Precise measurement of variations in the local gravitational acceleration is valuable for natural hazard forecasting, prospecting, and geophysical studies. Common issues of the present gravimetry technologies include their high cost, high mass, and large volume, which can potentially be solved by micro-electromechanical-system (MEMS) technology. However, the reported MEMS gravimeter does not have a high sensitivity and a large dynamic range comparable with those of the present commercial gravimeters, lowering its practicability and ruling out worldwide deployment. In this paper, we introduce a more practical MEMS gravimeter that has a higher sensitivity of 8 μGal/√Hz and a larger dynamic range of 8000 mGal by using an advanced suspension design and a customized optical displacement transducer. The proposed MEMS gravimeter has performed the co-site earth tides measurement with a commercial superconducting gravimeter GWR iGrav with the results showing a correlation coefficient of 0.91.

精确测量局部重力加速度的变化对于自然灾害预测、勘探和地球物理研究非常有价值。当前重力测量技术的常见问题包括成本高、质量大和体积大，这些问题可以通过微机电系统（MEMS）技术来解决。然而，所报道的 MEMS 重力仪与现有的商用重力仪相比，没有高灵敏度和大动态范围，降低了其实用性，排除了全球部署的可能性。在本文中，我们通过使用先进的悬架设计和定制的光学位移传感器，介绍了一种更实用的 MEMS 重力仪，它具有 8 μGal/√Hz 的更高灵敏度和 8000 mGal 的更大动态范围。