Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
xOEM500Oxford Technical Solutions Ltd. (OxTS) has announced its first inertial navigation OEM board set with integrated GNSS — the xOEM500, which the company is promoting at this week’s (October 7–9, 2014) Intergeo trade show in Berlin, Germany.
By Inside GNSS
IRNSS-1B satellite in clean room. ISRO photoA signal-in-space (SIS) interface control document (ICD) for the standard positioning service (SPS) of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is available for download from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) website.
By Inside GNSS
Editor’s Note: An exclusive interview with Gen. Hyten is available here with more details.
Details are emerging about another restructuring of the contract for the new GPS ground system, a deal that pushes completion of the project back another two years and recasts the remaining work to fit within the Air Force’s strained financial profile.
By Dee Ann Divis
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
Eugenia Acosta, an intern with Clearpath Robotics, unloads a Kingfisher unmanned vessel in preparation for a mission (top photo), the Kingfisher components and controller (bottom photo).“Our products are robotic research platforms,” says Clearpath’s Meghan Hennessey. “These can be configured and programmed so that our customers can explore their particular areas of interest without all the cost and troubleshooting involved in actually building robots themselves.”
Hennessey says Clearpath platforms — which include the all-terrain Husky, the larger, tractor-like Grizzly and the waterborne Kingfisher — can be thought of as project kits.
By Inside GNSS
Q: How do you trust centimeter level accuracy positioning?
By Inside GNSS
Unicore Communications, Inc. offers the UM220-INS, a BeiDou/GPS+inertial MEMS dual system inertial navigation module for in-dash automotive navigation and high-end navigation, and the UB280, a BeiDou/GPS dual-System dual-antenna high precision heading board for precise RTK position and heading.
Available now, the XDL Rover 2 is equipped with Bluetooth wireless communication for ease in configuration and operation, including use with Android devices in the field. UHF data can be transmitted via Bluetooth to a paired host device for operational efficiency.
By Inside GNSS
Topcon Positioning Group has released two unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for mapping — the Sirius Pro and Sirius Basic. Both systems are designed to produce accurate solutions for the automated mapping of a wide range of sites — regardless of terrain — including construction sites, mines and quarries, and for use in land surveying, power line and pipeline inspection as well as precision agriculture field mapping.
By Inside GNSS
IFEN SX3IFEN introduced its new SX3 GNSS software receiver, a major upgrade of the company’s SX-NSR, last week at the ION GNSS+ conference in Tampa, Florida. Redesigned hardware frontends feature four wideband RF frequency bands that can be split into a maximum of eight sub-bands per unit. At the same time the bandwidth has been expanded to a full 55 megahertz, offering additional signal power especially in the Galileo E5 band.
By Inside GNSS
The high-precision GNSS industry should expect to see industry consolidation and a scramble for new markets and innovations as prices for high-end chips and modules continue to slide, experts told attendees at a ION GNSS+ panel discussion in Tampa, Florida, last week (September 11, 2014).
The falling prices could strain R&D budgets, they noted, but could also create opportunity as high-end receivers come within reach of emerging industries like self-driving cars, unmanned aerial vehicles, and are even incorporated into consumer products.
By Inside GNSS
Working Papers explore the technical and scientific themes that underpin GNSS programs and applications. This regular column is coordinated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Günter Hein, head of Europe’s Galileo Operations and Evolution.
By Inside GNSS
Orbits of the fifth and sixth Galileo satellites launched together on August 22, 2014, in red, compared to their intended position, in dashed green, and the position of the four IOV satellites launched in 2011 and 2012 in solid green. This view looks down over Earth’s South Pole, helping to illustrate how the two satellites’ orbital inclination relative to the equator is less than was intended ESA illustration.The European Space Agency (ESA) released dramatic illustrations today (September 16, 2014) of the orbital locations of the two errant Galileo spacecraft launched on August 22, the intended orbit, and the locations of four In-Orbit Validation (IOV) satellites.
By Inside GNSS
