Generation, Injection and Use of Pilot Tones for Gyro System Characterization
First Claim
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1. A MEMS sensor, comprising:
- a gyro transducer configured to sense an angular rate about a rotational axis, comprising;
a drive mass configured to undergo oscillatory linear motion within a plane;
a sense mass configured to undergo an oscillatory motion out of the plane as a function of the angular rate about the rotational axis within the plane;
one or more electrodes positioned in relation to the sense mass for receiving a rate feedback signal and a quadrature feedback signal which includes a pilot test tone signal, and for electrostatically controlling motion of the sense mass; and
a processor for generating one or more pilot tone signals that are included in the feedback signal, comprising;
a digital pilot tone generation module for generating the one or more pilot tone signals which are injected into the gyro transducer through the one or more electrodes during normal sensing operation of the gyro transducer;
a test signal recovery module for recovering a pilot tone signal from the gyro transducer; and
a gyro parameter extraction module for computing one or more performance parameters of the gyro transducer based on the recovered pilot tone signal without requiring down time or interference with normal sensing operation of the gyro transducer.
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Abstract
A microcontroller-based method and apparatus are described for generating one or more amplitude and frequency selectable low frequency pilot tone signals (PT) that are injected into an embedded MEMS sensor (110) and mixed signal ASIC (120) and then recovered at the microcontroller (140) to compute or measure various gyro parameters during operational use of the device with no down time or interference with normal operations.
67 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A MEMS sensor, comprising:
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a gyro transducer configured to sense an angular rate about a rotational axis, comprising; a drive mass configured to undergo oscillatory linear motion within a plane; a sense mass configured to undergo an oscillatory motion out of the plane as a function of the angular rate about the rotational axis within the plane; one or more electrodes positioned in relation to the sense mass for receiving a rate feedback signal and a quadrature feedback signal which includes a pilot test tone signal, and for electrostatically controlling motion of the sense mass; and a processor for generating one or more pilot tone signals that are included in the feedback signal, comprising; a digital pilot tone generation module for generating the one or more pilot tone signals which are injected into the gyro transducer through the one or more electrodes during normal sensing operation of the gyro transducer; a test signal recovery module for recovering a pilot tone signal from the gyro transducer; and a gyro parameter extraction module for computing one or more performance parameters of the gyro transducer based on the recovered pilot tone signal without requiring down time or interference with normal sensing operation of the gyro transducer. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. An inertial sensor, comprising:
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a transducer unit comprising a feedback input for receiving a feedback control signal, the transducer unit comprising a sense resonator for generating an output signal that is responsive to motion of the transducer unit experiencing an angular velocity; a synchronous demodulator coupled to receive the output signal from the transducer unit for generating baseband output signals comprising a first baseband output signal for conveying angular velocity data, and a second baseband output signal for conveying oscillation data for the sense resonator which includes a pilot tone signal; and a transducer feedback control system having a pair of inputs for receiving the first and second baseband output signals, and a feedback output coupled to the feedback input of the transducer unit, the transducer feedback control system comprising; a pilot test tone signal generator for generating a predetermined pilot tone signal that is applied to the feedback output for injection into the sense resonator; a filter module for performing frequency selective filtering on the first and second baseband output signals to extract or block predetermined frequency content corresponding to the predetermined pilot tone signal from the quadrature channel, thereby generating an extracted pilot tone signal; and an extraction module for processing the extracted pilot tone signal to determine one or more predetermined sensor performance parameters for the transducer unit. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. A method of operating an inertial sensor having a transducer with a sense resonator, comprising:
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causing an oscillation of the sense resonator in a quadrature channel by injecting a pilot tone signal; providing a first signal from the sense resonator that is responsive to the oscillation of the sense resonator in the quadrature channel; providing a second signal from the sense resonator that is responsive to an angular rate experienced by the sense resonator in a non-quadrature channel; providing a first baseband signal and a second baseband signal responsive to the first and second signals from the sense resonator; extracting or blocking predetermined frequency content from the first baseband signal and the second baseband signal corresponding to the pilot tone signal, thereby generating an extracted pilot tone signal; and processing the extracted pilot tone signal to extract one or more inertial sensor performance parameters. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification