TDK Releases High-Performance, Closed-Loop MEMS Accelerometer

TDK Corporation recently announced the release of Tronics AXO315 — a miniature high-performance, one-axis closed-loop MEMS accelerometer with a 24-bit digital SPI interface and SMD package. The benefits: it reaches quartz sensors performances, outperforms commercial MEMS sensors, and eases integration.

The new force-rebalance accelerometer delivers an excellent one-year composite bias repeatability of 1 mg and composite scale factor repeatability of 600 ppm under severe temperature and vibration conditions common in industrial, land, railway, naval, and construction applications. Its characteristics enable a significant reduction in size, weight, and cost of materials for industrial motion control units, Inertial Measurement Units (IMU), and Inertial Navigation Systems (INS).

The AXO315 is a ±14 g range, in-plane linear accelerometer. It has been designed and developed to provide high precision and reliability in the most challenging environments. It achieves a 1 mg composite bias repeatability over one year at temperatures ranging from -55° to +105° C, and 4 g vibrations with an outstanding vibration rejection.

Performance is augmented by its superior Allan variance characteristics, with an excellent bias instability of 4 µg, a velocity random walk of 0.006 m/s/√h, and very low noise of 15 μg/√Hz, thus enabling high resolution and low error.

The new AXO315’s performance is equivalent to the incumbent analog quartz accelerometers and mechanical inclinometers, but at a fraction of their size, weight, and price, while remaining free from dual-use export control according to Annex 1 of Council Regulation (EC) No 428/2009.

The AXO315 exhibits higher-performance levels than any current commercially available MEMS sensors components and delivers an 80% gain in temperature stability compared to Tronics’ previous accelerometer generation AXO 215. The new accelerometer complements the existing lineup of Tronics high-performance GYPRO digital gyros for high-performance IMUs and INS.
It comes in a lightweight 1.4 g hermetic SMD J-lead ceramic package (12 x 12 x 5 mm), enabling low-cost assembly and reliability on PCB, even in fast-changing temperature conditions.

With its superior performance and robustness, AXO315 is an ideal sensor for applications requiring high accuracy and stability in demanding environments, such as servo inclinometers and dynamic inclinometers in industrial motion control units, IMUs, and INS for GNSS-aided positioning, and navigation of manned and unmanned ground vehicles and trains.

The AXO315 accelerometers are manufactured, tested, and calibrated at Tronics Microsystems’ facility in Grenoble, France. Pre-production and customer sampling have begun. Evaluation of the sensors can also be made through an Arduino-based evaluation kit that is specifically designed to provide developers with improved testing functionalities such as output reading and recording, recalibration, and digital self-tests.