With real-world disruptions increasingly affecting shipping and aviation safety, Kongsberg Discovery’s MGCs (motion gyro compasses) deliver an alternative for reliability, accuracy and resilience in contested environments, according to the company.
Although traditional gyrocompasses are immune to GNSS signal-based attacks by design, many modern navigation systems incorporate GNSS data to enhance positioning accuracy. For maritime operators, having an autonomous and reliable source of heading and positioning data ensures safety and maintains operational continuity in contested or signal-denied environments.
Kongsberg’s MGCs offer resilience, using high-grade strap-down inertial sensors that detect the Earth’s rotation without the need of external input. This allows them to determine true north and maintain precise heading without relying on GNSS. Unlike traditional mechanical gyros, Kongsberg’s MGCs can estimate latitude internally. This ensures consistent accuracy from equatorial regions to the poles.
The system also supports Doppler-based seabed and water-column tracking to determine vessel velocity, eliminating the need for satellite-derived speed data.
MGC Highlights
Kongsberg’s MGCs provide resilient navigation with advanced inertial technology and motion reference capabilities that enable:
Photo: Kongsberg
Continuous latitude estimation from Earth’s rotation measurements
Accurate heading, roll, pitch and heave without GNSS
Versatile support for velocity tracking and input
This robust combination ensures that even when GNSS signals are lost or manipulated by spoofing or jamming, the MGC continues to operate with high precision – offering a resilient navigation backbone when it’s most needed.
Kongsberg’s MGCs are designed to be maintenance-free, eliminating the need for frequent calibration or mechanical upkeep. Other features include:
IMO type-approved: Fully compliant with global navigation standards
Maintenance-free design: No spinning parts and no mechanical drift
Versatile integration: Can be used standalone or seamlessly incorporated into an INS (inertial navigation system)
According to Kongsberg, these attributes make the MGCs suitable for commercial and passenger vessels, offshore platforms and naval ships operating in challenging environments.
The D70 is the latest release in the Boreas digital FOG (DFOG) series, offering a new performance grade with superior accuracy, exceptional stability and reliability. The technology is suited to surveying, mapping and navigation across subsea, marine, land and air applications.
“We are thrilled to expand the Boreas series with the D70. It’s a system that will provide additional flexibility in the Boreas family, making ultra-high accuracy inertial navigation far more affordable than with previous FOG INS systems,” said Xavier Orr, CEO and co-founder of Advanced Navigation. “This patented technology opens the possibility for adopting FOG INS systems across a much broader range of vehicular applications, particularly autonomous vehicles and aircraft where weight and size are at a premium.”
Boreas D70 combines closed-loop DFOG and accelerometer technologies with a dual-antenna real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS receiver. These are coupled with Advanced Navigation’s artificial-intelligence-based fusion algorithm to deliver accurate and precise navigation.
The system features ultra-fast gyrocompassing, acquiring and maintaining an accurate heading under demanding conditions. While the D70 does contain a GNSS receiver, it is not required for gyrocompass operation.
Based on the company’s DFOG technology, the D70 delivers a 40% reduction in size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) when compared to systems of similar performance.
0.01° roll and pitch
0.1° secant latitude heading (gyrocompass)
0.01°/hour bias instability
10 mm position accuracy
The Boreas Series
The Boreas DFOG series features ultra-fast gyrocompassing and can acquire heading, either stationary or dynamically, in less than two minutes. The gyrocompassing allows the system to determine a highly accurate heading without any reliance on magnetic heading or GNSS.
The technology stems from Advanced Navigation’s artificial intelligence sensor-fusion algorithm allowing the system to extract significantly more information from the data. It is designed for control applications, with a high level of health monitoring and instability prevention to ensure stable and reliable data.
Advanced Navigation designed Boreas from the ground up for reliability and availability. The hardware and software are designed and tested to international safety standards and have been environmentally tested to MIL-STD-810. The system achieves a mean time between failure (MTBF) of more than 70,000 hours.
Additional features of the Boreas D70 include Ethernet, CAN and NMEA protocols, as well as disciplined timing via a PTP server and 1 PPS. An embedded web interface provides full access to all of the device’s internal functions and data. Internal storage allows for up to 1 year of data logging.
About DFOG Technology
DFOG is patented technology, which has been developed over 25 years involving two research institutions. DFOG was created to meet the demand for smaller and more cost-effective FOGs, while increasing reliability and accuracy.
The first generation of FOG, made available in 1976, used analog signals and analog-signal processing. The second generation was developed in 1994 and is still used to this day. It improved upon the first generation with a hybrid approach using an analog signal in the coil with digital signal processing.
In 2021, FOG evolved into DFOG. This third generation of FOG sets itself apart by being completely digital, providing higher performance and reliability while enabling a 40% reduction in SWaP-C.
To achieve this, three different yet complementary technologies have been developed to improve the capabilities of FOG.
Digital Modulation Techniques. DFOG uses a specially developed digital modulation technique passing spread spectrum signals through the coil. The new digital modulation technique introduced in DFOG technology allows in-run variable errors in the coil to be measured and removed from the measurements. This makes DFOG significantly more stable and reliable than traditional FOGs. It also allows a smaller FOG with less coil length to achieve the accuracy of one with a longer coil.
Revolutionary Optical Chip. By integrating five sensitive components into a single chip and removing all the fiber splices, the size, weight and power are reduced considerably while significantly improving reliability and performance.
Specially Designed Optical Coil. DFOG employs a specially designed closed-loop optical coil, developed to take full advantage of the digital modulation techniques. The design allows for optimum sensing of in-run variable coil errors using the new digital modulation technique. It also provides a very high level of protection for the optical components from shock and vibration.
U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Josie Kemp
The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) signed a contract with navigation company iXblue for up to 172 FOG-based Quadrans gyrocompasses. The Quadrans navigation systems will be delivered over four years and will equip the Swedish Navy’s fleet of high speed crafts, mainly combat boats CB90.
“The FMV was seeking new maintenance-free and high-performance gyrocompasses for the retrofit of their fleet of high speed crafts,” said David Cunningham, commercial director at iXblue. “The CB90 vessels are indeed very fast boats and need the most reliable and accurate heading and attitude data to navigate safely. With our Marins Series Inertial Navigation Systems being already in service on the Gotland-class submarines and Koster Class MCMV’s, and our Quadrans gyrocompasses equipping other surface boats in the Swedish Navy fleet, the FMV was familiar with the high-performance delivered by our systems and knew the Quadrans met the specific requirements needed for the CB90.”
The Quadrans gyrocompasses are build around iXblue’s Fiber-Optic Gyroscope technology. According to the company, the gyrocompasses provide highly accurate heading and attitude data and are perfectly suited for high performance at high speeds and in challenging environments such as GNSS-denied settings.
In addition, the Quadrans Gyrocompasses are compact, lightweight and with low power consumption. They’re easy to install on small-sized crafts, while their open architecture guarantees seamless interfacing with all major GNSS systems and third-party navigation software, iXblue added.
