The Dutch Navy has awarded a contract to IXSEA, a French underwater positioning systems manufacturer, to supply inertial navigation systems (INS) to the Navy’s offshore patrol vessels.

Under this contract, the company will furnish four new vessels, currently under construction at Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding, with a dual photonic inertial navigation system (PHINS) configuration.

The navigation system yields position, heading, roll, pitch, depth, velocity and heave.

The main component of the system inertial measurement unit is based on the company’s fibre-optic gyroscope technology linked with an embedded digital signal processor that runs an advanced Kalman filter.

IXSEA’s sales director Maarten Van Beelen said that the Dutch Navy was the first to use the off the shelf inertial navigation system.

Imtech Marine & Offshore will integrate the PHINS systems on the ship with special converters to provide the required synchro signals.

The company supplied 18 PHINS units for the Dutch and Belgian Navies in 2003.