Design and implementation of a novel sliding mode sensing architecture for capacitive MEMS accelerometers

Abstract

We propose novel feedback control and sensing schemes based on sliding mode control (SMC) for closed-loop micro-accelerometers as alternative digital control architectures to sigma–delta (ΣΔ) approaches. The under-damped micro-device has been designed in Coventorware, fabricated in SOIMUMPs (25 µm thick structural layer) technology and experimentally characterized using a Polytec MSA-500 (micro-system analyzer) equipment. To verify the system architecture robustness, the application of SMC is extended to an over-damped accelerometer model. In either case, the SMC demonstrates the repositioning of the proof mass to null position; however, the over-damped model exhibits shorter transition time (15 ms for 1g acceleration) due to the increased damping. In addition to that, we extend the usage of SMC beyond the classical actuation problem to a novel sensing problem where we demonstrate the extraction of the external acceleration measurement from the switching behavior along the sliding surface. An optimized fixed-point implementation is targeted on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) using rapid prototyping methodology, where the new proposed method has been compared for reference with a control scheme that employs a ΣΔ modulator. The SMC-based architecture is advantageous in terms of hardware complexity, and the control of the number of degrees of freedom required by an inertial measurement unit can be accommodated on a low-cost FPGA device. SMC offers a sound theoretical framework for the nonlinear control of inertial sensors.