North finders are widely used in military and civilian fields, and are not affected by terrain, climate, external magnetic fields, measurement time, measurement points, and measurement conditions, and can independently find true north with high accuracy. The main advantage of a gyroscopic north-seeker alignment instrument over a magnetic compass is that a gyroscopic north-seeker points to true north rather than magnetic north, and is not affected by the surrounding ambient magnetic field.

MEMS north finders have great application prospects in the field of inertial north-seeking. Compared with traditional gyro north-seeking direction alignment instruments, MEMS north-seeking direction alignment instruments has obvious cost advantages. In addition, size, weight and power are also highlights, which can shorten the gap between low-cost alignment instruments and small, low-weight, low-power portable devices.

1.Definition of full temperature compensation

Simply put, temperature compensation refers to the method of eliminating errors caused by changes in temperature during the measurement process by compensating for temperature. In many fields, such as industrial automation, aerospace, medical equipment, mining and drilling, etc., So temperature compensation is very important.

2.Why does temperature affect the north finder?

The MEMS gyroscope built into the north seeker is a temperature-sensitive device, and its material is semiconductor silicon. When the temperature changes, the thermal expansion coefficient, elastic modulus, resonant frequency, etc. of the silicon wafer will change.

The two most important performance indicators of north finder, one is the scale factor, the other is zero bias, zero bias and scale factor will be affected by the temperature characteristics, and the zero bias value is affected by the size of the factor, so the size of the scale factor affects the performance of the north finder equipment, therefore, we must pay attention to the scale factor. During downhole operation, the performance of MEMS north finder is affected by complex ambient temperature changes. The temperature will affect the head size structure of the gyroscope, the performance of the components, the elastic modulus of the material and the resonance frequency, so as to affect the zero bias and scale factor of the internal core sensor MEMS gyroscope. Because the components of the gyroscope and the performance of electronic components are very sensitive to temperature changes, the measurement accuracy of the MEMS gyroscope will be seriously restricted. As the core component, gyro will have an important influence on the accuracy of the north-seeking alignment instrument.

The full article can be seen: https://www.ericcointernational.com/application/why-do-mems-north-finders-need-full-temperature-compensation.html
Product information: https://www.ericcointernational.com/north-finders/mems-north-finder/three-axis-mems-north-seeker.html