Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
A Federal Register notice published yesterday (August 18, 2015) seeking comment on plans to shut down a large portion of the Nationwide Differential GPS (NDGPS) network marks the effective end of a program that spurred a hard-fought controversy in the era of Selective Availability (SA).
By Inside GNSS
A “GPS market review” submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this week diverges in methodology and results from a preliminary study of U.S. benefits of the Global Positioning System provided earlier this year to the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board.
By Inside GNSS
GPS contributed more than $68 billion to the U.S. economy in 2013, according to the preliminary results of a new study presented to the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board.
And the study’s author, Irv Leveson, a consultant to ASCR Federal Research and Technology Solutions, LLC, described that figure as conservative because it did not fully incorporate a host of GPS applications including those depending on GPS timing information.
By Inside GNSS
Francisco Rovira-Más, Agricultural Robotics Laboratory, Universidad Politécnica de ValenciaNow that we have had GNSS-driven precision in the fields for nearly 20 years, with widespread and growing acceptance by farm vehicle manufacturers and farmers, what lies ahead for precision agriculture?
By Inside GNSS
Equations 2, 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are finding increased application in both domestic and governmental applications. Small UAVs (maximum take off weight less than 20 kilograms) comprise the category of the smallest and lightest platforms that also fly at lower altitudes (under less than 150 meters).
Designs for this class of device have focused on creating UAVs that can operate in urban canyons or even inside buildings, fly along hallways, and carry listening and recording devices, transmitters, or miniature TV cameras.
By Inside GNSS
Navigation technologies appear to be losing their charm among new car buyers in the United States.
Twenty years after Detroit introduced the first in-vehicle car navigation systems, employing GPS and digital map technology, collision avoidance appears to be the common theme among the most popular automotive technologies, according to a new J.D. Power study released last Wednesday (April 22, 2015).
Spectrum-related tensions reemerged during a workshop on Thursday (March 12, 2015) organized to gather feedback on a testing plan to help protect GPS receivers.
The plan is part of the GPS Adjacent-Band Compatibility (ABC) assessment — a wide-ranging effort to determine the power levels at which services operating in frequencies next those used by GPS and other GNSS systems can broadcast signals without causing interference to GPS signals.
By Inside GNSS
Dr. John Fulton, Ohio State UniversityNowhere has the fact that GNSS can guide things besides military weapons and transport manifested itself more profoundly than in agriculture.
While Google and automotive manufacturers struggle to figure out how to put autonomous vehicles on the highway, farmers have been using GNSS for well over a decade to guide equipment through their fields — along with a host of other ag-related, site-specific applications.
Indeed, GNSS — along with an array of other high-tech resources — is transforming agriculture at an accelerating rate.
By Inside GNSS
GPS+EGNOS tracking device able to use EGNOS OS and EDAS mounted on a containerThe European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) has a European regional coverage that could be extended quite easily to areas adjacent to the European Union. Backed by the European Commission, a public/private consortium is operating programs of technical assistance to prepare nations in the Mediterranean region to adopt and exploit European GNSS services in their priority market segments, namely aviation and road freight transport/logistics.
By Inside GNSS
Apparently working overtime during the President’s Day weekend, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today (February 15, 2015) proposed a framework of regulations <http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published> that would allow routine use of certain small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) while maintaining flexibility to accommodate future technological innovations. An overview of the small UAS rule can be viewed at
By Inside GNSS
Efficient power transmission and distribution would benefit from synchronized near–real-time measurements of voltage and current phasors at widely dispersed locations in an electric power grid. Such measurements also could enable effective real-time system monitoring and control, which are considered to be the key to preventing wide-scale cascading outages like the 2003 Northeast Blackout.
By Inside GNSS
Gerald Mader, National Geodetic SurveyIn August, a group of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that the severe drought gripping the western United States in recent years is causing a “uplift” in the western United States.
About the same time, governmental agencies were reporting widespread cases of land subsidence in California’s central San Joaquin Valley caused by overpumping of water from wells there.
By Inside GNSS
