EMCORE’s EN-300 precision FOG IMU, ideally suited for UAS, now in high-rate production

October 29, 2020 | AUVSI News

EMCORE Corporation, a provider of advanced mixed-signal products that serve the aerospace and defense and broadband communications markets, has announced that its EN-300 FOG (Fiber Optic Gyro) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is now in high-rate production and is broadly available for purchase with 12-week lead times.

EMCORE’s EN-300 offers up to 10 times the bias performance of legacy systems in a form, fit, and function compatible package, making it ideally suited to serve GPS denied navigation, precise targeting, and line-of-sight stabilization requirements for UAS, as well as other demanding applications.

EMCORE has successfully completed a comprehensive Design Verification Testing (DVT) regimen over tough environmental conditions. The company has also provided several proof-of-technology IMUs globally to defense contractor primes and aerospace customers that are looking to upgrade their platforms and systems.

To enhance on-time delivery and specification compliance, EMCORE is now expanding production of the EN-300 with strict manufacturing process and quality controls in place. 

“Given the strong market interest and demand, we are extremely pleased to announce the production ramp-up and broad availability for purchase of the EN-300,” says David Hoyh, EMCORE’s director of Sales & Marketing for navigation products.

“EMCORE’s vertical integration creates unique capabilities that enable us to deliver the higher level of performance demanded by the market, coupled with greater precision and lower cost to further benefit our customers.”

The EN-300 precision FOG IMU is a three-axis, closed-loop design that leverages EMCORE’s proprietary, solid-state FOG transceiver with advanced integrated optics, which offers improved reliability and lower cost than legacy IMUs. It can be ordered with performance options tailored to specific customer requirements.

The COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) EN-300-3 model achieves bias in-run stability as low as 0.04 degree per hour with ARW (Angle Random Walk) of 0.015 degree/rt-hr. According to EMCORE, the non-ITAR EN-300 is superior in performance to older generation such as the closed-loop LN-200 IMU or open-loop KVH 1750 series IMU units that have higher bias over temperature drift.