200903 March/April 2009 Archives - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

GPS Satellite with L5 Payload Launches Successfully

Inside GNSS — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:31:45 +0000

Block IIR-20(M) launch from Cape Canaveral. Photo by Carleton Bailie, United Launch Alliance.

GPS program managers and users — especially the U.S. civil aviation community — can breathe a sign of relief following the successful launch Tuesday (March 24) of a satellite carrying a demonstration payload of the new L5 signal.

Built by the Lockheed Martin Company, the modernized Block II replenishment spacecraft, GPS IIR-20(M), is moving toward plane B, slot 2 to replace space vehicle number (SVN) 30. If all goes well, U.S. Air Force controllers expect to set the satellite healthy for navigation users worldwide next month.

Among other signals and capabilities, the IIR-20(M) will be the first to transmit the new GPS civil signal centered on 1176.45MHz (±12 MHz) within the protected aeronautical radionavigation service (ARNS) band. This so-called L5 signal will provide a second safety-of-life signal that meets the technical requirements for enabling aircraft to make precision landings in high multipath environments.

The Air Force faces an August 26 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) deadline for transmitting a signal on L5 in order to gain priority access to that frequency for GPS. Although the program is not completely out of the woods — the satellite still needs to reach it orbital location and begin broadcasts — the prospects look good at this point.

Delays in development of the GPS Block IIF satellites, which include the L5 signal capability as part of their basic design, led the Air Force to contract for the development of a demonstration payload that could be sent up earlier in order to meet the ITU deadline. That plan was threatened when a faulty 40-second timer on the third booster stage was discovered on the IIR-20(M) and IIR-21(M) satellites in June 2008, preventing launch of the spacecraft until the component could be replaced.

The IIR-M satellite, carried aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, lifted off at 4:34 a.m. (EDT) from Space Launch Complex 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The Air Force expects to launch its last GPS IIR-M satellite in August. This next mission will also be the last Air Force Delta II mission as the program transitions all its launch services to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV).

According to the United Launch Alliance, one third of the 140 successful Delta II launches have been dedicated to GPS satellites. The very first Delta II launch on Feb. 14, 1989, was the the first GPS Block IIA spacecraft.

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GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Compass: What GNSS Race? What Competition

Inside GNSS — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:32:01 +0000

(This story appears in the "GNSS World" department in the March-April 2009 issue of Inside GNSS.)

Munich’s high-level satnav summit the first week in March opened with a plenary titled, “The Worldwide Race in GNSS” and closed with a panel, “The Competition among the Big Four.”

(This story appears in the "GNSS World" department in the March-April 2009 issue of Inside GNSS.)

Munich’s high-level satnav summit the first week in March opened with a plenary titled, “The Worldwide Race in GNSS” and closed with a panel, “The Competition among the Big Four.”

Despite the provocative session titles, few speakers were willing to admit that either a race or a competition was under way in the GNSS world. Visa problems reportedly kept a Chinese spokesperson from joining the GNSS “race” session, and the “competition” panel was opened by GPS pioneer Brad Parkinson invoking the motto of GNSS interchangeability: “Any four [satellites from any system] will do.”

Indeed, one way of looking at the Summit’s premise is that the United States already won both the race and the competition in late 1993 with a declaration of initial operational capability (IOC) and 24 operational GPS satellites on orbit. The Russian Federation came in second in 1995.

End of story.

But within the conference’s dozen panel discussions and inevitable hallway conversations lurked many indications that the race continues and the competition is fierce.

China squeezed out a few additional details on its implementation plans, announcing that three more Compass satellites would be launched this year, including one in the first half of 2009, and seven in 2010. Russia announced its decision to put CDMA signals on the new GLONASS civil L3 band centered at 1208 MHz.

Galileo representatives put a brave face on a program that continues to encounter adversity at home and abroad. As did U.S. officials for a GPS program that has had nearly a yearlong halt in its launch schedule due to a questionable component in the Delta II rocket, and now may have encountered new problems in the next-generation Block IIF satellites.

The general downplaying of a GNSS competitive race might best have been reflected in the observation of Mike Shaw, director of the U.S. National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT): “The race should not be among the provider nations and the services they offer. They [GNSS providers] should focus on the issues of compatibility and interoperability. The race is really in the [GNSS equipment and services] industry sector.”

