3DM-GX4
™
-45
™
Inertial Navigation System
User Manual
Sensor Overview
7
2.
Sensor Overview
The 3DM- GX4- 45
™
is a high- performance, miniature Inertial Navigation System (INS) that
combines micro inertial sensors and a high- sensitivity embedded Global Positioning System
(GPS) receiver for use in a wide range of industrial grade applications such as unmanned vehicle
navigation, robotic control, platform stabilization, motion tracking and analysis, vehicle health
monitoring, and device aiming.
The 3DM-GX4-45
™
utilizes the strengths of integrated multi-axis gyroscopes, accelerometers,
and magnetometers in combination with GPS, temperature, and pressure readings to provide high
accuracy attitude, heading, and inertial measurements. Each of the integrated sensors is
especially good at certain tasks, and it is the weighted combination of their outputs that provides
the best estimations for AHRS and PVA systems . All measurements are temperature
compensated and are mathematically aligned to an orthogonal coordinate system. The
combination of sensors, environmental compensation and dual on- board processing with an
Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) allow the 3DM -GX4 -45
™
to perform well in a wide variety of
applications that require ultra low noise, drift, gain, and offset errors. Settings for sensor filtering,
sensor noise, sensor bias, bias estimation, scale factor estimation, and more offer many
adjustments for specific application needs.
The 3DM-GX4-45
™
communicates through a serial communications cable and is monitored by a
host computer. A detachable GPS antenna is plugged into the sensor and positioned with
unobstructed line of sight to the sky to obtain GPS satellite links. Sensor measurements and
computed outputs can be viewed and recorded with the LORD MicroStrain
®
MIP Monitor software
that is provided with system starter kits or available as a free download from the LORD
MicroStrain
®
website. Alternatively, users can write custom software with the LORD MicroStrain
®
open source data communication protocol. The data is time-aligned and available by either polling
or continuous stream.
Figure 1 -
3DM-GX4-45
™
Sensor