Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Establishing someone’s immediate whereabouts is emerging as a key element in preventing credit fraud and improving cyber security.
The technique uses location data, derived from GPS and other sources, to estimate the likelihood that the person making a request to enter a building, access a computer network, or use a credit card is actually who they say they are.
By Inside GNSS
Better known for supporting U.S. troops in firefights in Afghanistan firefights, a Predator drone has been deployed to help California National Guard firefighters battle wildfires raging around Yosemite National Park.
U.S. Department of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved the use of a GPS-guided MQ-1 Predator to support firefighters battling the Rim Fire that has expanded to more than 160,000 acres, accordeing to Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Keegan, California National Guard public affairs officer.
By Inside GNSS
Two companies angling to provide the government with cutting-edge, GPS-based weather data may get a boost this fall if a bill aiming to improve forecasting wins U.S. House approval.
The companies, Bethesda, Md.-based Planet IQ and GeoOptics, Inc., of Pasadena, California, hope to use GPS radio occultation or GPS-OR to provide the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Defense with weather data.
By Inside GNSS
During the past two decades, the Global Positioning System, together with other GNSSes, has become an essential element of the global information infrastructure, with myriad applications in almost every facets of modern businesses and lifestyles, including communication, energy distribution, finance and insurance, and transportation. Ever-growing dependence on GNSS creates strong incentives to attack civil GNSS, for either an illegitimate advantage or a terrorism purpose.
By Inside GNSS
Navigation — if you are reading this magazine, you almost certainly have some level of interest in navigation technology, which has seen an incredible explosion in use within many different fields.
By Inside GNSS
Recent tests of GPS anti-jam antennas on small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at a Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) facility at Patuxent River, Maryland, showed encouraging results for preventing interruption of mission-critical data.
By Inside GNSS
With a key Galileo patent dispute now set to enter its third year the European Union (EU) is moving to monitor GNSS patents around the world — a move that should give it insight into the competitiveness of European positioning, navigation, and technology (PNT) companies and a heads-up about future intellectual property (IP) issues.
By Inside GNSS
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will soon be taking new applications for its unmanned aircraft assessment program — a project that gives potential government customers at local, state, and federal levels an impartial evaluation of the strengths and costs of different systems.
By Inside GNSS
Three key associations of state officials are recommending that states pass legislation banning the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance unless the person being tracked has given permission or a warrant has been issued.
The associations also recommended banning UAVs from carrying weapons and emphasizing in state laws that both UAVs and their smaller cousins, model aircraft, be operated in ways that do not “present a nuisance to people or property.”
By Inside GNSS
[Updated August 15, 2013] Investors led by Harbinger Capital Partners have filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit against a trio of GPS receiver manufacturers over LightSquared, a now bankrupt firm that still hopes to build a wireless broadband network across the United States.
By Inside GNSS
A series of assertions in a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article regarding putative dissension between the Air Force and Navy over responsibilities for precise timing — a key element in GPS operations — has drawn a pointed rebuttal from the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO).
By Inside GNSS
Last month, USAF Col. Bernard Gruber stepped down after three years of running the Global Positioning Systems Directorate at Los Angeles Air Force Base.
The GPS Directorate, originally established in 1974 as the NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office, is responsible for development, acquisition, fielding and sustainment of all GPS space segments: the modernized operational control segment (OCX), the next-generation GPS III satellites, and modernized GPS user equipment (MGUE).
By Inside GNSS
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued restricted category type certificates to a pair of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), a milestone that will lead to the first approved commercial UAS operations later this summer.
Issuing the type certificates is an important step toward the FAA’s goal of integrating UAS into the nation’s airspace. FAA officials announced the action last Friday (July 26, 2013).
By Inside GNSS
