniaturized quadruple mass gyroscopes: challenges and implementation

This work introduces the smallest quadruple mass gyroscope, fabricated with a standard MEMS process within a 1 mm(2) area. The design highlights the challenges in miniaturizing such a structure, so to mitigate unavoidable coupling between modes, spring hardening, and angular gain losses. The fabricated device is coupled to suitable electronics and operated as a Lissajous frequency modulated rate sensor. Though the small footprint, results demonstrate phase noise as low as 20 mu Hz/root Hz, corresponding to 6 mdps/root Hz angle random walk over a 40 Hz sensing bandwidth.