The future of the MEMS inertial sensor performance, design and manufacturing

The market for high-performance inertial sensors, tactical grade and above, has been dominated to date by macro-scale devices such as HRGs, RLGs and FOGs. While the size, power requirements, and cost of these sensors have decreased considerably over the past two decades and further reductions can be expected, the tactical IMU size remains on the order of 0.5l, and the cost remains in the $10k range. During the same period, micro-scale inertial sensors based on MEMS technology have been introduced for automotive and consumer electronics applications and are now produced at the rate of several million per day. MEMS IMUs have become truly ubiquitous, however they have so far fallen short of the requirements for high-performance applications. Nevertheless, there have been continuing reductions in their size, power and particularly cost, to less than $3 for an IMU. There is great interest in understanding future trends for MEMS and their potential threat to traditional sensors for tactical and navigation grade applications. One author has many years of experience in developing macro-scale high-performance sensors and IMUs. The other author has many years of experience in supplying design tools to leading MEMS organizations worldwide. We will first describe trends that are affecting MEMS inertial sensors, including commoditization, consolidation of advanced CMOS manufacturing, market demands for increasing package- and chip-scale integration, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the entry of mainstream CMOS foundries to MEMS manufacturing. We'll speculate on the direction that could lead to greatest business success for foundries and their customers. We will then survey promising approaches to improving the performance of MEMS sensors and we will conclude with speculations on the roadmap and timeline for a possible crossover for MEMS in high-performance applications.