Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The Mobile World Congress, described as the world’s largest gathering for the mobile industry, is organized by the GSMA and held in the Mobile World Capital Barcelona, Spain from Feb. 27 to March 2, 2017.
By Inside GNSS
Tower Hall at San Jose State University. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons.The 26th annual Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems (WSTS), sponsored by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and ATIS, will take place April 3-6 at the DoubleTree in Jan Jose, California.
By Inside GNSS
Photo source: NASANASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN)/Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) announces a workshop on February 16 on “Emerging Technologies for Autonomous Space Navigation” to inform the U.S. industry on evolving positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies and techniques being developed to enhance the operational efficiency and flexibility of future missions.
By Inside GNSS
RTM3205 Precision Timing Module. Photo source: EndRun Technologies. Santa Rosa, California-based EndRun Technologies, a provider of precision time and frequency solutions, announced last week at the International Technical Meeting-Precision Time/Time Interval (ITM-PTTI) meeting, the release of the RTM3205 Precision Timing Module for portable time and frequency applications. The second generation RTM3205 is optimized for size, weight, and power (SWaP), but can exceed the stability of a standard cesium atomic frequency reference, according to the company.
By Inside GNSS
‘Unprecedented’ data key to understanding radiation threats to satellites and infrastructure, and expected to provide a boost to space-weather science is now available, announced a joint release from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory on January 30.
As of today, more than 16 years of space-weather data is publicly available for the first time in history. The data comes from space-weather sensors on board the nation’s GPS satellites.
By Inside GNSS
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released on January 25 its annual list highlighting the most congested bottlenecks for trucks in America.
Congestion chokepoints hurt the economy and the environment, so the ATRI uses GPS data collected each year to help identify times and locations that truckers will want to avoid.
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
Tracking illegal logging in Romania, autonomous mining, ancient calendars and Canadian cows
By Inside GNSSAs with the notion of “disruption,” unpredictability can be useful. A move in chess or go, for instance. Or in the case of cuisine — say, when usurping Taco Thursday with chicken tagine. Even in negotiations, an unanticipated gambit can change the outcome positively.
Sometimes, of course, unpredictability is in the immanent nature of things. Despite advances in meteorological technology and science, weather continues to prove fickle. Foreknowledge of earthquakes remains difficult to pin down in space and time.
By Inside GNSS
Washington has seen a lot of transitions, so even amidst political controversy it’s generally business as usual.
For the GPS community that business, at least in the near term, will likely center on changes in federal leadership — with many key appointments, like a new Secretary of the Air Force, still to be determined. In addition — even at this early stage when new lawmakers are still trying to find their offices — there are issues and opportunities worth watching in emerging legislation.
By Dee Ann Divis
EquationsIncorporation of real-time synchronized phasor measurements in the control of power grids can play an important role in maintaining the overall closed-loop stability of the power system. In the past, instability in the power grid caused disturbances ranging from small local perturbations to severe large scale blackouts as can be seen from Figure 1. Currently, the synchronization achieved in measurements collected using devices known as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is not robust enough for efficient monitoring the power grid.
By Inside GNSS_and_Fergus_Noble_(R),_co-founde-e240cc279eaa83b2be814504fc94555b.jpg)
Swift Navigation co-founders Colin Beighley (left) ands Fergus Noble (right). Swift Navigation co-founders Fergus Noble (29) and Colin Beighley (28) have been honored in the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Consumer Technology list.
Swift Navigation is a San Francisco-based startup that provides centimeter-accurate real-time kinematics (RTK) GPS and GNSS positioning technology for autonomous vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision agriculture, robotics, surveying, space applications and more.
By Inside GNSS
Passive hydrogen maser atomic clock of the type flown on Galileo, accurate to one second in three million years. ESA photoAt the traditional January media briefing in Paris yesterday (January 18, 2017), European Space Agency (ESA) General Director Jan Woerner was forthright in laying out the knowns and unknowns about the failed rubidium and hydrogen maser clocks onboard orbiting Galileo satellites, clocks that are absolutely crucial for accurate positioning.
By Inside GNSS
