A recent presentation on Compass/Beidou that appeared to reflect a step back from China’s GNSS program more likely represented a step sideways — and an implicit acknowledgment of the complex political and technical elements involved in such an enterprise.

In February 20 remarks at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in Germany, Jing Guifei, a project manager at the National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC), seemed to play down the global aspects of Compass — or Beidou 2 — while underlining near-term efforts to implement a regional capability for the system.

A recent presentation on Compass/Beidou that appeared to reflect a step back from China’s GNSS program more likely represented a step sideways — and an implicit acknowledgment of the complex political and technical elements involved in such an enterprise.

In February 20 remarks at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in Germany, Jing Guifei, a project manager at the National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC), seemed to play down the global aspects of Compass — or Beidou 2 — while underlining near-term efforts to implement a regional capability for the system.

Jing said that a regional capability would be achieved for the Beidou 1 “test system” in 2008 “or maybe next year,” and that funding for the development had been approved by the government. In response to a question from the audience, however, Jing said that he had “no information” to provide about budgetary approval of the global program.

“We want to take care of Beidou 1 users,” Jing said, referring to the first-phase system, which had its first satellite launch in October 2000. That system uses an “active” radiopositioning technique based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) information passed among geostationary (GEO) satellites, a ground station operated by BDStar Navigation (the BD stands for Beidou), and user equipment.

In contrast, Beidou 2 uses middle earth orbiting (MEO) satellites and CDMA-based navigation messages similar to GPS. The first and only Compass MEO satellite was launched in April 2007.

In a keynote presentation at the Shanghai Navigation Forum 2007 (NaviForum) in December, however, Liao Xiaohan, deputy director-general of MOST’s High & New Technology Development & Industrialization Department, assured his listeners that “we have provided sufficient financing” for the Compass/Beidou system.

Civil and Military Interests

The NRSCC, a branch of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), is the designated agency for cooperative efforts on Europe’s Galileo program following an October 2003 agreement between the European Union (EU) and China. Under that agreement, NRSCC formerly worked with the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) and, following the discontinuation of the GJU earlier last year, now works with the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA).

The Compass program, however, falls under the direction of China’s defense ministry and operates out of the China Satellite Navigation Project Center (CSNPC), where activities fall under departments for project management (PMD) and general technology (GTD). The PMD is responsible for management of Compass research and construction, international collaboration and communication, frequency cooperation, and so on. The GTD is responsible for overall design and technology development.

At a mid-February meeting of the UN-hosted International Committee on GNSS (ICG) and the ICG Providers Forum in Vienna, it was business as usual for representatives of the CSNPC who attended, according to participants at the Austria gathering. The

ICG agenda focused on the committee’s workplan and the next full meeting December 8–12 in Pasadena, California.
It’s not so much that China is of two minds on the subject, more that the nation’s satellite navigation program is proceeding on dual tracks — triple tracks, if the Galileo involvement is counted.

Indeed, Jing moderated a panel discussion at NaviForum 2007 that brought together the three initiatives in a dialog that included Compass/Beidou developers and representatives of user communities as well as European delegates. That dialog revealed a certain dichotomy of emphasis among civil and military agencies in terms of the interest in Galileo cooperation versus building out Compass quickly.

In a subsequent presentation in Munich, Yin Jun, director of MOST’s European office, said that China supports construction of Galileo and was interested in further further collaboration during the operation phase. “We should have our own independent [GNSS] system, but that doesn’t mean we close the door to other systems,” Yin said.

The Olympics and International Cooperation

Another consideration that may explain the emphasis on completing the regional capability is that Beidou will be used — along with GPS — to monitor traffic congestion and support security operations during this summer’s Olympics in Beijing, according to the CSNPC’s deputy director Ran Chengqi. In fact, Beidou has been used for a number of years in a variety of military and security applications.

China had originally indicated plans to participate in the ICG as a provider of a regional system. However, before the ICG meeting in Bangalore, India, last September, they contacted the ICG secretariat and asked to be considered as a provider of a full-fledged GNSS.

Inevitably, the complexity and ramifications of developing a global rather than merely regional system become more apparent in the doing of it, as the other three GNSS providers — the United States, Russia, and Europe — have already discovered.

