Capacitive vs Piezoresistive MEMS Gyroscopes: A Theoretical and Experimental Noise Comparison

This work aims both at theoretically formalizing a comparison between piezoresistive (PZR) and capacitive (CAP) gyroscopes in terms of resolution limits, and at validating the predictions through experimental measurements on MEMS devices of both types. As predicted by the developed theory, PZR gyroscopes, well immune to parasitic capacitances and void of feedback resistance noise, show 10-fold better angle random walk (ARW) than CAP gyroscopes for the same nominal mode-split value, the same drive-motion amplitude and the same electronic noise density.