By 2026, the application scenarios of the low-altitude economy had fully erupted. The number of agricultural protection drones nationwide has clearly exceeded 300,000 units, while unmanned eVTOL aircraft and flying cars have successively entered the trial flight phase; drone-based food delivery, pollution monitoring, traffic inspection, and emergency rescue have become standard features in major cities. More than 30 provinces across the country have incorporated the low-altitude economy into their government work reports, and over 30 cities have launched low-altitude logistics routes. The Civil Aviation Administration of China predicts that by 2030, the scale of the low-altitude economy will exceed 3 trillion yuan.

The trillion-dollar aviation sector is rapidly emerging, with millions of aircraft taking to the skies in dense formations, transforming one traditional industry after another. However, a technical challenge has become the key bottleneck for large-scale commercialization of the low-altitude economy: flight scenarios within this domain happen to be precisely where conventional navigation signals are most unstable.

The "canyon effect" between urban buildings blocks satellite signals, while glass curtain walls in building complexes reflect signals and cause multipath interference. Electromagnetic signals in urban areas face severe complexity and interference issues, with frequent occurrences of "black interference" due to lax regulation of jamming devices. Even in open airspace, when hundreds of drones fly in dense formations, the electromagnetic environment becomes highly complex, making safety redundancy from a single navigation source far inadequate.

So, is there a navigation technology that can effectively address signal shielding and obstruction issues while accurately determining the aircraft's attitude and position even in harsh environments?

GNSS and INS: The "Golden Partnership" for Low-Altitude Aircraft

The flight control system serves as the "decision-making center" of a drone, requiring an attitude-sensing module to continuously monitor changes in the aircraft's posture and transmit real-time data to the flight control unit. Based on this information, the unit dynamically adjusts motor speeds and rudder angles to ensure stable performance even under extreme conditions such as turbulence, strong winds, or signal interruptions. While the GNSS-INS combination is typically employed to provide attitude and position data, why is this approach necessary?

GNSS provides absolute position and velocity references with precision that remains stable over time, yet it has inherent limitations: signals are susceptible to occlusion and interference, updates occur at relatively low frequencies, and it cannot capture instantaneous high-dynamic attitude changes.

The fundamental limitation of standalone INS systems lies in the cumulative nature of errors over time. Without external correction, the accuracy of INS's position and velocity estimates gradually deteriorates, with the deviation increasing exponentially over time.

Thus, a perfect solution emerged: deeply integrating INS with GNSS—using GNSS's long-term stability to correct INS's cumulative errors and leveraging INS's real-time high-dynamic data to compensate for GNSS signal losses and low update rates. By complementing each other's strengths and serving as mutual backups, they form a comprehensive and reliable "golden duo" for low-altitude aircraft operations.

Imagine a logistics drone executing a pharmaceutical delivery mission on the western Sichuan Plateau when it encounters a canyon terrain, causing its GNSS signal to fail. At this point, the Inertial Navigation System (INS) becomes the sole navigation source, using its inertial measurement data to maintain the drone's course and altitude. As the drone crosses the canyon and reacquires GNSS signals, the integrated navigation algorithm immediately combines GNSS's absolute position data with the INS's cumulative estimates for real-time correction, ensuring seamless flight path continuity and ultimately safe arrival at destination.

LINS Technology: Building a solid "security foundation" for the trillion-dollar low-altitude economy

To address the urgent demand for high-precision and highly reliable integrated navigation systems in the low-altitude economy, LINS Technology has developed a product portfolio tailored to diverse application scenarios. The LINS688 series IMUs can be directly integrated into existing GNSS-based flight control systems, while the MS-6222 integrated navigation system provides users with a GNSS+INS hybrid solution.

The LINS688 series IMUs employ a three-dimensional stacked MEMS manufacturing process, measuring just 44×47×14 mm in size, weighing under 40 g, and consuming less than 1 W of power. The highest-specification model features a gyroscope zero bias instability of <0.3°/h and an accelerometer zero bias instability of <15 μg. When integrated with existing GNSS or external GNSS receivers in flight control systems along with LINS's proprietary Kalman filtering algorithm, these units maintain exceptional navigation accuracy even during prolonged GNSS signal interruptions.

The MS-6222 is a compact, high-precision, high-performance MEMS-based navigation system independently developed by LINS Technology. It features a robust packaging design, integrates a high-precision MEMS inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a high-precision GNSS module, employs a multi-source Kalman filtering fusion algorithm, supports dual GNSS antennas, offers extensive interfaces, operates across wide voltage ranges, and delivers continuous, reliable high-precision positioning, navigation, and 3D attitude information in complex environments.

As every drone safely flies over cities, as every eVTOL smoothly delivers passengers to their destinations, and as every low-altitude flight route becomes a reliable "skyway" —behind all these achievements stands the steadfast support of  LINS Technology's premium product portfolio. LINS Technology will continue to deepen its expertise in INS-GNSS integration technology, offering a comprehensive product lineup to meet diverse low-altitude application needs, thereby establishing a solid "safety foundation" for the trillion-dollar low-altitude economy and soaring together with China's low-altitude industry.