Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The recent release of the 2010 Federal Radionavigation Plan (FRP) marks the passage of a recurring milestone for the U.S. positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) community.
By Inside GNSS
Mike Dyment, General Partner, NextGen Equipage Fund LLC» Air Traffic Control Modernization (PDF)
In between partisan confrontations around the 2011 federal budget and raising the U.S. debt limit, prospects are improving for federal legislation that would provide the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with a regular full-year budget for the first time since Fiscal Year 2007 — including support for completing the transition to a GNSS-driven air traffic control (ATC) system known as NextGen and a “public-private partnership” to equip aircraft with the needed avionics.
By Inside GNSS
Resolution of the between Congressional Republicans and Democrats that threatened a shutdown of the federal government has clarified the picture for military GPS programs in the coming year, although prospects for the civil side remain uncertain.
On April 15, 2011, President Obama signed the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 (H.R. 1473, Public Law 112-10), the last in a series of government-wide funding measures for Fiscal Year 2011 (FY11).
By Inside GNSS
The demand for techniques capable of authenticating the GNSS signals and detecting simulation attacks (spoofing) has increased exponentially in the last years, mainly targeted to financial and safety critical applications.
Associated proposals and developments addressing these issues focused on two different approaches: user segment authentication services that leveraged existing services in order to detect signal spoofing and that integrated signal authentication services into the GNSS system itself.
By Inside GNSS
Enterprise Baseline ScheduleCol. Bernie Gruber, commander of the GPS Directorate since June 2010, works in a busy place.
Through its various incarnations since being established in 1974 — as Joint Program Office, Air Force Wing, and now Directorate — the GPS program at the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), Los Angeles Air Force Base, California, has been at the center of the action.
By Inside GNSS
GPS III satellite. Lockheed Martin illustrationLockheed Martin announced today (March 15, 2011) that the team it leads in developing the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation GPS III satellites has successfully completed the program’s first major flight-software integration milestone at the company’s software integration laboratory in Newtown, Pennsylvania.
By Inside GNSS
The GPS community is seething over a January 26 decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) giving a conditional go ahead to a new broadband network with the potential to overwhelm GPS receivers across the country.
By Dee Ann Divis
Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory (CHIL) illustration (Lockheed Martin)GPS III contractor Lockheed Martin has integrated several virtual reality technologies in a new Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory (CHIL) in Littleton, Colorado, which will be used to validate and test next-generation GPS and other space programs.
With CHIL, Engineers and technicians can explore satellite designs and functions, troubleshoot and fine-tune them in a virtual world before building them in physical space.
By Inside GNSS
After eight years of successful participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) chip scale atomic clock (CSAC) initiative, Symmetricom, Inc., announced today (January 18, 2011) the general availability of what it says is the world’s smallest, lowest power atomic oscillator: a 16 cubic-centimeter unit weighing less than 35 grams (about 1.25 ounces) and operating on only 115 milliwatts of 3.3 VDC power.
By Inside GNSS
FIGURES 1, 2 & 3For the complete story, including figures, graphs, and images, please download the PDF of the article, above.
In satellite navigation, a GNSS receiver must account for several sources of error such as relativistic effects, atmospheric propagation delay, offset of satellite clocks from system time and satellite ephemeris. In order to accurately compute user position, velocity, and time (PVT), these errors need to be predicted/estimated precisely.
By Inside GNSS
Spirent Communications, long established in the laboratory test marketplace with its line of navigation and positioning simulators, has extended its product development into real-world environments by introducing a GNSS record and playback system (RPS).
By Inside GNSS
The GPS program continues progress on several fronts — in space and on the ground.
During fall 2010, the U.S. Air Force and the Raytheon Company team developing the GPS Advanced Control Segment (OCX) successfully carried out an integrated baseline review (IBR) for the next-generation system on schedule.
When completed in 2015 under the current schedule, GPS OCX will deliver control segment enhancements designed to provide secure, accurate and reliable navigation and timing information to military, commercial and civil users.
By Inside GNSS.jpg)
Horses racing by Margret Hofheinz-Doering 1956Return to "GNSS Year in Review"
We’ve come a long ways from the attitudes of the Cold War environment in which the Global Positioning System and GLONASS programs arose.
But that doesn’t mean that GNSS competition is a thing of the past. Indeed, the second most-read item on the Inside GNSS website during this year was a March 2009 article entired “GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Compass: What GNSS Race? What Competition?”
By Inside GNSS
