Patents Assigned to International Navigation, Inc.
  • Patent number: 4918824
    Abstract: An electronic digital compass utilizes an amorphous magnetostrictive wire 100 exhibiting reentrant behavior as a core. A sense wiring 104 is wrapped about the core and the core is driven with a triangular wave through a drive coil 102. The earth's magnetic field biases the core 100 such that when the core 100 is driven to reentrant jumps the time duration between adjacent pulses induced into the sense winding 104 is related to the heading. A pair of such arrangements are used in physical 90 degree relationship to resolve ambiguities in heading angle. The resulting heading angle calculation is a true digital product which is independent of analog amplitude variations and requires little or no adjustment for high accuracy.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 5, 1988
    Date of Patent: April 24, 1990
    Assignee: International Navigation, Inc.
    Inventor: James G. Farrar