Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based programmable digital emulator of vibratory microelectromechanical systems...

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Sensor Technology

Background:

• Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) vibratory gyroscopes are crucial for inertial sensing.
• Characterizing and verifying control/interface electronics for MEMS gyroscopes is time-consuming.
• Current design cycles are prolonged by the need to integrate MEMS fabrication with electronic testing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a hardware emulator for MEMS vibratory gyroscopes.
• To facilitate hardware-in-the-loop testing for control/interface electronics.
• To accelerate the design and verification process for MEMS gyroscope systems.

Main Methods:

• A re-configurable hardware emulator synthesized on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board.
• Modeling of the Coriolis effect and key MEMS gyroscope error sources.
• Implementation on a Xilinx Zynq®-7020 SoC (Digilent ZYBO Z7 board) with user-controllable parameters.

Main Results:

• Successful emulation of the Coriolis effect.
• Accurate modeling of prominent error sources: quadrature error, spring nonlinearity, and various noise types (thermo-mechanical, electronic, environmental).
• Preliminary experimental validation of noise and nonlinearity models.

Conclusions:

• The hardware emulator effectively models MEMS gyroscope dynamics and error sources.
• This approach significantly decouples electronic testing from MEMS fabrication, shortening design cycles.
• The re-configurable FPGA-based emulator offers a flexible platform for MEMS gyroscope research and development.