Abstract: A vibrating structure gyroscope includes a permanent magnet, a structure arranged in a magnetic field of the permanent magnet and arranged to vibrate under stimulation from at least one primary drive electrode and a drive system that includes: one primary drive electrode arranged at least one primary sense electrode arranged to sense motion in the vibrating structure and a drive control loop controlling the primary drive electrode dependent on the primary sense electrode. The structure also includes a compensation unit arranged to receive a signal from the drive system representative of a gain in the drive control loop and arranged to output a scale factor correction based on that signal. As the magnet degrades (e.g. naturally over time as the material ages), the magnetic field weakens. To compensate for this, the primary drive control loop will automatically increase the gain.

Abstract: An inertial measurement unit comprising at least one inertial sensor that is arranged to output an inertial measurement and a primary temperature sensor spatially associated with each inertial sensor that is arranged to output a temperature measurement, and a processor that receives the outputs; wherein the processor is arranged to differentiate the temperature measurement with respect to time so as to determine a temporal temperature gradient output. Existing temperature sensor(s) can be used to observe not only absolute temperature, but also thermal gradients, to further improve performance of the inertial measurement unit (IMU). This approach is distinct from the conventional calibration approach adopted for inertial sensors and IMUs in that the temperature sensor(s) in the device are used to determine temporal temperature gradients, in addition to a temperature output alone, one or both of which can be used for parametric compensation.