Gravity-Assisted, Passive Cancellation of Disturbances for Inertial Sensors

Abstract

Continuing enhancements in Microsystem Technologies facilitate the development of inertial sensors — accelerometers and gyroscopes — of unprecedented performance to cost ratio and broaden the frontiers of their application. Of particular interest, because of their immunity to ambient disturbances, are sensors equipped with high resolution Electro-Mechanical ΣΔ converters and with a high speed, digital serial signal transmission. The digital circuitry of these sensors reaches the accuracy of 0.02 parts-per-million (ppm). However, the analogue transducers of measured physical quantities into electrical signals inside of the even best inertial sensors are prone to inherent imperfections of analog systems such as nonlinearity, cross-sensitivity, or noise. The best accuracy of these transducers is about two orders of magnitude worse than that of the electrical circuitry. The overall accuracy can be greatly improved by using corrective filters that cancel the effects of imperfections in the analogue transducers. The effectiveness of these filters hinges upon the accuracy of identifying comprehensive models of the analogue transducers. Ambient disturbances, in particular mechanical vibrations, greatly deteriorate the accuracy of identification. Their impact can be attenuated to some extent by using vibration isolation platforms. The effectiveness of attenuation is usually good at the frequencies above 5–10 Hz, however it is poor at low frequencies. This poor attenuation is a significant disadvantage since the low frequency phenomena in inertial sensors have pronounced impact on their suitability for a broad class of applications (e.g., navigation). The presented research focuses on the design of a passive vibration isolation device in which horizontal movement is coupled to tilt in a way that a component of the gravity perceived by the tested inertial sensor effectively cancels out the horizontal acceleration coming from the ambient vibrations.