In the last two decades navigation applications, currently based on fiber optic and hemispherical resonator gyroscopes, have been leading the MEMS gyroscopes market and research, as they could greatly benefit from the inherent low area occupation, power consumption and cost. This manuscript discusses the efforts to enhance the performance of amplitude modulated mode-split piezoresistive gyroscopes to cope with the requirements of inertial navigation applications. The work starts from a temperature characterization of the sensors, as in the considered scenario environmental conditions usually play a large role. Then, near navigation-grade performance are demonstrated by coupling the gyroscope with a custom designed low-noise integrated circuit, implementing the drive loop, automatic gain control loop and an open-loop sense chain, while digitization, demodulation and data transfer are performed by an off-the-shelf lock-in amplifier. Afterwards, in order to allow a full market compliant validation of the sensors, a pre-industrial compact and stand-alone FPGA-based demonstrator has been developed to extend the technology readiness level, providing consistent results with higher fidelity. Further miniaturization is sought through a second generation of the integrated circuit that adds the demodulation and automatic quadrature compensation stages.