Resiliency was again top of mind at this year’s JNC, where manufacturers displayed a variety of solutions designed to complement and strengthen PNT.
For years, GPS was enough. It just worked, and that allowed us to become complacent. Now, while still a remarkable system, we can clearly see GPS has vulnerabilities. Spoofing and jamming have become more common and more sophisticated, putting our warfighters and critical infrastructure at risk.
Now is the time to develop and field technologies that strengthen PNT, adding much needed layers of resiliency. There is no silver bullet that will fix this problem; we need multiple solutions to fall back on when GPS is denied or simply unavailable. Manufacturers are working to answer the call, developing technologies designed to make PNT more robust. Many of these solutions were on display at ION’s Joint Navigation Conference (JNC), held in the Greater Cincinnati area in June.
Ideal Aerosmith was among exhibitors at this year’s show. The company has seen a renewed interest in testing in its Inertial Test Lab, Chief Growth and Technology Officer Jim Richtsmeier said, as more in the industry realize how inertial sensors can be leveraged and how they’ve advanced. A lot of work is being done to reduce drift, for example, while inertial sensors are also being integrated with technologies like visual navigation.
Ideal Aerosmith’s motion tables can repeatedly test various solutions, Richtsmeier said, so users can better understand how technologies might perform in real-world scenarios. The company takes a mission-first approach and is committed to helping customers achieve success.
There’s a big push for sensor integration, Richtsmeier said, because of the current “GPS denied situation.”
“We’ve gotten behind,” Richtsmeier said, “ because we weren’t leveraging the capabilities we had with sensor fusion and processing power because GPS was there, and we didn’t need it.”
Now, that is changing, with the industry feeling a sense of urgency to develop solutions that build the resiliency required to protect PNT and those who depend on it.
Visual Navigation Becoming a Focus
Visual navigation is one of the areas gaining momentum, Richtsmeier said.
AEVEX Aerospace, for example, recently acquired Veth Research Associates (VRA), a company known for advancements in navigation and autonomous systems. VRA’s LYNC vision-based navigation (VBN) system enables navigation independent of external GPS signals. The modular system can be integrated on both manned and unmanned platforms and will be used to upgrade capabilities in future AEVEX solutions.
“This system allows us to offer assured PNT without GPS,” Senior Director of Business Development Mark Glover said. “It’s very reliable in most conditions, day and night.”
LYNX-VBN combines image processing, nonlinear sensor fusion and machine learning techniques. The open architecture makes it adaptable to various mission needs.
AEVEX highlighted a variety of other solutions at the show, including Geo-iNAV, a fully-integrated GPS-aided inertial navigation system that supports a wide range of IMU grades; Geo-APNT, a GPS-aided inertial navigation solution available with M-Code, SAASM or commercial GPS receivers; and Geo- hNAV, a hybrid dual-GPS/INS navigation system.
Navigation Over Water
Navigating over bodies of water is a challenge, Richtsmeier said, and is the “next exciting thing to get solved.”
Kearfott’s celestial navigation, in combination with other sensors, is a possible solution JNC attendees had the opportunity to learn about.
The company’s short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensors, meant to improve performance in adverse conditions, enable round-the-clock use on various vehicles in remote environments, where traditional star trackers may struggle during the day or in cloudy nighttime skies. SWIR offers greater atmospheric penetration and lower susceptibility to light scattering, with early testing demonstrating reliable detection of stars up to magnitude 1.25 (See more on Kearfott page 64).
Sandbox’s AQNav is another promising solution for ocean navigation. AQNav leverages magnetic navigation, Solutions Architect Jonathan Montague said, and can neutralize the effects of electronic attack on positioning. The airborne system, he said, can’t be jammed or spoofed and solves the “over ocean” challenge “better than any other system.” It also pairs well with vision navigation for even more resiliency.
How does it work? AQNav leverages sensitive quantum magnetometers to acquire data from the Earth’s crustal magnetic field. Proprietary AI algorithms then compare this data against known magnetic maps, enabling the system to quickly and accurately find its position. AI algorithms are applied to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, removing mechanical, electrical and other forms of interference.
At the 2024 JNC, talks with attendees about this approach to navigation were more theoretical, Montague said. This year, discussions were more application driven. That’s partly because various groups have been working on developing this technology for the last year, and that includes two Department of Defense (DoD) projects.
“Magnetic navigation has come out of the shadows and is being applied to real world scenarios,” Montague said. “You can test and evaluate to prove the technology out to move toward operational capability.”
