New force-rebalance digital MEMS accelerometer now available

TDK Corporation has released the Tronics AXO315, a miniature high-performance one-axis closed-loop digital MEMS accelerometer. The sensor and its Arduino-based evaluation kit are now available globally.

The device is a ±14g range, in-plane linear accelerometer created and developed to offer high precision and reliability in the toughest environments, withstanding severe temperature and vibration conditions common in industrial, land, naval, railway, oil and gas and construction applications. It delivers one-year composite repeatability of 1mg and a 600ppm composite scale factor repeatability over temperatures varying from -55C to +105C and under 4g vibrations, with an outstanding vibration rejection. Performance is augmented by its excellent Allan variance characteristics, with a basis instability of 4µg, a velocity random walk of 0.006m/s/√h and extremely low noise of 15µg/√ Hz, therefore, allowing high resolution and low error.

Its characteristics allow a significant reduction in size, weight and cost of materials for several applications. These include servo inclinometers and dynamic inclinometers in industrial motion control units, IMU and INS for GNSS-aided positioning, and navigation of manned and unmanned ground vehicles and trains.

The device offers a force-rebalance architecture, a 24-bit digital SPI interface and an SMD package. Its performance is comparable to the incumbent analog quartz accelerometers and mechanical inclinometers but at a fraction of their weight, size, and price. It also claims to outperform all commercially available MEMS sensors components and eases integration compared to analog sensors.

It is supplied in a lightweight 1.4g hermetic SMD J-lead ceramic package (12mm x 12mm x 5mm), facilitating low-cost assembly and reliability on PCB, even in fast-changing temperature conditions.