Performance Evaluation of the VIA Accelerometer

Pierre Bouniol, Denis Janiaud, Olivier Le Traon, Serge Muller

Abstract:	Among the existing accelerometer technologies, one of the most promising concepts as far as the scale factor accuracy is concerned is the Vibrating Beam Accelerometer (VBA) concept. Based on the change in the resonance frequency of a vibrating beam when submitted to specific forces, the output of such an accelerometer can be directly used by digital computers without an analog to digital converter. Except for Silicone VBA’s which have been developed in recent years, the beam and the proof mass of VBA’s are always made of different materials. By the end of the 80’s ONERA has developed a monolithic VBA with the financial support of the DGA (the French MOD procurement agency). That accelerometer, named VIA (Vibrating Inertial Accelerometer), includes a proof mass and a beam etched in the same quartz wafer. Aside from its good performance, the other important features of that accelerometer are its single step etching process and its small size (6 mm in diameter), both making it a potentially very low cost sensor. This paper will shortly describe the principles of operation for such VBAs and give a brief overview of the evolutions of the VIA design. As the official navigation system and inertial sensor test facility of the DGA, LRBA has verified the performance of each VIA prototype design. After a short presentation of the principles of operation of such VBA’s and a brief overview of the evolution in the VIA design, this paper gives the results of a comprehensive performance evaluation performed at LRBA on the latest version of the VIA. The results of this evaluation can be summarized by the following figures: 1OOg range, few hundreds of micro g bias error, ten ppm scale factor error, less than 2 cm3 sensor volume.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1998 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 21 - 23, 1998 Westin Long Beach Hotel Long Beach, CA
Pages:	169 - 173
Cite this article:	Bouniol, Pierre, Janiaud, Denis, Le Traon, Olivier, Muller, Serge, "Performance Evaluation of the VIA Accelerometer," Proceedings of the 1998 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Long Beach, CA, January 1998, pp. 169-173.
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