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US 7,360,422 B2Granted
Silicon inertial sensors formed using MEMS
AssigneeUniversity of Southern California
InventorsAsad Madni, Qiang Zou, Eun Sok Kim, Lynn Costlow, Jim Vuong, Roger Wells
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A MEMS silicon inertial sensor formed of a mass that is supported and constrained to vibrate in only specified ways. The sensors can be separately optimized from the support, to adjust the sensitivity separate from the bandwidth. The sensor can sense three dimensionally, or can only sense in a single plane. Vibration cancellation may be provided.
Claims12
A sensor comprising:
- a sensor anchor part;
- a sensor supporting structure;
- beams coupled between said sensor supporting structure and said sensor anchor structure;
- a mass;
- a beam supporting structure, coupled between said sensor supporting structure and said mass, allowing movement of said mass in a first plane;
- first and second sensor portions, located and coupled to said mass on opposite sides of said beam supporting structure, adjacent edges of said mass and sensing said movements of said mass in said first plane;
- third and fourth sensor portions, coupled between said sensor supporting structure and said sensor anchor part on an opposite side of the beam supporting structure where the first and second sensor portions are located and being at positions closer to a center of the beam supporting structure than the first and second sensor portions, said third and fourth sensor portions to sense movements of said mass and
- an electrical connection that connects said first, second, third and fourth sensor portions in a Wheatstone bridge with said first and third sensor portions forming a first half of the Wheatstone bridge and said second and fourth sensor portions forming a second half of the Wheatstone bridge, said Wheatstone bridge to measure a phase difference between movements sensed by said first and third portions and movements sensed by said second fourth portions.
5 more elements
An inertial sensor comprising:
- a first mass and supporting structure that allows movement of said mass in at least one specified plane;
- first and second sensors located near first and second edges of said mass, that produce an output based on said movement;
- and
- at least one vibration canceling part, which compensates for out of plane vibrations, that are in other than said first specified plane, to reduce an effect of said out of plane vibrations on said output, wherein said vibration canceling part includes a second mass, located in a location, and driven to move in anti-phase with said first mass in a first direction, and third and fourth sensors near first and second edges of said second mass to substantially cancel vibrations thereof in said first direction, where said first, second, third and fourth sensors are substantially in a straight line with one another.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.