ADIS16550 inertial sensing unit

The ADIS16550 inertial sensing unit is a MEMS IMU from Analog Devices that combines a triaxial digital gyroscope and a triaxial digital accelerometer in one calibrated module, intended for guidance, navigation and control of unmanned aircraft, eVTOL platforms and other vehicles that need a compact inertial measurement unit.

The unit reports angular rate and linear acceleration to a host processor, together with delta angle and delta velocity outputs computed inside the device. Delta outputs give the angular displacement and the velocity change accumulated between two samples, which lets a flight controller or navigation filter integrate motion without losing information at its own update rate. A data-ready signal and an option for an external clock help synchronize the sensor with other time-critical elements of the avionics.

The key figures describe how well the sensor holds its accuracy over time. The gyroscope range is 300 °/s, with a bias instability of 1 °/h and an angle random walk of 0.13 °/√h; the first number sets how slowly the gyro offset drifts during a long flight leg, the second how much noise builds up in the integrated heading. The accelerometer covers 14 g with an in-run bias stability of 9 µg, which matters for dead reckoning because any residual acceleration bias turns into position error. Sensors are factory calibrated over a temperature range of -40 °C to +85 °C, and the operating range is -40 °C to 105 °C. The housing is an aluminum package of approximately 47 x 44 x 15 mm, and the unit survives mechanical shock of up to 1500 g.

Integration is through a single SPI port, with a register structure for configuration and data collection. The supply is a single 4.75 V to 5.25 V rail, so a regulated 5 V line from the avionics power system is sufficient. A Linux industrial I/O driver exists for the device; it exposes the sampling frequency, the accelerometer low-pass bandwidth, per-axis calibration bias and scale, and buffered capture of the inertial and delta outputs, with sampling rates such as 4000 Hz and 1000 Hz shown in its examples.

Typical applications are guidance, navigation and control of drones and eVTOL aircraft, and dead reckoning in environments where GPS is denied or degraded, where the IMU has to carry the position estimate between external fixes. It also suits stabilization of payloads and platforms, and as an inertial source for an attitude and heading reference or INS/GNSS fusion running on the host system.