Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
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
Securities regulators recently approved a plan to improve the tracking of financial trades by creating a single, comprehensive database that, among other things, incorporates tightened clock synchronization standards.
By Inside GNSS
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James. (Photo source: DoD).Though the schedule is still uncertain, progress is being made on completing the new GPS ground system, said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, who credited a crack group of private-sector computer wizards with helping get the program back on course.
Calling the GPS Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX), a "terribly, terribly important program," James said, however, she still did not consider the software-focused effort to be "out of the woods."
By Dee Ann Divis
8835 GPS Clock. Photo Source: TRAK Microwave.TRAK Microwave, a brand of London, England– and Stuart, Florida–based Smiths Interconnect, has released its 8835 GPS Clock, a GPS time and frequency instrument. The 8835 GPS Clock is designed to deliver optimal power and interoperability options while maintaining GPS accuracy and reliability.
By Inside GNSS
Professor Vidal Ashkenazi OBENottingham Scientific Ltd (NSL) has announced that the company’s founder and CEO, Professor Vidal Ashkenazi, has been named an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE ) in the 2017 New Year’s Honors List for “Services to Science.”
The OBE was created by King George V in 1917 and is awarded by the ruling monarch of the United Kingdom, currently Queen Elizabeth II. The honor recognizes distinguished service to the arts and sciences, public services outside the civil service, and work with charitable and welfare organizations.
By Inside GNSS
GPS III satellites in production. Image Source: Lockheed Martin.The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) says it continues to work on GPS III ceramic capacitor testing and plans to have an updated launch schedule published late next month.
As Inside GNSS reported, the first GPS III satellite’s delivery, originally scheduled for August, was delayed by four months because of a Lockheed Martin subcontractor’s failure to test a ceramic capacitor.
By Inside GNSS
