Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
L3/Interstate Electronic Corporation (IEC) has scored a key contract win with today’s (March 17) announcement of the company’s selection by Alliant TechSystems, Inc. (ATK) to supply IEC’s new TruTrak Evolution GPS receiver for the Army’s Precision Guidance Kit (PGK) program.
By Glen Gibbons
Successful launch of a GPS Block IIR satellite on March 15 continues a U. S. Air Force initiative to bolster the nation’s GNSS constellation against anticipated failures of aging on-orbit spacecraft while improving system accuracy and accelerating the availability of new military signals.
An analysis of the condition of subsystems on GPS satellites in orbit last year indicated that up to nine GPS space vehicles (SVs) could fail in the near future, according to Col. David Madden, commander of the GPS Wing at the Space & Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California. “That’s what drove us down this path of launching five in one year,” said in a recent news conference.
By Glen Gibbons
Astrium Services and Allsat GmbH network+services have created a joint venture, AXIO-NET GmbH, to offer precise navigation and positioning services across Europe.
The companies, which formed a JV in September 2007 to operate the German ascos service, have created a trans-European brand — AXIO-NET — to extend the service, based on a network of reference stations that generate high-accuracy differential corrections of GPS and GLONASS satellite signals.
By Glen Gibbons
ION President Christopher HegartyGPS civil signal design innovator Christopher Hegarty has been elected 2008-9 president of the U.S.-based Institute of Navigation (ION). Hegarty is the director of spectrum management for the MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development, based in McLean, Virginia, USA.
Founded in 1945, ION is a professional society for military and civil engineers, students, and others interested in air, space, marine, land navigation, and position determination. It is affiliated with the International Association of Institutes of Navigation.
By Inside GNSS
The White HousePresident Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget released earlier this month proposes an allocation of nearly $1.2 billion dollars for GPS operations, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center’s GPS Wing at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California.
If approved, the budget would support continued development of the GPS III satellite program with a first launch in FY14. The somewhat delayed target date appears to match the prediction of the GPS Wing that the first GPS III launch would be set back a few months as a result of Congressional cuts in the FY08 GPS budget.
By Glen Gibbons
The Letter LoggerThe new GPS Letter Logger (GLL-1000) by TrackingTheWorld uses a Texas Instruments microprocessor and a u-blox ANTARIS 4 GPS module to help the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) find out where and how long a piece of mail spends in one place.
By Glen Gibbons
SiRF Technology has launched its SiRFprima platform, which combines a GPS/Galileo location engine, application processor, audio and video recording and playback capabilites, high-resolution 3D graphics, and a host of peripheral interfaces – all tuned to operate concurrently. The platform supports both WinCE and Linux operating system environments, according to the company.
By Glen Gibbons
CSR of Cambridge, UK, has announced its successful integration of GPS with cellular measurements to create eGPS (enhanced Global Positioning System) technology capable of providing accurate position information on demand in all environments, as well as availability of a single-chip GPS receiver with embedded Bluetooth and FM radio technologies.
CSR’s CEO, Joep van Beurden, says that the new developments advance his company’s goal of providing eGPS capabilities to cellular phones at an additional goal of less than $1 per unit.
By Glen Gibbons
Spirent Communications plc, Crawley, UK, has announced the availability of two new capabilities for its UMTS Location Test Solution (ULTS) that will affect assisted GPS (A-GPS) implementation in mobile communication devices and location-based services (LBS): enhanced testing of secure user plane (SUPL) and wideband CDMA (WCDMA) signaling conformance testing.
By Glen Gibbons
Antiquated LORAN vacuum tubeThe Bush administration appears to have finally made a long-delayed decision to complete implementation of an enhanced LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) system to serve, in part, as a back-up to GPS.
Late in the drafting process of the Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget proposal that went to Congress earlier this week (February 4), officials added language “migrating” the LORAN-C system from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). A $34.5-million budget and 294 positions would take part in the migration.
By Glen Gibbons
NXP Semiconductors launched its first assisted-GPS (A-GPS) chip, the GNS7560, targeting mobile phones and standalone personal navigation devices (PNDs) with the product’s package size of less than nine square millimeters.
By Glen Gibbons
CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) and Motorola have announced launch of an industry group that seeks to promote the integration of GPS and other location technologies to create more robust, continuous positioning capabilities by mobile device users.
By Glen Gibbons
Swindon, UK–based start-up company Air Semiconductor is aiming its first OEM GPS product at what it hopes is a sweet spot in the market: geotagging digital camera photos.
And it may be pointing in the right direction, according to a new IMS Research report that predicts a 200 percent cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) for GNSS-aided digital cameras over the next five years.
By Glen Gibbons
