A doubly decoupled micromachined vibrating wheel gyroscope

In this paper, a doubly decoupled vibrating wheel gyroscope with novel torsional sensing comb capacitors is presented. The doubly decoupled design and symmetrical structure can efficiently suppress the mechanical coupling of the gyroscope. Moreover, the symmetrically distributed proof masses make it immune from the linear accelerations. Both driving and sensing modes of the gyroscope are dominated by slide film air damping, so it can work even at atmospheric environment. The process for this gyroscope is also compatible with z-axis gyroscope, which makes it potential to realize low cost monolithic MIMU (miniature inertial measurement unit) without vacuum packaging. The gyroscope was fabricated and tested at atmosphere. The sensitivity is 3.1 mV/deg/s while the nonlinearity is 7.68⁰/₀₀ with the full scale of 900deg/s. The noise floor is 0.45deg/s/Hz^1/2.