As Ran told his NaviForum audience, “Beidou is a huge investment. We need to be very careful in its implementation. . . . Our goal is a long-term commitment to users.”

A couple of challenges include the need to build a worldwide ground monitoring and control system as well as to operate compatibly with other GNSS systems, a principle to which China has already committed itself under the terms of a joint statement issued by the Providers Forum in Bangalore.

Jing pointed to establishment of global monitoring stations as one way that other nations could cooperate with China on Compass to create a network similar to the International GNSS Service.

As for compatibility, a key issue is China’s proposal to overlay Compass signals on a portion of the L1 frequency where Europe plans to transmit its Publicly Regulated Service (PRS), an encrypted signal that would be used for security applications such as police, fire, and customs and immigration purposes. As part of its participation in the Galileo program, China had attempted to gain access to PRS but was rebuffed by the EU.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said that the Compass frequency plan has still not been finalized and the topic is under negotiation. Yin said that a special China/EU working group on frequency coordination had been set up.

Representatives from the European Commission met with Chinese counterparts in Beijing last summer to discuss the situation, and two more meetings were are planned this year, according to an EC official involved in the talks.

The post China’s Compass/Beidou: Back-Track or Dual Track? appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

President Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget released earlier this month proposes an allocation of nearly $1.2 billion dollars for GPS operations, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center’s GPS Wing at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California.

If approved, the budget would support continued development of the GPS III satellite program with a first launch in FY14. The somewhat delayed target date appears to match the prediction of the GPS Wing that the first GPS III launch would be set back a few months as a result of Congressional cuts in the FY08 GPS budget.

President Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget released earlier this month proposes an allocation of nearly $1.2 billion dollars for GPS operations, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center’s GPS Wing at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California.

If approved, the budget would support continued development of the GPS III satellite program with a first launch in FY14. The somewhat delayed target date appears to match the prediction of the GPS Wing that the first GPS III launch would be set back a few months as a result of Congressional cuts in the FY08 GPS budget.

The FY09 President’s budget for GPS proposes the following allocations:
• $310.2 million, space and control segments, to continue GPS IIF development and production and GPS Operational Control segment (OCS) upgrade
• $155.5 million, military user equipment, to continue multi-vendor development of modernized user equipment MUE
• $307.3 million, OCX modernization of the OCS to handle more satellites and upgraded functionality, to continue Phase A development with Phase B downselect about mid-fiscal year
• $420.3 million, GPS III, to continue development of next-generation GPS spacecraft with scheduled delivery of the first GPS IIIA space vehicle for launch in FY14.

The post President’s FY09 Budget Proposes $1.2 Billion for GPS Program appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

The Bush administration appears to have finally made a long-delayed decision to complete implementation of an enhanced LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) system to serve, in part, as a back-up to GPS.

Late in the drafting process of the Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget proposal that went to Congress earlier this week (February 4), officials added language “migrating” the LORAN-C system from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). A $34.5-million budget and 294 positions would take part in the migration.

The Bush administration appears to have finally made a long-delayed decision to complete implementation of an enhanced LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) system to serve, in part, as a back-up to GPS.

Late in the drafting process of the Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) budget proposal that went to Congress earlier this week (February 4), officials added language “migrating” the LORAN-C system from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) to the Department of Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD). A $34.5-million budget and 294 positions would take part in the migration.

In the words of the USCG “Posture Statement” on the FY09 budget, the action was taken “in preparation for conversion of LORAN-C operations to Enhanced LORAN (eLORAN).” LORAN will be incorporated within the National Communications System (NCS) responsibilities of the DHS to “provide mission-critical national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) telecommunications for Federal, State and local governments, and private industry. . . .”

The NPPD portion of the FY09 budget document confirms the role of eLORAN for protecting the nation’s positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities: “the Department, acting as Executive Agent, will undertake development of enhanced Long Range Navigation . . . as a backup for the Global Positioning System (GPS) in the homeland. NCS will oversee LORAN-C modernization as a first step toward providing back-up capability for critical infrastructure that depends on GPS for position, navigation and timing.”

