Design of a low power capacitive sensor for a micromachined accelerometer

Anew possible commercial application for a micromachined accelerometer is for use in handheld devices such as personal digital assistants and cellular phones, as an intuitive method of data entry which does not consume space on the ever-shrinking exterior. These devices are battery powered, which imposes stringent power consumption limitations on any hardware added. To make an accelerometer a viable addition to a handheld device, a low power version was designed, with the other device parameters, such as measurement range and noise performance, tailored to be suitable for use in a handheld. The final design measures ±3 g's of acceleration with approximately 140 [mu]g/ [square root of]Hz of noise, consuming only 200 [mu]W of power.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Good, Daniel (Daniel Albert), 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Rahul Sarpeshkar.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/16840

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/16840