The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

A circuit-level methodology for simulating micromachined inertial sensors based on a hierarchical representation of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is presented. In the NODAS methodology (NOdal Design of Actuators and Sensors), microaccelerometers and microgyroscopes are designed as netlists of general-purpose micromechanical beams, plates, electrostatic gaps, joints, and anchors and evaluated using lumped-parameter behavioral models. The on-chip displacements and global position of each micromechanical element have been separated in the netlist, enabling application of translation and rotation of the chip while simultaneously providing access to on-chip displacements for position sensing and electrostatic actuation. Simulations of static displacements and modal frequencies of a cantilever beam, a crab-leg accelerometer, and a symmetric vibratory-rate gyroscope agree to within 2% of finite-element analysis when using the minimal number of elements. Simulation of a 16 kHz vibratory-rate gyroscope system with dual transresistance sense amplifiers illustrates the ability to perform system-level mixed-domain simulation.

Notes

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Microelectromechanical Systems Laboratory

Text Reference

J.E. Vandemeer, M.S. Kranz, and Gary Fedder, "Hierarchical Representation and Simulation of Micromachined Inertial Sensors," Modeling and Simulation of Micromsystems Conference, April, 1998.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Fedder_1998_1484,
   author = "J.E. Vandemeer and M.S. Kranz and Gary Fedder",
   title = "Hierarchical Representation and Simulation of Micromachined Inertial Sensors",
   booktitle = "Modeling and Simulation of Micromsystems Conference",
   month = "April",
   year = "1998",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu