Micromachined Gyros for Automotive Applications

R. Neul1, U. Gómez2, K. Kehr1, W. Bauer2, J. Classen2, C. Döring1,

E. Esch2, S. Götz1, J. Hauer1, B. Kuhlmann2, C. Lang4, M. Veith2, R. Willig3
1 3
Corporate Sector Research and Advance Engineering Automotive Equipment Division Chassis Systems
Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch GmbH
Gerlingen, Germany Abstatt, Germany
2 4
Automotive Equipment Division Automotive Electronics Research and Technology Center North America
Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch Corporation
Reutlingen, Germany Palo Alto, CA, USA

Abstract—Micro machined gyros are key elements in several (ROM), Active Suspension Control (ASC) and Steer-by-
automotive systems, thus enabling highly sophisticated Wire (SbW) [5], [6].
applications like roll over detection and mitigation, navigation
systems, Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other future
vehicle stabilizing and dynamics control systems. New
II. ANGULAR RATE SENSING ELEMENT
automotive systems are demanding higher accuracy, better The sensing element of the DRS-MM3 is an electro-
signal to noise ratio, higher robustness and insensitivity against statically driven and sensed vibratory gyroscope, which is
external perturbations, better system availability and manufactured by pure silicon surface micromachining, using
reliability as well as easy application of the gyro. a slightly modified Bosch foundry process [7], with an 11
µm thick poly silicon functional layer to form the movable
This paper is presenting the recent development, now the third parts of the micromachined structure.
generation of micromachined angular rate sensors at Robert
Bosch GmbH. Mass production was started in spring 2005.
These surface micromachined gyroscopes exhibit outstanding
performance compared to similar designs.

I. INTRODUCTION
The first ESP system was introduced in 1995, assisting
drivers to keep their vehicles on track in critical driving
situations and thus helping to prevent accidents. A current
description can be found in [1]. These first systems were
using a macro mechanical yaw rate sensor, the DRS 50/100,
which was based on a piezoelectrically actuated and sensed
vibrating steel cylinder as sensing element [2].
In 1998 the first silicon micromachined yaw rate sensor,
the DRS-MM1 [3], was introduced by Robert Bosch GmbH
and used in ESP systems. The sensing elements are
manufactured using a mixed bulk and surface micro-
machining technology.
The second generation of micromachined angular rate Figure 1. Schematic view of the micromachined sensing element.
sensors, the DRS-MM2, was introduced in 2001. It is using Drive motion in x-direction. Sensing motion in y-direction.
The z-axis is the sensitive angular rate input axis.
pure surface micromachining and was designed to meet the
requirements for roll over detection and navigation systems
[4]. The operating principle of the sensing element is
depicted in Fig. 1. It consists of two almost identical parts,
The third generation of angular rate sensors, the DRS- connected by a coupling spring to ensure common mode
MM3, as described in this paper, is again targeting ESP shapes of the whole structure. Each part comprises a “drive”
systems and other advanced vehicle stabilizing systems like frame on the outer circumference, an intermediate “Coriolis”
Electronic Active Steering (EAS), Roll Over Mitigation frame, and a “detection” frame on the innermost position. All

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frames of each part are connected via U-shaped springs, and balanced feedback loops. The analog front ends are
the outer and innermost frames are also anchored via U- differential capacitance to voltage and flash A/D-converters.
shaped springs on the substrate. Early transition to the digital domain provides for excellent
offset stability. The micromachined sensing element itself is
The drive frames are excited to a resonant vibration at part of the ∆Σ-modulators, resulting in a substantial
approximately 15 kHz by electrostatic comb drives in improvement of SNR by applying noise shaping techniques.
antiparallel direction along the x-axis. This drive motion is Post packaging trimming of the angular rate sensors is
translated to the Coriolis frames by appropriately attached U- enabled by on-chip PROM and temperature measurement.
shaped springs, whereas the detection frames are unaffected Angular rate output is provided by a digital serial peripheral
by the drive motion, leading to a decoupling of drive and interface (SPI).
detection motion at the detection frames.
If there is an external angular rate around the z-axis, the
Coriolis frames are driven into a vibrating motion by the
occurring Coriolis forces. This motion is translated to the
detection frames via U-shaped springs and picked up by
means of parallel plate capacitor structures due to their
change in capacitance.

Figure 3. Block diagram of the evaluation circuit. Sensing element on

Figure 2. SEM picture of the sensing element. On the right, a detail of
the coupling spring is shown.
A SEM picture of the sensing element is shown in Fig. 2.
The application of U-shaped springs ensures small
mechanical nonlinearities. The particular design with the
feature of decoupled detection structures reduces mechanical
and electrical crosstalk emerging from drive motion.
Mechanical crosstalk is additionally reduced by tightly
controlling lithography and trench as the critical MEMS
manufacturing processes. Differential signal evaluation and
the high operating frequency of approximately 15 kHz lead
to sufficient insensitivity to external mechanical perturbation
(vibration, shock) usually present in automotive
environments. High Q-factors of drive and detection modes,
due to the enclosed vacuum, lead to high bias stability.
the left (outside grey area), drive loop, detection loop, synchronous
demodulation, signal conditioning. Analog parts in light green
and digital parts in dark blue.
According to the demands of advanced vehicle control
systems concerning safety and availability of sensor signals,
extensive internal safety and monitoring techniques have
been implemented into the sensor system design. They
comprise self test and monitoring of internal features during
start up and operation and will convey their status to the SPI
interface. In addition, several internal parameters like
temperature, quadrature and current control loop quantities
are also output at the interface, thus enabling to integrate the
safety and monitoring concepts into higher level safety and
monitoring systems. In addition, the availability of the
sensor’s internal signals provides for additional high
precision trimming.

III. SIGNAL EVALUATION CIRCUIT

A block diagram of the signal evaluation circuit is shown
in Fig. 3. It mainly consists of drive control loop, detection
loop, synchronous demodulator, signal conditioning and self
test circuits. Except for the front ends most signal processing
is digital. The drive control loop maintains a stable
oscillation of the sensing element by means of a phase
locked loop (PLL) for establishing the phase condition and
an automatic gain control (AGC) to achieve constant Figure 4. Angular rate sensor module SMG in premold package PM20.
magnitude. Open module on the right including hermetically sealed sensing element
and signal evaluation ASIC.
Measurement of the Coriolis accelerations is carried out
by electromechanical ∆Σ-modulators including force

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 IV. ANGULAR RATE SENSOR MODULE
AND SENSOR CLUSTER
Sensing element and signal evaluation ASIC are
packaged together in a surface mountable premold package
PM20 as illustrated in Fig. 4. The open package on the right
reveals the 2-chip-approach comprising sensing element and
signal evaluation ASIC. Special care is taken to minimize
stress on the sensing element.

Angular rate sensor

Accelerometer

Figure 6. Power spectral density of the angular rate sensor’s output.

µ-Controller Inset shows the rate offset raw data.

characteristics of the sensor’s output low pass filter can

Figure 5. An example for a sensor cluster MM3.x, containing easily be identified. The angular rate signal bandwidth is
a low-g accelerometer module and an angular rate sensor module from DC to approximately 60 Hz. Within this bandwidth the
as well as a microcontroller. output noise density is typically about 0.004 (°/s)/√(Hz). At
higher frequencies the noise is attenuated by the output filter.
For use in a car, two or even more inertial sensors are
combined in one housing to form an inertial sensor cluster.
An example is shown in Fig. 5. The pictured sensor cluster
comprises a low-g accelerometer and an angular rate sensor.
A micro controller is used to collect, to further process and to
check the signals, before they are handed over to the CAN
interface, typically used in automotive systems.

V. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
The sensor modules are designed to operate under usual
automotive conditions. This involves a temperature range
from -40 °C to +120 °C and external mechanical and
electrical perturbations (vibration and EMI).
The most important properties of inertial sensors and in
particular of angular rate sensors are
• noise power spectral density, determining SNR and
the limits of resolution,
Figure 7. Root Allan Variance of the angular rate sensor. The inset is the
• offset drift of the sensor over operating temperature rate offset at sample time 10 ms.
range and life time and
• sensitivity of the sensor system against external Next important feature to be addressed for automotive
mechanical perturbations (e. g. vibrations). applications in vehicle stabilizing systems is the offset
Some typical measurements concerning these properties are stability. A common technique to characterize drift
discussed in the following. phenomena is the Root Allan Variance [8]. This technique
was applied to measurement data taken from a typical
The output noise characteristic is shown in Fig. 6. production sample of an angular rate sensor module at room
measured on a typical production sample. The inset displays temperature, and is illustrated in Fig. 7.
the original time domain data during a measurement interval
of 10 s at a sample rate of 1 kHz. Note that the noise peaks The inset in Fig. 7 shows the originally measured time
are within approximately ±0.1 °/s. The main plot is depicting domain data. The measurement was done during a time
the corresponding noise power spectral density. The period of 6·104 s at a sample rate of 100 Hz. The main plot is

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the Root Allan Variance calculated from the measurement
data. The slope at short cluster times indicates an angle
random walk. Resolution noise floor is reached after about
600 s of integration time and exhibits an outstanding bias
stability of approximately 1.35 °/h. Typical values are less
than 3°/h at cluster times between 200 s and 600 s. The
raising slope at larger cluster times >1000 s is due to rate
random walk (1/f noise) or an exponentially correlated
random process with a time constant >>1000 s.
Besides offset drift over time the offset drift over the
whole temperature range is typically within ±0.4 °/s.
Figure 8. Sensitivity of the sensor cluster to external vibration. From top
to bottom: Shaker reference [g], angular rate output [°/s],
lateral acceleration [g], longitudinal acceleration [g].
At last the sensitivity of the sensors against external
vibration shall be investigated. As the g-sensitivity is not
only a property of the sensing element itself, but is highly
depending also on packaging and mounting of the sensor
modules, a whole sensor cluster was put under test. The
sensor cluster comprises an angular rate sensor and
longitudinally and laterally measuring accelerometers. The
results are shown by Fig. 8. A sinusoidal excitation with 5 g
amplitude and a frequency sweep from 30 Hz to 10 kHz was
applied on a shaker in z-direction (perpendicular to the
sensor chips or the printed circuit boards). Excitations in
other directions show similar results, except for the fact, that
the accelerometers measure the excitation, if it occurs in their
sensitive direction, as they are supposed to.
No additional mechanical damping is necessary to
suppress external mechanical perturbations (vibrations). This
is due to the applied design measures and the tight control of
the MEMS fabrication tolerances, leading to easy application
of the sensor modules in automotive environment and to cost
effective sensor cluster designs.
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VI. CONCLUSION
New design concepts have resulted in a surface
micromachined angular rate sensor meeting the requirements
of current and future high performance vehicle stabilizing
and vehicle dynamics control systems. The sensor exhibits
advanced properties in accuracy, signal to noise, robustness,
availability, reliability and ease of application. The
performance is maintained under harsh environmental
conditions, therefore being well suited for automotive
applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank all colleagues at Robert
Bosch Automotive Equipment, Division Automotive
Electronics and Division Chassis Systems and at Corporate
Sector Research and Advance Engineering, who have
contributed to the development of the new angular rate
sensors, beginning from first concepts through design of
sensing element and readout electronics, development of
technology, micro structuring, packaging, testing,
mechanical construction and software until high volume
production.
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