A frequency meter based on Costas FLL for resonant accelerometers

The resonant accelerometer (RA) is an important part for high-performance inertial devices. And high accuracy frequency measurement is one of the key technology for RA. This paper developed a frequency meter based on Costas frequency lock loop (FLL). This structure is flexible as the analog input sinusodial voltage wave is converted into digital domain by an ADC and the frequency measurement function dealing with that voltage could be implemented only with digital circuits. The transfer function of the frequency meter is determined by the loop filter of the FLL and the closed system is always stable for PID controller. The noise in the loop is reshaped by a first order Sigma-Delta modulator formed by the frequency meter loop, which relaxes the requirement for the accuracy of ADC. A test board for the frequency meter is implemented with a 24-bit ADC and FPGA, and achieves a noise of 1 mHz/root Hz at low frequency band, 7 mu Hz/root Hz around 50 Hz with a 40 kHz sinusodial input voltage.