Frequency modulated micro-gyro signal processing method and device

A signal processing method and device for measuring the input rate of an FM micro-gyro having a modulation frequency F M and having an oscillator sense element having a nominal frequency F OSC is disclosed. In a first aspect of the invention, the method comprises defining a first time interval T WN and a second time interval T WP and measuring the first time interval and the second time interval by counting the number of periods of a predetermined reference frequency. The nominal frequency of the oscillator sense element F OSC is measured along with the modulation frequency F M . From these measurements, the proof mass period N W is calculated. The time difference Δt is calculated from the above measurements. The method then comprises calculating a modulation M that produced the measured Δt, preferably using an iterative method. From the above, the input rate Ω is calculated by dividing M by a sensitivity S of the FM micro-gyro. The above method and other methods for signal processing for measuring the input rate of an FM micro-gyro are disclosed herein.