Silicon Sensing outlines how high-performance tactical MEMS inertial sensors can help maintain Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) when Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals are unavailable.
In contested environments, Electronic Warfare (EW) techniques such as jamming and spoofing can disrupt the PNT of uncrewed platforms, guided munitions, and tactical ground vehicles.
For systems engineers and project managers, the challenge is increasingly focused on operational resilience, ensuring platforms can continue to navigate when GNSS cannot be relied upon.
Maintaining Navigation Without GNSS
Inertial navigation enables a platform to calculate its position from a known starting point by tracking its own motion, without depending on an external reference.
Historically, missions requiring high levels of inertial accuracy have relied on Ring Laser Gyroscopes (RLGs) or Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes (FOGs). Although highly precise, these systems can be heavy, bulky, power-hungry, and costly, creating integration challenges for smaller, faster-moving autonomous platforms.
High-performance tactical MEMS sensors are helping to close this gap. Advances in silicon architecture allow these sensors to achieve levels of bias instability and Angle Random Walk (ARW) that can rival traditional FOG systems, at a fraction of the size, weight, and cost.
Because inertial sensors neither transmit nor receive Radio Frequency (RF) signals, they are immune to jamming and spoofing by design, supporting continued dead reckoning when GNSS is unavailable.
Resilience Through Sensor Design
Tactical MEMS sensors can use a silicon resonating ring structure rather than a traditional tuning-fork design. The symmetrical geometry of the vibrating ring provides resistance to linear shock and high-frequency vibration, helping to reduce Vibration Rectification Error (VRE).
This limits the effect of mechanical noise from engines, rotors, or rough terrain on navigation data.
Thermal calibration can span the full military temperature range from -40°C to +85°C as a minimum, with certain sensors and systems qualified beyond these limits where the operational environment requires it. This helps keep scale factor and bias characteristics predictable without the need for complex, power-heavy external thermal stabilization systems.
Compact form factors can also simplify interface design, free space for mission-critical payloads, and support installation within tight enclosures. For project managers, simpler integration can shorten development timelines and reduce overall program risk.
Reducing the SWaP-C Trade-Off
High-performance MEMS inertial sensors are reducing the traditional trade-off between performance and size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C).
As silicon architectures continue to mature, tactical MEMS sensors can support greater PNT resilience in GNSS-denied missions while avoiding the integration burden associated with larger legacy inertial systems.
