Compass/Beidou Archives - Page 17 of 26 - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

March 25, 2013

Letters: Get a Start on GNSS Interoperability Now

“The GNSS Quartet” (January-February 2013, Inside GNSS, aptly named and coauthored by Glen Gibbons, Dee Ann Divis, and Peter Gutierrez) is reminiscent of Dr. Brad Parkinson’s observation about “interchangeability” at his ION GNSS 2011 plenary session. With interoperability taken to its logical level of completion, a position solution should be readily obtainable from four satellites, each belonging to a different constellation.

By Inside GNSS

GNSS Hotspots | March 2013

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. LATE LAUNCHES
Cape Canaveral and Plesetsk
√ [updated April 1] After three delays, a single GLONASS-M satellite will go up from Plesetsk space center on April 26. The United States will send up SVN66, the fourth GPSIIF satellite— on an Atlas V launcher for the first time—during the early evening of May 15. It had been delayed from March.

By Inside GNSS

March 20, 2013

SASGI 2013: SA Surveying + Geomatic Indaba 2013

SASGI 2013 will take place at the Emperors Palace in Gauteng, South Africa on July 22, 23 and 24. The theme is Geospatial Solutions for National Development Planning.

This is the annual South African conference of surveying, geo-informatics, GIS, mapping, remote sensing and location-based business.

The conference is wide-ranging and will cover:

By Inside GNSS

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CSNC 2013 Focuses on BeiDou, Applications

CSNC 2013 Scientific Committee Chairman, Sun Jiadong

The 4th China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC 2013) will be held on May 15-17, 2013 in Wuhan, China. It will incorporate a wide range of activities, such as academic exchange, high-level forum, and technical presentations.

A China Satellite Navigation Technology and Application Achievement Exhibition will be held all three days in parallel with the event.

By Inside GNSS

March 9, 2013

The PNT Boom

FIGURE 1: Potential components of a multisensor integrated navigation system

The navigation world is booming with new ideas at the moment to meet some of the greatest positioning challenges of our times. To realize demanding applications — such as reliable pedestrian navigation, lane identification, and robustness against interference, jamming and spoofing — we need to bring these different ideas together.

By Inside GNSS

February 19, 2013

East Meets West: Hemisphere GNSS’s New Era

Xinping Guo, president and chairman, Beijing UniStrong

Although not on the scale or at the strategic level of China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s takeover of Canada’s Nexen Inc., the recent acquisition of the Precise Products business of Hemisphere GPS by Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd. marks a notable achievement in the GNSS world — the acquisition of a North American manufacturer with core GNSS receiver intellectual property by a Chinese enterprise.

By Inside GNSS

Spectracom Announces BeiDou Upgrade Plans for Its Simulators

Spectracom has announced the upgrade capability of its GNSS simulators to China’s BeiDou system.

The Spectracom GSG Series 5 and Series 6 GNSS simulators, released last year, are designed to be field upgradeable to simulate current and future GNSS constellations.

The recent release of the Beidou ICD specification has enabled Spectracom to ensure that its GSG Series 5 and Series 6 equipment will be able to simulate these satellites with a simple field-upgradeable firmware update.

By Inside GNSS

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February 1, 2013

Hemisphere GPS Sells Non-Agricultural Operations to Chinese Company

[Updated February 4, 2013] Hemisphere GPS Inc. moved closer to a final exit from the OEM GNSS space yesterday (January 31, 2013) by signing a definitive agreement to sell the business assets associated with its non-agricultural operations to the Canadian subsidiary of Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd., which will operate under the name The cash sale price was $14.96 million.

By Inside GNSS

January 23, 2013

Markets and Multi-Frequency GNSS

FIGURE 1: Proposal to have a single chip GNSS receiver with additional pins to allow for the inclusion of an additional radio

Q: What will limit the spread of multi-frequency GNSS receivers into the mass market?

A: To set the scene, we need to define our terms of reference. By multi-frequency we mean receivers that operate with navigation signals in more than just the standard upper L-band from about 1560–1610 MHz where we find GPS L1, Galileo E1, Compass B1, and GLONASS L1. The obvious additional frequency is the lower L-band, from about 1170 to 1300 MHz, where again the same four constellations have signals.

By Inside GNSS

The GNSS Merry Go Round

The whole GNSS world should have a warm spot in its heart for centripetal forces.

After all, a centripetal force — in this case, gravity — is what keeps planets in rotation around our Sun and satellites, around the Earth.

Centrifugal force, of course, is what throws us off a merry-go-round or carousel. Centripetal force is what keeps us on board.

For those on a merry-go-round, the centripetal force is not gravity, but rather the tensile strength of our arms pulling us toward the center of rotation, at right angles to the motion of our seats.

By Inside GNSS

No Time Like the Present for Europe in Asia

Peter Gutierrez

Galileo promoters have always tended to try to link the program to new jobs and economic growth, arguing that once Europe’s global satnav system is up and running, new services will be possible and opportunities for EU companies will abound.

Such arguments needed to be made, to bolster the chronically tenuous political support Galileo has garnered from the European Union (EU) powers-that-be and the chronic lack of faith among just about everybody in Europe’s ability to actually make the system fly.

By Peter Gutierrez