Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The U.S. Coast Guard’s Navigation Center (NAVCEN), and its commander Captain Russell Holmes, received special honors at a ceremony where Holmes officially took his leave for New Orleans and a new post as officer in charge of marine inspection for the outer continental shelf.
By Dee Ann Divis
The Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR (Medium-Altitude Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) system has been in the news quite a bit of late, and with good reason. As the technology has evolved, so too has the ability to improve search and rescue operations which save lives.
The cover story for the current issue of Inside GNSS is dedicated to the Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR system and its role as a solution to support the ICAO GADSS Autonomous Distress Tracking recommendation.
By Inside GNSS
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting 5 Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) navigation payload, developed by Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services business, is now operational and fully integrated into the WAAS network. The GEO 5 payload joins two others already on orbit in correcting GPS satellite signal ionospheric disturbances, timing issues, and minor orbit adjustments, giving users increased coverage, improved accuracy, and better reliability.
By Inside GNSS
The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has considerably increased the number of services and applications that require positioning information. In this sense, IoT positioning sensors usually obtain and deliver their position to a central node where it is further managed and analyzed by a user or scheduler. Nonetheless, the stringent requirements of low-cost IoT sensors in terms of low power consumption to achieve larger battery lifetime are pushing current technologies to their limits.
By Inside GNSS
Recent presentations and publications have suggested that multi-frequency spoofing is infeasible using low-cost, off-the-shelf equipment, and that a good defense against any but well-funded and technically competent adversaries would be to use a multi-frequency capable survey grade receiver. The authors of this article wish to demonstrate that this is definitively false.
Today, it appears that the Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR system, relying on payloads deployed on GNSS constellations (Galileo, GPS, GLONASS), offers all the conditions to meet the new recommendation of ICAO for ADT-system for Commercial Aviation, with a new generation of in-flight triggered beacons, identical to the current ELT in terms of aircraft integration, but capable of receiving triggers and cancellation events from the avionics, from the crew or from internal sensors, and of detecting and managing their inhibitions to maintain the capability to raise alerts and be localized in any situation.
By Inside GNSS
With expectations of accelerating the implementation of safety, integrity and reliability, within GNSS for autonomous applications, Hexagon AB announced the acquisition of AutonomouStuff, a leading supplier of integrated autonomous vehicle solutions.
By Stan Goff
China is set to launch two backup satellites for BeiDou-2 in next two years to improve its performance, and the country also has announced plans to finish building a high precision national comprehensive positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system on the basis of the BeiDou system by 2035.
By Stan Goff
Orolia announced today that its atomic clock solutions have been selected for the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Under contracts totaling 26 million euros, or approximately $30 million, Orolia will deliver its stable, accurate timing solutions to 12 additional Galileo satellites.
By Stan Goff
In recent years there has been plenty of talk about Smart Cities, including numerous lectures on the topic at a variety of GNSS conferences including multiple Institute of Navigation meetings. The benefits delivered by these Smart Cities range from improved safety, efficiencies in transportation and deliveries, reduced traffic congestion and improved environmental effects.
By Stan Goff
This article focuses on the research project Galileo Online: GO! – which with support from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (grant number 50NA1510) designs and develops a reliable and high-precision receiver for multi-constellation and dual-frequency GNSS whose suitability and capabilities are tested in railway applications. Project results showcase the advantages of GPS and Galileo if used simultaneously in railway applications.
By Inside GNSS
Authors: Frank van Diggelen and Mohammed Khider
Google has publicly released GNSS Analysis Tools to process and analyze GNSS raw measurements from your phone. These tools enable manufacturers to see in detail how well the GNSS receivers are working in each particular phone design and thus improve the GNSS design and performance in their phones. Also, with the tools publicly available there is significant value for app-developers, researchers and educators. Here, the authors show what these tools do, and how they reveal details of receiver and signal behavior that are not possible to observe without raw measurements.
Photo courtesy of GPS.gov. House and Senate authorizers are forcing a reorganization of the Pentagon’s management of military space programs, giving authority to a soon-to-be-named official to prioritize space budgets across services and setting planning in motion for a possible new department. They also approved spending the full amounts requested for the military GPS programs and mandated that defense officials both test a backup to GPS and look at incorporating European and Japanese GNSS signals into military user equipment.
By Inside GNSS
