Yet another tuning fork gyroscope

This paper reports on the development of a micromechanical vibrating mass tuning fork gyroscope with coupled drive and sense modes. The mechanical structure has been designed to have a first anti-phase drive mode and a second anti-phase sense mode. The frequencies of all other modal modes are higher. The micromechanical structure is fabricated with a cavity SOI technology called BDRIE [1]. The analog ASIC for very low noise readout (<; 50 nV/rtHz) is placed on the MEMS and is connected symmetrically with wire bonds. MEMS and ASIC have been co-designed to best fit physically and electrically to each other.