Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
A confluence of technology, policy, and applications is turning indoor venues into the next big frontier for positioning and navigation.
Recent market studies have heralded the prospects for positioning, navigation, and tracking inside buildings where GNSS signals are often attenuated or blocked entirely. Many products and conceptual designs combine the indoor technologies with GNSS to provide “ubiquitous” positioning.
By Inside GNSS
GPS pseudolite used in experiment at University of New South Wales Satellite Navigation and Positioning LabInternational aviation officials have asked U.S. experts to consider updating standards for GNSS aviation receivers to improve their ability to withstand interference from repeaters, pseudolites, and jammers.
Repeaters — generally used to extend navigation signals inside buildings where they would otherwise be blocked — rebroadcast GNSS satellite signals and therefore operate in the same frequency band. Although useful within a building, care must be taken to confined the repeater’s signal lest it confuse other receivers operating nearby.
By Inside GNSS
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are getting a lot of attention this week at the INTERGEO conference and exhibition in Berlin, Germany, where a special session on Tuesday (October 7, 2014), “UAVs in Practice,” focused on their use in airborne surveying and mapping, environmental monitoring, and other commercial or civil applications.
By Inside GNSS
The Terracotta Army inside the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum in Xi’anThe 2015 China Satellite Navigation Conference and technology and applications exhibition will be held at the Xi’an Qujiang International Conference Center on May 13, 14, and 15, 2015 in Xi’an, China.
Registration information can be found on the conference website. The deadline for abstracts has passed.
This year, conference topics include:
By Inside GNSS
One of 12 magnetograms recorded at Greenwich Observatory during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of 1859
1996 soccer game in the Midwest, (Rick Dikeman image)
Nouméa ground station after the flood
A pencil and a coffee cup show the size of NASA’s teeny tiny PhoneSat
Bonus Hotspot: Naro Tartaruga AUV
Pacific lamprey spawning (photo by Jeremy Monroe, Fresh Waters Illustrated)
“Return of the Bucentaurn to the Molo on Ascension Day”, by (Giovanni Antonio Canal) Canaletto
The U.S. Naval Observatory Alternate Master Clock at 2nd Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB in Colorado. This photo was taken in January, 2006 during the addition of a leap second. The USNO master clocks control GPS timing. They are accurate to within one second every 20 million years (Satellites are so picky! Humans, on the other hand, just want to know if we’re too late for lunch) USAF photo by A1C Jason Ridder. 
Detail of Compass/ BeiDou2 system diagram
Hotspot 6: Beluga A300 600ST
1. STOP THE CAR!
Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Aviation officials Thursday (September 25, 2014) for the first time approved the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial filming in the United States, opening the door to what is expected to be a slow-building gold rush to the skies.
Six companies received exemptions from the existing rules, which generally ban the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems or UAS. The exemptions were granted to RC Pro Productions Consulting LLC dba Vortex Aerial, Aerial MOB LLC, Astraeus Aeria, HeliVideo Productions LLC, Pictorvision Inc., and Snaproll Media LLC.
By Inside GNSS
Gerald Mader, National Geodetic SurveyIn August, a group of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that the severe drought gripping the western United States in recent years is causing a “uplift” in the western United States.
About the same time, governmental agencies were reporting widespread cases of land subsidence in California’s central San Joaquin Valley caused by overpumping of water from wells there.
By Inside GNSS
Q: How do you trust centimeter level accuracy positioning?
By Inside GNSS
Sidescan image of Norbit SeahorseSensonor has announced new features for its STIM300, a small, lightweight micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement unit (IMU) that provides non-GPS–aided positioning in multiple domains.
The STIM300 — which can be used underwater, on land and sea, and in aeronautic and astronautic applications — now has real-time g-compensation in al axes and supports rates of up to 2000 degrees/second.
By Inside GNSS
Graham Purves, new Veripos CEOIn his role as president of Hexagon Positioning Intelligence, Michael Ritter has announced the appointment Graham Purves as president & CEO of Veripos, effective September 9.
“Graham has amassed a tremendous level of experience in all aspects of our industry during his over 25 years at NovAtel,” said Ritter, who also serves as president and CEO of the Calgary, Canada–based NovAtel Inc. “This experience and especially his dexterity for sales, marketing, and business development are ideal prerequisites for this next step in his career.”
By Inside GNSS
The high-precision GNSS industry should expect to see industry consolidation and a scramble for new markets and innovations as prices for high-end chips and modules continue to slide, experts told attendees at a ION GNSS+ panel discussion in Tampa, Florida, last week (September 11, 2014).
The falling prices could strain R&D budgets, they noted, but could also create opportunity as high-end receivers come within reach of emerging industries like self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and are even incorporated into consumer products.
By Inside GNSS
Two European proposals to allow pseudolites in the protected frequencies used by GPS and Galileo could soon be adopted, creating a potential interference risk to GNSS receivers and hampering efforts to protect satellite navigation spectrum, experts say.
By Inside GNSS
The Antiquarium in the Residenz MünchenThe Munich Satellite Navigation Summit will take place at the Residenz Muenchen in Munich, Germany on March 24 – 26, 2015.
The theme for this year’s summit is “Future of PNT – A Glance into the Crystal Ball”.
The technical program includes plenary discussions and updates on the main activities in worldwide satellite navigation systems, including:
By Inside GNSS
