Static temperature analysis and compensation of MEMS gyroscopes

¹ MOEMS Education Ministry Key Laboratory, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, P.R. China
² School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK

^⋆ Correspondence: Ping.Yang@brunel.ac.uk

Received: 29 June 2013
Accepted: 7 November 2013

Abstract

MEMS gyroscopes as a kind of angular rate sensor have been widely used, but their accuracy tends to be low in practical applications, especially under temperature influence, and they generally require error compensation. Based on the analysis of gyroscope operating principle, this paper has shown that the resonant frequency and measuring precision of the gyroscope are dependent on temperature and temperature gradients. The paper has thus proposed a compensation model based on temperature and temperature gradients. The experimental results have demonstrated that the thermal drift of zero bias can be effectively suppressed, and the accuracy can be improved by one order of magnitude after compensation. Compared with compensation methods only based on temperature, the new method gives significantly better performance. The new error compensation model has not only integrated the differences under different temperature conditions, but also reduced the repeatability errors. It provides a theoretical basis for accurate compensation of the gyroscope thermal error in practical applications and is applicable to other MEMS gyroscopes.