Emcore wins US DoD contract
Emcore, a provider of optoelectronics for comms and defence systems, has been awarded a contract by a large US Department of Defense (DOD) contractor to design and deliver several navigation grade Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) for incorporation into custom Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) early next year.
These units will be used for system qualification and are expected to be a precursor to production orders following later in 2019.
This navigation grade IMU will be based on technology developed for the Emcore-Orion series of Fibre Optic Gyro (FOG)-based Micro Inertial Navigation Systems (MINAV). It will be designed to deliver the highest level of performance in Emcore's navigation systems product line with bias drift over temperature as low as 0.006 degrees per hour for the FOGs, and 35 micro-g over temperature for the accelerometers. The unit achieves this navigation grade performance in a package less than 75 cubic inches, which is said by the company to be an industry first for this class of IMU.
The Emcore-Orion MINAV is a three-axis design using the company's proprietary, next-generation solid-state optical transceiver with integrated optics, combined with FPGA electronics to deliver standalone aircraft grade navigator performance at one third the size of legacy or competing systems. The low Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) of Emcore-Orion series makes it a suitable inertial navigation system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), manned aircraft, rotorcraft and dismounted soldier applications.
