Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
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
NAO Campus schematicThe French engineering consultancy Pole Star SARL has expanded the firm’s development activities with the launch of its first products — NAO City and NAO Campus, designed to improve the robustness of GNSS positioning in urban and indoor environments with a focus on location-based services.
By Glen Gibbons
IT321Fastrax Ltd. has launched two new GPS OEM receivers, including one with an integrated chip antenna, aimed at designers of mass-market automotive and portable devices.
The Fastrax UC322 incorporates an on-board chip antenna (five millimeters thick) designed to reduce the size from that of typical patch antennas and large separate ground planes, according to the company. Instead, the end device’s printed circuit board functions as part of the antenna.
By Glen Gibbons
The Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, site of the 2008 Munich Summit plenaryAs it prepares for its sixth annual conference, the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit continues to hone its identity as a genuine "summit," the place for high-level political, military, and corporate leaders to discuss all of the GNSS systems from a strategic perspective.
By Inside GNSS
Block IIF satellite undergoing tests at Space & Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, CaliforniaHaving successfully passed its initial phase of tests at the Space & Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, the first GPS Block IIF (follow-on generation) satellite is expected to enter the second round of thermal vacuum testing in late March, according to the GPS Wing.
On December 24, the GPS IIF program completed the first of two phases of thermal vacuum testing on the first IIF space vehicle (SV-1) built by The Boeing Company. This was "a major success for the program," in the words of GPS Wing officials. Thermal-vac tests exposed the spacecraft to extreme hot and cold temperatures under vacuum conditions to verify system performance and correlate the thermal models, according to the GPS Wing.
By Glen Gibbons
The GPS constellation, as illustrated 30 years ago.While awaiting the arrival of the definitive history of the Global Positioning System, students of the premier GNSS program might want to take a look at a systems engineering case study released last month by the Center for Systems Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
By Glen Gibbons
Enhanced Paveway IIRaytheon Company received more than $150 million worth of contracts in December for its Paveway family of precision-guided munitions. The latest figures bring the total Paveway year-to-date bookings for 2007 to more than $300 million, a record for Raytheon’s Paveway program.
The contracts are a combination of direct commercial sales and foreign military sales and will provide customers in Europe and Asia with the Enhanced Paveway II (EP2) and the EP3 variants of the Paveway weapon system, which upgrade "dumb bombs" into precision-guided munitions.
By Glen Gibbons
Abstracts for the 2008 International Symposium on GPS/GNSS are due on Monday, June 16.
This year, the conference, which rotates throughout the Asia-Pacific region, will take place in Tokyo, Japan from November 11 through November 14.
Presenters who choose to have their papers refereed and published in the proceedings must submit their full papers with payment by July 15. Non-refereed papers must be submitted by September 15.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by July 31.
By Inside GNSS
Organizers of the Defense Department’s 2008 Joint Navigation Conference have extended the abstract submission deadline to Friday, January 18. You still have time to send your one-page unclassified proposal to the track chairs listed at this site:
http://www.jointnavigation.org/conference/?page=14
