Development of a single-structured MEMS gyro-accelerometer

This paper presents a study on the development of a multi-sensing inertial sensor with a single mechanical structure, which can be used both as a gyroscope and an accelerometer. The proposed MEMS gyro-accelerometer is designed to detect the angular rate and the acceleration at the same time using two separate detection circuits for one proof mass. In this study, the detection and signal processing circuit for an effective signal processing of different inertial measurements is designed, fabricated, and tested. The experimental results show that the performances of the gyro-accelerometer have resolutions of 1mg and 0.025deg/sec and nonlinearities of less than 0.5% for the accelerometer and the gyroscope, respectively, which are similar results with those of sensors with different structures and different detection circuits. The size of the sensor is reduced almost by 50% comparing with the sensors of separated proof mass.