Page 59: of Marine Technology Magazine (November 2015)

FOG Technology for High Latitude Navigation

Fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) tech- develop the equipment and methodol- vey missions were conducted with an nology occupies a unique place in the ogy necessary to collect high-resolution, AUV under the ice and a full acoustic navigation history, according to navi- hydrographic-quality, bathymetric data positioning solution including iXBlue gation, positioning and imaging solu- of the Arctic seabed in harsh weather PHINS to track it.

tions provider iXBlue, who says FOG conditions. UNCLOS Article 76 sur- www.ixblue.com continues to break performance bound- aries. FOG and inertial navigation sys- tems (INS) technologies perform even in extreme applications such as mission critical space operation, nuclear subma- rine stealth operation and high latitude (North) navigation. Navigation in the northern latitudes is especially dif? cult mainly because of the alignment. The physical effect that is measured for the alignment is the projection of the earth’s rotation rate on the horizontal plan. The higher the latitudes, the more dif? cult it gets to accurately project where North is. iXBlue systems, however, are suited for use in many arctic missions, under the Canadian’s ice and in the Norwegian (Photo: iXBlue) seas, the manufacturer says. Recently,

Lance is equipped with iXBlue INS the Norwegian Polar Institute conduct- ing a routine mission to recover scien- ti? c instruments, offered iXBlue live

Arctic testing of its products. “When we plan a sailing route, especially when we are close to land, it is very important for us to know the exact heading,” said

Lance’s captain.

At North latitude, more than the sta- bility, the problem is to determine the correct heading without bias. Thanks to its high precision, iXBlue Phins consis- tently delivered performance similar to the ones at lower latitudes. Furthermore, iXBlue gyroscopes, compensated for thermal behavior, maintained perfor- mance even mounted on the exterior of the vessel.

iXBlue FOG has also been put to harsh real-world subsea test where GPS aiding is not available. The high latitude test was conducted onboard the Inter- national Submarine Engineering Arctic

Explorer class AUV. This equipment was selected to support the “Corner- stone” project performed in conjunction with NRCAN/DRDC. The goal was to www.marinetechnologynews.com

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