MEMS and Sensors
iMEMS® Accelerometers
iMEMS® Gyroscopes
Analog Temperature Sensors
Digital Temperature Sensors
Techniques for Improving Resolution in Tilt and Inertial
Solutions to the problem of bias stability:
Correcting for temperature drift and long term stability
 

Buy an expensive sensor ($100 +)

End product too expensive, leading to bankruptcy and personal humiliation

Use a microcontroller with a temperature sensor

Zero g bias drift can be measured over temperature and compensated for by the microcontroller

Temperature induced effects are relatively linear so they are easy to handle using either a look-up table or a mathematical solution

Use an Analog correction circuit

I.e. add a temperature controlled gain stage with an op-amp and a thermistor

Hard to match response for sensor to sensor variance

Use a temperature controlled crystal oven

Holds the accelerometer at a constant temp, so drift due to temp doesn't exist

Crystal oven may consume a lot of power (500 mA)

Allow a user recalibration

Let the user hit a "reset button" from time to time when the accelerometer is experiencing zero g

Be very clever in your application

Does your application really need to be DC coupled (i.e. do you need to measure tilt)? If not you should AC couple the accelerometer, via a capacitor, to your signal conditioning stage to eliminate bias drift

Use software to detect very low speed, long term, zero changes

 
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