Gyro quadrature stabalization with demodulation phase error nulling

• US 9,605,964 B2
• Filed: 01/03/2014
• Issued: 03/28/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/03/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Original Assignee: The Boeing Co.
• Inventors: Ge, Howard H., Challoner, Anthony Dorian
• Primary Examiner(s): Huber, Robert
• Assistant Examiner(s): Sinha, Tarun
• Application Number:
  US14/147,260
• Publication Number:
  US 20150192415A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,180 Days
• Field of Search: 735/041.3, 735/041.2
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 19/5684 the devices involving a micromechanical structure
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 19/5776 Signal processing not specific to any of the devices covered by groups G01C19/5607 - G01C19/5719

Abstract

A gyroscope system may include a disc resonator gyroscope including a plurality of electrodes embedded in the disc resonator gyroscope. The electrodes may be configured for at least applying a drive voltage and a tuning voltage to the disc resonator gyroscope and for sensing operating parameters of the disc resonator gyroscope. The gyroscope system may also include a quadrature stabilization circuit configured to measure a quadrature error and generate a quadrature regulating voltage based on the quadrature error. The tuning voltage may be adjusted by the quadrature regulating voltage to cancel an effect of voltage flicker before being applied to a tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope.

Claims

1. A gyroscope system, comprising:

a disc resonator gyroscope comprising a plurality of electrodes embedded in the disc resonator gyroscope, wherein the electrodes are configured for at least applying a drive voltage and a tuning voltage to the disc resonator gyroscope and for sensing operating parameters of the disc resonator gyroscope;

a force-to-rebalance (FTR) loop associated with the disc resonator gyroscope that senses an FTR signal from the disc resonator gyroscope;

an automatic gain control (AGC) loop associated with the disc resonator gyroscope that senses an AGC signal from the disc resonator gyroscope; and

a quadrature stabilization circuit configured to measure a quadrature error signal and generate a quadrature regulating voltage based on the quadrature error signal, wherein the quadrature error signal is measured using the FTR signal and the AGC signal and wherein the tuning voltage is adjusted by the quadrature regulating voltage to cancel an effect of voltage flicker on the tuning voltage before the tuning voltage is applied to a tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope.

2. The gyroscope system of claim 1, further comprising a demodulation phase tuning circuit configured to measure a demodulation phase angle error of the disc resonator gyroscope and to adjust the demodulation phase angle to about 90 degrees.

3. The gyroscope system of claim 1, further comprising a frequency stabilization circuit configured to maintain an operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope substantially constant.

4. The gyroscope system of claim 1, wherein the quadrature stabilization circuit comprises a demodulation filter and wherein the AGC signal is fed into the demodulation filter as a reference signal and the FTR signal is filtered by the demodulation filter, the demodulation filter provides a demodulated quadrature signal and a demodulated bias signal.

5. The gyroscope system of claim 4, wherein the quadrature stabilization circuit further comprises a signal conditioning device that removes noise greater than a predetermined frequency from the demodulated quadrature signal and provides a conditioned demodulated quadrature signal.

6. The gyroscope system of claim 5, wherein the quadrature stabilization circuit further comprises:

a mechanism to apply a constant offset voltage signal to the conditioned demodulated quadrature signal to provide the quadrature error signal; and

a compensator configured to generate the quadrature regulating voltage in response to the quadrature error signal.

7. A gyroscope system, comprising:

a disc resonator gyroscope comprising a plurality of electrodes embedded in the disc resonator gyroscope, wherein the electrodes are configured for at least applying a drive voltage and a tuning voltage to the disc resonator gyroscope and for sensing operating parameters of the disc resonator gyroscope, wherein the plurality of electrodes comprise;

a force-to-rebalance (FTR) electrode that senses an FTR signal; and

an automatic gain control (AGC) electrode that senses an AGC signal;

a demodulation phase tuning circuit configured to measure a demodulation phase angle error of the disc resonator gyroscope using the FTR signal and the AGC signal and to adjust a demodulation phase angle to about 90 degrees; and

a quadrature stabilization circuit configured to measure a quadrature error and generate a quadrature regulating voltage based on the quadrature error, wherein the quadrature error is measured using the FTR signal and the AGC signal and wherein the tuning voltage is adjusted by the quadrature regulating voltage to cancel an effect of voltage flicker on the tuning voltage before the tuning voltage is applied to a tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope.

8. The gyroscope system of claim 7, further comprising a frequency stabilization circuit configured to maintain an operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope substantially constant.

9. The gyroscope system of claim 8, wherein the frequency stabilization circuit is configured to control a temperature of the disc resonator gyroscope in response to an output resonator operating signal from the disc resonator gyroscope that corresponds to the operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope.

10. The gyroscope system of claim 8, wherein the frequency stabilization circuit comprises:

a frequency estimator configured to receive an output resonator operating signal from an output electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope and to estimate a resonator frequency based on the output resonator operating signal, the output resonator operating signal corresponding to the operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope;

a comparator to determine a difference between a stable frequency reference and the estimated resonator frequency, wherein the comparator provides a frequency error signal corresponding to the difference between the stable frequency reference and the estimated resonator frequency;

a compensator configured to generate a frequency regulating voltage in response to the frequency error signal; and

a heat source powered using the frequency regulating voltage, wherein the heat source controls a temperature of the disc resonator gyroscope in response to the frequency regulating voltage for maintaining the operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope substantially constant.

11. The gyroscope system of claim 10, further comprising a voltage generator configured to add an offset voltage to the frequency regulating voltage that provides a predetermined controllable range of operation of the heat source.

