High Performance Isolation and Excitation of Vibration for Enhanced Identification of Inertial Sensors

Abstract

Microsystems Technology based inertial sensors offer important advantages in low-invasive measurement of spatial motion with sub-micron accuracy. However, their successful implementation hinges upon achieving very low distortion and noise at the low end of the frequency spectrum. Therefore the investigations that lead to the enhancement of inertial sensors require environments free of the ambient vibrations to the maximum possible extent. This research focuses on developing a hybrid vibration isolation system. It comprises a custom built pre-isolation stage supporting a small size, high performance commercial vibration isolation platform. Our objective is to reduce the ambient vibrations present in typical research laboratories, usually strongly affected by the “cultural noise”, down to a level of the super quiet sites, i.e., close to the level defined by New Low Noise Model (NLNM). Performance of the developed system is illustrated with experimental results.