Grigory Stupak, deputy designer of GLONASS for the Russian Institute of Space Device Engineering, echoed thoe sentiments: "Competition should be fruitful and directed toward GNSS integration."

Despite the denials of competition, a race of sorts is being run in the GNSS world. What kind of race? Arguably, it’s a marathon. All of the programs have planning processes under way that reach to 2020 or beyond.

Other aspects of the situation, however, give the impression of a sack race, with two or more GNSS providers running in tandem under bilateral and multilateral accords, each with one leg in the same sack. Or within a few years it could even be likened to leapfrog as each round of system modernization propels a GNSS provider temporarily to the front of the pack.

GLONASS
In some ways, the GLONASS program — after an allocation of more than 100 billion rubles (nearly $3 billion) in funding for its 2002–2011 modernization effort — has progressed most steadily in recent years.

With the three newest satellites from a launch last December now in operation, GLONASS has a 20-bird constellation — including 19 modernized space vehicles (SVs), the most in more than a decade. Some 17 of the spacecraft are broadcasting a second full civil signal on the GLONASS L2 frequency, the only such GNSS system doing so.

Its signal-in-space user range error (URE) is down to 1.8 meters — still high compared to GPS’s 1-meter URE, but within the 3.7 meters called for in the GLONASS Interface Control Document (ICD) and several times better than the UREs of just year ago. By the end of last year, GLONASS was typically providing a standalone receiver with five-meter positioning accuracy using pseudoranges.

Launches have taken place regularly as scheduled over the past few years, and another six satellites are set to go up in triple launches in October and December this year. If successful, that should bring the GLONASS constellation to full operational capability (FOC) with 24 satellites early in 2010.

But that’s not all. The next-generation GLONASS-K will begin launching next year and include a CDMA (code division multiple access) signal on L3, which will more closely align with other GNSS systems that the system’s legacy frequency division multiple access (FDMA) design.

A decision about new GLONASS signals at the L1C and L5 frequencies depends on negotiations by a U.S./Russia working group, but could lead to additional CDMA signals, said Sergey Revnivykh, deputy director of the Russian space agency’s Mission Control Center.

The stable progress in rebuilding and modernizing GLONASS has even drawn interest from players in the mobile phone industry. Nokia has been investigating the use of GLONASS for its handsets. And, at the Munich summit, Frank van Diggelen, technical director and chief navigation officer for Broadcom Corporation, a semiconductor company that targets mobile handset manufacturers, appeared to compare GLONASS’s prospects favorably to Galileo.

“If GLONASS, which almost has a complete constellation, finds its way onto consumer devices, then consumers will have access to 65 satellites (GPS 31 + SBAS 7 + QZSS 3 + GLONASS 24 = 65),” van Diggelen said. “This may be enough.” In a worrisome aside for Europe’s system, which is counting on mobile phones playing a prominent role in downstream markets, he added, “Galileo may simply be too late to matter.”

COMPASS
As for Compass, if China executes its currently announced schedule for satellite launches, it would mark a substantial acceleration in that program. Given the caution with which Chinese officials have announced their plans, the 10 satellites in two years commitment could well be met.

Indeed, a Chinese representative indicated that the Compass program is under pressure from Beijing to show progress in bringing the planned five civil and five restricted services online. The schedule also suggests that China has a lot of satellites already built and ready to fly soon.

Autonomous positioning accuracy for the open service is expected to be at least 10 meters, according to Jing Guifei, chief of the international cooperation division in the National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC). A wide area differential service providing one-meter real-time positioning and a short message service (SMS) is also part of the Compass program, Jing said.

As the “newcomer” to the GNSS field, in the words of Yin Jun, director of the European Affairs Division of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Compass “is not in the same place at the start of the race.”

Yin stressed that GNSS should not be a “competitive” exercise. “We need coordination among system providers,” he said. Although a “regional” capability is expected once the first 10 Compass satellites are in place, Yin said a global Compass service would not arrive until between 2015 and 2020.