12. The gyroscope system of claim 7, wherein the demodulation phase tuning circuit comprises:

a demodulation filter configured to generate a demodulated bias signal in response to the FTR signal from the FTR electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope and the AGC signal from the AGC electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope;

a synchronous error detection device configured to measure a peak-to-peak variation of the demodulated bias signal and generate a bias error signal that corresponds to the peak-to-peak variation of the demodulated bias signal;

a demodulation phase compensator configured to generate a demodulation phase angle adjustment signal in response to the bias error signal; and

a phase filter configured to adjust a phase angle of the FTR signal in response to the demodulation phase angle adjustment signal to drive the bias error signal to about zero, an in-phase bias term and a quadrature term of an equation of motion of the disc resonator gyroscope are decoupled in response to the bias error signal being zero.

14. The gyroscope system of claim 12, wherein the synchronous error detection device is configured to compare the demodulated bias signal to a reference signal to measure the peak-to-peak variation of the demodulated bias signal.

15. The gyroscope system of claim 12, wherein the quadrature stabilization circuit comprises:

the demodulation filter configured to generate a demodulated quadrature signal in response to the FTR signal and the AGC signal, the demodulated quadrature signal being feedback as a quadrature error signal;

a compensator configured to generate a quadrature regulating voltage in response to the quadrature error signal, wherein the quadrature regulating voltage is added to the tuning voltage to cancel an effect of voltage flicker before the tuning voltage is applied to the tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope.

16. The gyroscope system of claim 15, wherein the bias error signal is driven to about zero before the quadrature regulating voltage is applied to the tuning electrode.

17. The gyroscope system of claim 7, wherein a sinusoid perturbation voltage is applied to the tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope to induce a selected change in quadrature when driving the bias error signal to about zero, a frequency of the sinusoid perturbation voltage being chosen with respect to a mechanical bandwidth of the disc resonator gyroscope and an amplitude of the sinusoid perturbation voltage being chosen to induce a predetermined perturbation in quadrature without deviating from a tuned electrostatic-mechanical equilibrium of the disc resonator gyroscope, the sinusoid perturbation voltage is summed with the tuning voltage for applying to the tuning electrode.

13. The gyroscope system of 12, wherein the demodulation compensator is configured to use a magnitude and polarity of the bias error signal to generate the demodulation phase angle adjustment signal that drives the bias error signal to about zero.

18. A method, comprising:

applying a drive voltage to a drive electrode of a disc resonator gyroscope;

applying a tuning voltage to a tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope;

measuring a demodulation phase angle error of the disc resonator gyroscope;

adjusting a demodulation phase angle to about 90 degrees in response to the demodulation phase angle error measurement;

measuring a demodulation quadrature error, wherein measuring the demodulation quadrature error comprises;

sensing a force-to-rebalance (FTR) signal by an FTR electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope; and

sensing an automatic gain control (AGC) signal by an AGC electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope;

generating a quadrature regulating voltage based on the demodulation quadrature error; and

adjusting the tuning voltage using the quadrature regulating voltage to cancel an effect of voltage flicker of the tuning voltage being applied to the tuning electrode.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising controlling a temperature of the disc resonator gyroscope to maintain an operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope substantially constant, wherein the temperature of the disc resonator gyroscope is controlled by a heat source in response to an output operating signal from the disc resonator gyroscope that corresponds to an operating frequency of the disc resonator gyroscope.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

comparing a stable frequency reference and an estimated resonator frequency;

generating a frequency error signal based on a difference between the stable frequency reference and the estimated resonator frequency;

generating a frequency regulating voltage in response to the frequency error signal;

powering the heat source using the frequency regulating voltage; and

adding an offset voltage to the frequency regulating voltage that provides a predetermined controllable range of operation of the heat source.

21. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

demodulating the FTR signal and the AGC signal from the disc resonator gyroscope to provide a demodulated bias signal;

measuring a peak-to-peak variation of the demodulated bias signal, the measured peak-to-peak variation of the demodulated bias signal corresponding to a bias error signal;

generating a demodulation phase angle adjustment signal in response to the bias error signal; and

adjusting a phase angle of the FTR signal in response to the demodulation phase angle adjustment signal to drive the bias error signal to zero, an in-phase bias term and a quadrature term of an equation of motion of the disc resonator gyroscope are decoupled in response to the error signal being zero.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprising applying a sinusoid perturbation voltage to the tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope to induce a selected change in quadrature when driving the bias error signal to about zero, a frequency of the sinusoid perturbation voltage being chosen with respect to a mechanical bandwidth of the disc resonator gyroscope and an amplitude of the sinusoid perturbation voltage being chosen to induce a predetermined perturbation in quadrature without deviating from a tuned electrostatic-mechanical equilibrium of the disc resonator gyroscope, the sinusoid perturbation voltage is summed with the tuning voltage for applying to the tuning electrode.

23. The method of claim 21, further comprising

demodulating the FTR signal and the AGC signal from the disc resonator gyroscope to provide a demodulated quadrature signal;

receiving the demodulated quadrature signal by a compensator as a quadrature error signal; and

generating a quadrature regulating voltage in response to the quadrature error signal, wherein the quadrature regulating voltage is added to the tuning voltage to cancel the effect of voltage flicker of the turning voltage being applied to the tuning electrode of the disc resonator gyroscope.

24. The method of claim 18, wherein measuring the demodulation quadrature error further comprises:

demodulating the FTR signal and the AGC signal from the disc resonator gyroscope to provide a demodulated quadrature signal; and

feeding back the demodulated quadrature signal for measuring the demodulation quadrature error after a correct demodulation phase angle is established.