Sensing offset analysis and compensation of a capacitive displacement transducer for space inertial sensors

Abstract Capacitive displacement transducers play a crucial role in inertial sensors especially for space gravitational wave detection missions. One of the major requirements for the displacement transducer is to have a lower sensing offset. The sensing offset will adversely affect the accuracy of the absolute position measurement of the test mass, providing erroneous data to the drag-free controller and leading to spacecraft mispositioning. Additionally, the offset could introduce multiplicative noise to the sensing output and the closed loop output of the inertial sensor. The asymmetry of the sensing bridge within the front-end electronics has been identified as the primary source of these offsets. This paper analyzes the requirements of the main parameters in the sensing bridge. A method is proposed to reduce the sensing offset by utilizing differentiated resonant capacitors while maintaining the ability to tune the resonant frequency and ensure a sufficiently low sensing noise level. Experimental results show that this approach can effectively reduce the residual sensing offset to (−15.7 ± 5.0) ppm, which satisfies the stringent requirement for space inertial sensors in the TianQin mission.