More Work Remains
The budget proposal appears to have removed the threat of LORAN’s decommissioning that has hung over the program for several years in the Department of Transportation’s Federal Radionavigation Plan and an effort by the Coast Guard to defund the program in the current fiscal year. But language in the Homeland Security Department portion of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 denied that request.

A budgetary gap remains, however, in funding further modernization in the current LORAN infrastructure to implement a fully operational eLORAN system. The $34.5-million allocation would merely maintain the current level of operation of the partially completed modernization of LORAN, for which the Coast Guard is expected to continue operation on a reimbursable basis in 2009.

According to the DHS budget document, “DHS has vested NPPD with the responsibility to develop this capability based on the transformation of LORAN-C system to Enhanced LORAN. . . . Transfer of LORAN budget authority will provide NPPD with financial oversight and responsibility for the system and permit the Department to fund any planned upgrades to the system.” Until 2009, the Coast Guard will work with NPPD to develop a plan for transformation of LORAN-C to eLORAN.

Since 1999, Congress has allocated $160 million to begin the eLORAN improvements, according to a presentation by USCG Capt. Curt Dubay to the U.S. Space-Based PNT Executive Committee last October. Of the 24 U.S. LORAN-C stations; 19 have been updated and modernized to transmit the extra data services required for eLORAN, but a monitoring network has not yet been installed.

No funds have been allocated since FY06, however, and a full eLoran
system would cost up to $400 million more with an expected annual
allocation of $15–$25 million, Dubay said. Annual LORAN operations and
maintenance costs (as of FY06) are $45 million, a figure expected to
decline to a projected $22 million a year upon implementation of full
eLORAN system architecture with reduced staffing at automated stations.

Improvements have included the following:
• upgrade existing station transmitting equipment to new solid state transmitters and associated timing equipment (atomic clocks)
• transition to time of arrival (TOA) positioning techniques, similar to pseudorange-based navigation used in GPS
• incorporate new messaging channel to increase position and time accuracy (differential Loran, integrity, and time messages)
• support operation of modern all-in-view equipment (improves fix geometry for better accuracy and extended coverage).

Modernization of LORAN improves the system’s positioning accuracy from between 0.25 and 1 nautical mile to between about 3 and 20 meters.

Meets Navigation, Infrastructure Protection Needs
According to Dubay, eLORAN provides maritime harbor entrance and approach accuracies of 10–20 meters and meets aviation required navigation performance requirements of 0.3 nautical miles for non-precision approach and integrity. A high-power, low-frequency, land-based system — the inverse of GPS — eLORAN provides coverage in many obstructed areas not served by GPS.

Although launched after World War II as an aid to maritime navigation, a modernized LORAN would support many air navigation and precise timing needs, according to its advocates. A Federal Register notice last year requesting comments on eLORAN garnered about 1,000 responses, more than 90 percent in support of the system.

An Independent Assessment Team (IAT), set up in 2006 and headed by Brad Parkinson, the first GPS Joint Program Office executive director, and Jim Doherty of the Institute for Defense Analysis, unanimously concluded that eLORAN was a prudent, affordable back-up to GPS that would contribute to protection of critical national infrastructure.

The latest support for the eLORAN program emerged in an analysis completed last summer by ITT Corporation’s Advanced Engineering & Sciences Division for the NGATS Institute that is backing the Next Generation Air Transportation System, a joint government-private sector partnership that would transform the national air system.

The post President’s 2009 Budget Proposal Directs DHS to Implement eLORAN appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Finland’s Nokia, the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile phones, is investigating use of GLONASS signals in new products that could reach the market in the near future.

Finland’s Nokia, the world’s leading manufacturer of mobile phones, is investigating use of GLONASS signals in new products that could reach the market in the near future.

Tired of waiting for Europe’s Galileo system to come on-line and looking for features that can differentiate their products in the fiercely competitive handset marketplace, Nokia has conducted extensive study of the suitability of including Russia’s GLONASS in network assisted-GNSS (AGNSS) solutions in addition to GPS. Nokia predicts that 30-40 percent of cellular handsets sold within three to four years — about 300 million phones per year — will use AGNSS.

The attention of Nokia could give a substantial boost to the Russian system, which has recently come under criticism from the country’s First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. Ivanov has recently complained that GLONASS does not yet provide enough global coverage for users, is less accurate than GPS, and GLONASS-capable user equipment is not available to consumers.

