Mechanical-thermal noise in micromachined acoustic and vibration sensors

Abstract

The small moving parts in acoustic and vibration microsensors are especially susceptible to mechanical noise resulting from molecular agitation. For sensors designed for small-signal applications, this mechanical-thermal noise is often one of the limiting noise components. Several techniques for calculating the mechanical-thermal noise in acoustic and vibration sensors in general, and in micromachined sensors in particular, are reviewed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>