Roger T. Howe (Advisor)

Design and Modeling of a Dual Mass SOI-MEMS Gyroscope

Ashwin Seshia
Roger T. Howe
Kristofer S.J. Pister
1999

This report discusses the design of a dual mass silicon-on-insulator(SOI) MEMS gyroscope. The main advantage of the dual mass gyroscope is the ability to cancel out common mode acceleration. The SOI MEMS process also provides several inherent advantages including increased out-of-plane stiffness, increased mass, and increased...

Integrated Micromechanical Resonant Sensors for Inertial Measurement Systems

Ashwin Seshia
Roger T. Howe
Bernhard E. Boser
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Roberto Horowitz
2002
Thumbnail-sized inertial measurement systems based on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology have been perceived as a breakthrough in the field of inertial navigation. However, even as micromechanical accelerometers have seen widespread commercialization, vibratory micromechanical gyroscopes...

Elliot Hui

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Roger T. Howe (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2002

Assembly and Molding Processes for Three-Dimensional Microfabrication

Elliot Hui
Roger T. Howe
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Dorian Liepmann
2002
Lithographic semiconductor microfabrication has been employed with great success for the manufacture of mechanical structures, achieving microscopic dimensions and great complexity at low cost. However, due to the inherently planar nature of the lithographic process, this technology is limited in its capability to produce three-dimensional structures. In this work, three strategies are presented for extending thin-film microfabrication into the...

A Solar-Powered, Milligram Prototype Robot from a Three-Chip Process

Seth Hollar
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Albert P. Pisano
Roger T. Howe
Richard M. White
2003
Commercial CMOS electronics and two in-house processes have been combined to establish a framework for making hybridized, milligram mobile robots. To demonstratethe capabilities of this framework, an 8.6 mm long, 10 mg, solar-powered prototype robot has been built. Dragging its tail end, the robot has demonstrated autonomous movement under its own weight and power, shuffling to the side a few millimeters and lifting its...

Sunil Bhave

Alumni
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
Professor Roger T. Howe (Advisor)
Ph.D. 2004

High-Order ΣΔ Interface for Micromachined Inertial Sensors

Vladimir Petkov
Bernhard E. Boser
Roger T. Howe
Roberto Horowitz
2004
Emerging automotive and consumer applications such as vehicle stability control, GPS backup and many others are generating a growing demand for inertial sensors with an increasing range of functionality including digital interfacing, built-in self-test, calibration and temperature compensation. Among various techniques for implementing inertial sensor interfaces, Σ∆ modulation provides the benefits of intrinsically linear, two-level force-feedback and analog-to-digital conversion....

Electrostatic Transduction for MEMS Resonators

Sunil Bhave
Roger T. Howe
Tsu-Jae King
Oliver M. O’Reilly
2005
The vast majority of RF systems currently in production use some form of the heterodyning architecture developed by Edwin Armstrong 75 years ago. Today, this architecture relies on discrete components such as quartz crystals and ceramic filters to provide frequency selection and stable references. However, quartz and ceramics cannot be easily integrated with on-chip circuitry, which precludes a fully monolithic wireless transceiver. In recent years, high quality factor (Q) electrostatically transduced micromechanical resonators have emerged as a possible...

Electronics for Resonant Sensors

Kenneth Wojciechowski
Bernhard E. Boser
Liwei Lin
Roger T. Howe
2005
Resonant force or displacement sensing based on observing the change in resonant frequency is attractive because of its relative insensitivity to 1/f noise, high resolution and bandwidth, and “quasi-digital” output. Applications include inertial and strain sensors, biosensors based on mass-loading, and atomic force microscopy. The main contributions of this dissertation are Design of low-noise high fidelity MEMS resonators for sensing, ...

Ultra-Low Power Wireless Technologies for Sensor Networks

Brian Otis
Jan Rabaey
Roger T. Howe
2005

The new field of wireless sensor networks presents manmy opportunities and just as many challenges. One particularly difficult aspect of wireless sensing is the implementation of the radio link. To enable energy scavenging, a technique that harvests ambient energy to pwoer the sensor node indefinitely, sub-mW power levels are necessary for the reciever. To allow a small node form-factor, all external surface-mount components must be eliminated. Traditionial RF transceiver design techniques are not suitable for achieving complete integration since they rely on frequency synthesis, requiring...