TOYON RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A15-022

Description

Department of Defense Instruction 4650.08 requires that U.S. forces employ navigation warfare (NAVWAR) compliant sources for positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). A high level (Level 3) of PNT integrity can be obtained from self-contained sources, such as inertial sensors. As stand-alone tactical-grade inertial sensors are sufficient for only short missions, instruments that are navigation-grade or better are required. Existing navigation-grade sensors are too large, cost too much, and use too much power. Although micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have shown a great deal of promise in reducing the cost, size, weight, and power (C-SWAP) of inertial sensors, further improvements are required in order to achieve true navigation-grade performance. While there has been a great deal of research conducted on MEMS-based gyrocompass technology, very little has been done to develop front-end micro-electronics for such devices. During this effort Toyon will study the front-end requirements for capacitive- and piezoelectric-based sense and drive electronic front-ends for navigation-grade Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes (CVG) and derive a prototype design for such a system. The prototype design will be constructed and validated during the first half of the Phase II effort before being converted into an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) in the second half of the program.