New Solutions
This year’s JNC attendees had the opportunity to learn about many new PNT technology releases designed for military use, including Safran Federal Systems’ BroadSim Genesis, the latest in the company’s BroadSim product line. BroadSim Genesis advanced NAVWAR simulator, purpose built for the U.S. defense community, features advancements in signal capacity, operational flexibility and the user experience.
The simulation tool, which Safran demonstrated in an unclassified setting for the first time during the meeting, offers flexibility and performance, and can be leveraged to validate mission equipment, training in NAVWAR scenarios and assessing new PNT architectures. It is multi-signal and multi-antenna.
“It’s been an eye opener, being able to have the demo based on live sky information, in a closed loop environment and being able to manipulate any signal,” NAVWAR Business Development Manager Adam Corner said of the JNC demos. “It adapts to any mission set. Anyone can use it.”
The simulation tool has an enhanced GPU, Corner said, features six front facing RF outputs, and has a 1,000 HZ simulation iteration rate.
Safran offers navigation solutions for virtually all domains, Director of Business Development, Navigation Systems Tony Full said, in two forms: inertial measurement units and inertial navigation systems. Geonyx M-Code, which integrates the company’s Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG) Crystal, is among the solutions the company highlighted at JNC.
HRG offers the ultimate gyro capability, Full said. It’s navigation grade and built into almost all of Safran’s IMU and INS solutions.
HRG has a lower size, weight and power (SWAP) capability than traditional options like fiber optic gyros (FOGs) and ring laser gyros (RLGs). Unlike these solutions, HRG boxes don’t need to increase in size to achieve better performance.
Safran also announced the company has, in close partnership with Anduril, played a role in rapidly delivering advanced capabilities to support U.S. Special Operations Forces. The companies collaborated to accelerate a critical enhancement, advancing the deployment timeline. Safran was the primary software integrator, working with Anduril to “bring cutting-edge technologies into operational readiness under tight logistical constraints,” according to a news release about the partnership.
“Mission first is really key and never under question,” Corner said. “Real world work is happening right now, and there’s more to come.”
Calian GNSS launched its next-generation GNSS anti-jamming Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna (CRPA) at JNC. The advanced dual band (L1/L2, E1/E5b) CR8894SXF+, supports low-power, is lightweight and compact, and provides strong mitigation of in and out of band interference.
The antenna has a single RF output and two serial outputs (RS232 and RS422) that stream proprietary NMEA messages. These messages provide the user with the state of the antenna: nominal (no jamming detected); jamming detected and mitigated; and strong jamming detected and cannot be mitigated, and the antenna is turned off to protect the receiver.
CR8894SXF+ also reports the power, azimuth and elevation angle of the interference or jammer relative to the antennas north point, Product Line Manager Ken MacLeod said.
The four-element dual band CRPA can be used on lightweight aerial vehicles, land and marine vehicles. It also can be used to detect and mitigate interference at critical infrastructure, such as airports, marine ports and military bases, Senior RF Engineer Mohamed Emara said.
One of the main features of the CR8894SXF+, he said, is its low SWaP. It can be powered directly from most commercial off the shelf (COTS) GNSS receivers that output 150 mA at 5 volts to the antenna.
The CRPA achieves interference mitigation in several ways, Emara said. One method employs Calian’s eXtended Filtering + (XF+) technology. XF+ can achieve out of band mitigation up to 80 dB (from 400 to 2,500 MHz). The + feature splits the signal amplification into two independent frequency channels (upper and lower bands).
“If one channel is jammed,” Emara said, “the other can pass through a good signal to the receiver.”
CR8894SXF+ also employes active null forming and can generate up to three nulls per band, he said, for a total of six nulls, with a null depth between 20 and 40 dB.
BAE Systems introduced a diverse line of M-Code GPS receiver solutions at JNC, rounding out an extensive line of products developed to ensure U.S. warfighters have the most dependable GPS systems available across domains.
The security-certified Common GPS Modules (CGMs) leverage the robust M-Code signal across an all-inclusive GPS receiver line. The portfolio scales from the world’s smallest and lowest-power M-Code GPS for size weight, and power (SWaP)-challenged applications, to highly robust receivers with integrated anti-jam (AJ) antenna electronics (See more on BAE Systems on page 62).
Adtran launched lower cost versions of its Oscilloquartz optical cesium clocks, the OSA 3200 SP and OSA 3250 ePRC, at JNC. Like the OSA 3300 and 3350 cesium clocks, the new options leverage optical pumping technology.
