Development of a Micromachined Differential Type Resonant Accelerometer and Its Performance

This paper presents the differential type resonant accelerometer (DRXL) and its performance test results. The DRXL is the INS grade, surface micro-machined sensor. The proposed DRXL device produces a differential digital output upon an applied acceleration, and the principle is a gap-dependent electrical stiffness variation of the electrostatic resonator with torsion beam structures. Using this new operating concept, we designed, fabricated and tested the proposed device. The final device was fabricated by using the wafer level vacuum packaging process. To test the performance of the DRXL, a nonlinear self-oscillation loop is designed using describing function technique. The oscillation loop is implemented using discrete electronic elements. The performance test of the DRXL shows that the sensitivity of the accelerometer is 12 Hz/g and its long term bias stability is about $2mg(1{\sigma})$. The turn on repeatability, bandwidth, and dynamic range are 4.38 mg, 100 Hz, and ${\pm}\;70g$, respectively.