Although Russia has signaled its intention and desire for GLONASS to find a place in consumer markets, the system has until now been used primarily by commercial manufacturers of high-precision (and expensive) specialty equipment and by Russia’s defense sector.

In a presentation at the (U.S.) Institute of Navigation’s National Technical Meeting in San Diego on January 30, Nokia engineer Lauri Wirola described a lengthy investigation conducted last autumn that tracked GLONASS satellite signals and evaluated their ability to be combined with GPS in AGNSS solutions on mobile phones.

Wirola said the study indicates that the modernized GLONASS satellites — GLONASS-M — will be stable and accurate enough to be used — despite differences in the GPS and GLONASS system time scales, frequencies, signal structure, and geodetic coordinate system.

“We cannot afford to wait for Galileo,” Wirola said, referring to the 2012–13 timeframe for the system’s completion. “That’s why we are looking so closely into GLONASS.” He said that Nokia is talking with major GNSS chipset manufacturers about the prospects for building GLONASS into OEM receivers intended for mass markets.

In addition to providing more signals in general, the GLONASS system offers other advantages. The orbital inclination of the satellites in its three-plane constellation brings GLONASS spacecraft much higher in the sky than GPS, making their signals less likely to be masked by buildings or terrain. That same feature also decreases the geometrical dilutiuon of precision (GDOP) factor, a figure of merit that translates into improved accuracy for GNSS position fixes.

In its recent fourth-quarter 2007 report, Nokia announced shipments of 133.5 million handsets, up 27 percent from a year ago. The company’s share of the mobile phone handset market grew to 40 percent, according to Nokia, while its profit jumped 73 percent in the quarter and revenue climbed 49 percent. The company is predicting 10 percent growth in 2008 unit sales.

AGNSS uses information provided through the telecom network itself — such as the current orbital location of satellites and a rough approximation of the user’s location — to accelerate the time to first fix (TTFF) of a GNSS position.

"The consumer doesn’t want to wait 30 seconds for that first position fix," said Wirola. The goal of AGNSS is to bring TTFF to under 10 seconds.

International industry-based standards groups, including the mobile phone–oriented Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Open Mobile Alliance, have been evolving first an assisted-GPS standard in the 1990s and more recently an AGNSS standard with "place-holders" that incorporate Europe’s Galileo system and, provisionally, GLONASS.

Although the Galileo component has been implemented, Wirola said that political factors appear to be inhibiting the activation of the GLONASS AGNSS standard.

He said Nokia shares the concern of other handset manufacturers that the Russian program, which has been launching modernized satellites steadily, might experience another interruption such as occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Russia can launch satellites, but will a mid-1990s-type collapse occur if, for instance, it runs out of oil [revenues]?" Wirola said. Nokia, however, appears to be ready to wager that such a situation won’t recur and that GLONASS will provide a signal resource ahead of other GNSS providers.

Another development that could encourage adoption of GLONASS for consumer products would be broadcast of a CDMA (code division multiple access) signal in addition to the FDMA (frequency division multiple access) signals presently transmitted by the satellites. Russia had set itself an end-2007 deadline to make a decision on CDMA, but no decision has been announced yet.

As of February 2, the GLONASS constellation had 15 operational satellites transmitting signals and another satellite — the last of three GLONASS-M spacecraft from the most recent launch December 25 to come on-line — in the final phase of commissioning. Another six satellites are scheduled for launch later this year. According to the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), once the three GLONASS-M satellites launched in December 2007 are put into service, 95 percent of Russia’s territory and 83 percent of the world will be covered by sufficient GLONASS signals for navigation and positioning.

Several North American and European manufacturers offer combined GPS/GLONASS OEM products, including NovAtel, Javad GNSS, Trimble, and Leica. Several domestic organizations — including the Russian Institute for Space Device Engineering, the Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time, and the JJ-Group — are working on designing GLONASS/GPS chips. It remains to be seen, however, how soon high-volume low-cost GLONASS chipsets will become available for use in products developed for consumer mass markets.

The post Nokia Eyes GLONASS signals for AGNSS Handsets appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.