Optical pumping enhances precision and performance, making these cesium clocks well suited to safeguard critical infrastructure if GNSS is unavailable or denied.
These clocks replace the magnetic cesium clocks from the 1950s, Assistant Vice President Business Development for the Americas Daniel Burch said, describing Adtran as “the only company in the world that has this technology.”
The devices address industry demand for alternatives to magnetic cesium clocks that are more difficult to manage and, with the lower price point, make the technology more accessible.
“We had cesium clocks before, but we stopped using them when we got GPS,” Burch said. “With jamming and spoofing, we need something with holdover. We started with 14 days, then it was 40, and now it’s 100 days with 100 nanoseconds or less.”
Part of the SOLAR MEMS Technologies team was also at the conference discussing the technology they’re ready to bring into the defense market. Their goal was to learn more about market needs and how their technology, due out at the end of the year, can fit in, Business Development Specialist Ana Blanco Esteve said.
The company offers star trackers and sun sensors to enhance satellites with precision and reliability.
“The sensor we’re developing is a complement to what’s already in the market,” PMO Manager and Project Manager Javier Gonzalez Moreno said. “There are a lot of potential collaborations.”
The idea behind the technology, he said, is to look up to navigate instead of looking down.
The solution can be used for various applications, including marine and ground vehicles, and can be tailored to fit customer needs and the platform it’s being integrated onto, Esteve said.
Fibernetics plans to release an IMU by the end of the summer, President Ralph Bergh said. The Triton Series IMU is based on fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) and quartz flexture accelerometer (Q-Flex) technology. The IMU is very effective at taking light from the laser diode through the fiber source, making it more efficient optically. The quiet, low power IMU also features vibration isolated sensors and can handle vibration and temperatures.
The company will start out with small production, Bergh said, and is also looking for partners.
Keeping Attendees Busy
While attendees learned about new innovations during this year’s JNC, there were also plenty of legacy solutions to get to know better. KBR’s Global Positioning System Interference and Navigation Tool (GIANT) was among them. The simulation tool can be used to model GNSS and is something the PNT community has relied on since 1996.
KBR does update the tool every year, Senior Manager PNT Portfolio Christine Denissen said, based on feedback they receive during user groups.
The GIANT 5.9.0, set to be released in September, will feature various enhancements including external antenna receiver model support to protect proprietary information; updated GPS III antenna patterns; updated BeiDou, GLONASS and Galileo models; player event import; and added satellite tracking lines to 3D globe visualization.
Exhibitor Frequency Electronics talked to attendees about the company’s solutions, which provide precise time and frequency synchronization for various applications, including defense.
They also presented a paper on the company’s Timing Unit Rubidium Oscillator (TURBO), Vice President, Business Development Betsy Varghese said, which features timing requirements that can’t be met with quartz oscillator technology alone. The company leverages quantum atomic sensing for mission critical rubidium atomic clocks. High-Precision Quartz Oscillators for space, land, sea and air applications in assured position navigation and timing (APNT), electronic warfare (EW) and time distribution are among other solutions.
TRX Systems, a company that has partnered with the U.S. Army as part of the Dismounted Assured, Positioning, Navigation, and Timing System (DAPS) II Program of Record, was also at the show. The solution TRX is developing will replace the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR), TRX Marketing Manager Nicholas Boushell said, and will feature a more accurate M-Code receiver that is much more difficult to jam or spoof. The navigation system also leverages other technology to offer a more layered approach to PNT resiliency and deliver APNT information to warfighters when GPS is denied or compromised.
Hexagon/NovAtel/Antcom, CAST Navigation, GPS Networking, Advanced Navigation, Epson, Honeywell, Inertial Labs, JAVAD GNSS, Microchip, Septentrio, Tualcom, VectorNav, and VIAVI Solutions were among the other leading companies at this year’s JNC. Attendees also had the chance to sit in on sessions that covered various topics, including integrity and assurance, sensing technologies, platform integration, field testing, and magnetic anomaly based navigation. Attendees also participated in social events or took time to enjoy all Greater Cincinnati has to offer.
Protecting PNT
Many of the manufacturers leading the charge toward more resilient PNT were at this year’s JNC, talking with attendees and each other about the current problems the industry faces and how to solve them. They are focused on making PNT more robust to protect it and, ultimately, the warfighter. Companies like Ideal Aerosmith are mission focused and customer driven, and it shows in the innovations that have recently been released and those still in development.
“This is a unique community,” Richtsmeier said. “The people working in this community want to be successful together.
