Inertial measurement unit integrates accelerometer, gyro

Inertial measurement unit integrates accelerometer, gyro

PORTLAND, Ore.—Inertial measurement units (IMUs) integrate a three-axis accelerometer and a three-axis gyroscope, which Bosch Sensortec now claims to have put into the smallest package yet available for consumer-grade applications such as mobile phones, tablets and digital cameras.

Frank Melzer, Bosch Sensortec CEO, announced the integration into a single inexpensive 3.5-by-4.5 millimeter package at the MEMS Business Forum Thursday (May 24) in Santa Clara, Calif.

Every smartphone today has a three-axis accelerometer to track motion—for automatically switching its screen from portrait to landscape—but for advanced gaming, gesture recognition and indoor navigational tasks, a three-axis gyroscope is needed, too. Accelerometers only track linear motion, but gyroscopes track rotation-in-place motion, thus providing a higher precision when tracking fine user movements. Packing both accelerometers and gyroscopes into a 3.5-by-4.5 millimeter package could enable any smartphone can upgrade to a full six-degree-of-freedom inertial measurement unit (IMU).

"Bosch Sensortec is now offering the smallest IMU available today," said Leopold Beer, director of global marketing at Bosch Sensortec. "We are the only MEMS manufacturer who makes accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and barometers in-house."

Bosch has both 6-inch and 8-inch MEMS fabs in Reutlingen, Germany, capable of building 1,500 wafers per day at 0.5 micron and 800 wafers a day at 0.18 micron, respectively. They are also the only manufacturer making two six-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) parts with their own chips—an accelerometer/magentometer combo for e-compasses and navigation, and now an accelerometer/gyroscope combo for gaming and gesture recognition. With the addition of one of their barometer chips—for determining altitude—Bosch Sensortec now also has a complete 10-DoF intertial navigation unit (INU) as a two-chip solution.


Bosch Sensortec wire-bonds together into 3-D stacks the MEMS die and the ASIC holding its electronics all in a single package.
Source: Bosch Sensortech

TAG:Micro electro mechanical system MEMS Semiconductor Sensor Electronics