GPS
As the leading GNSS provider, the United States might be thought to have the luxury of improving on a real and existing system with 31 operational SVs on orbit. In fact, the GPS program is in the midst of a full-blown modernization phase.

Launch of a modernized GPS Block IIR satellite — SV IIR-20(M) — is scheduled for March 24, the first since discovery of a faulty component in the Delta 2 booster last June led to a suspension of launches. A demonstration payload for the new L5 civil signal is on the IIR-20(M), and faces an August 2009 deadline to meet an International Telecommunications Union requirement for securing primary GPS access to the frequency.

The last IIR-M should go up in August, according to Col. Dave Buckman, PNT command lead for Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.

Launch of the first Block IIF spacecraft is scheduled for October 2009, although anomalies discovered in the signal generator of the second IIF now under construction has introduced some uncertainty into the plan.

GPS produced a one-meter URE in 2008, Buckman said. The GPS III satellites, which will carry the new civil L1C signal, are designed to have a URE that is four times better.

Galileo
Turning at last to Europe’s Galileo, the laborious process of contracting out the fully operational capability (FOC) system development continues. In Munich, Fotis Karamitsos, European Commission director-general for transport and energy, and Paul Verhoef, head of the Galileo unit, indicated that agreements with companies winning the lead contracts for six work packages should be signed between September and the end of this year.

Discussions at the Summit revealed tensions around negotiations with China about a frequency overlay of Compass signals on the security-oriented Public Regulated Service as well as the question of whether the costs to build Galileo can be kept within the €3.4-billion limit agreed by the European Council and the European Parliament.

In answer to a question at the March 3 opening plenary, Karamitsos insisted that “we have no reason to believe that FOC won’t be delivered on time and on budget.”

Responding to a comment that “several member states” and private companies have already suggested creating a “light” version of Galileo — fewer services, signals, and/or satellites, Karamitsos said he that the European Union (EU) member states have a “legal obligation to deliver the full system. Galileo satellites will be acquired in blocks of 10, 8, and 8.

Karamitsos complained of “people negotiating through the press,” adding, “In this time of economic constraints it doesn’t make sense for our industry to try to make money over” the amount allocated for the program.

According to one European source, the reference was to Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), a UK firm whose acquisition by EADS Astrium closed in January as well as EU members uninterested in using the PRS. SSTL, which specializes in smaller, economical satellite designs, built Galileo’s GIOVE-A satellite now in orbit.

Phil Davies, SSTL’s business development manager, acknowledges that “we’ve been pushing the idea of ‘Early Services’ for several years now, but I must admit it’s an uphill struggle trying to single-handedly revector the Galileo juggernaut.”

Davies referred to a December 17, 2007, op-ed article that he wrote for Space News that he believes “probably remains valid today.”

In that commentary, Davies argued, “Whilst the full set of services might seem attractive it is clear that a simpler specification could be implemented more rapidly and at lower cost with minimal controversy and less demands on the ground segment.

“Such a system would allow Europe to achieve some of the strategic aims for Galileo such as the political and economic benefits,” the op-ed column continued. “Additional services, if shown to be cost beneficial, could be introduced on later batches of satellites that are now planned to be contracted after 2008. In this way Galileo could become an evolving system, rather like GPS with its different blocks of satellites.”

SSTL, along with its bidding partner OHB System AG (OHB), has been short-listed as a candidate for the Galileo FOC space segment (with EADS as the other contender) and are preparing for the submission of a “refined proposal” to the European Space Agency.

Versus Compass
Meanwhile, the issue of the Compass/Galileo signal overlay — which recalls an earlier attempt to overlay the PRS on the GPS M-code — continues unresolved after two meetings between Chinese and EC representatives. Some years ago, China attempted unsuccessfully to gain access to the encrypted PRS, which requires unanimous agreement of EU member states before a non-EU nation can do that.

“PRS needs spectral separation,” insisted Paul Verhoef, head of the EC’s unit for Galileo and intelligent transport, who acknowledged that negotiations with China are “going slower than we hoped.”

China’s ambitious launch schedule, which requires final decisions on Compass’s frequency plan, increases the urgency of the dialog. “We hope to get agreement [with Galileo] before we launch, but we cannot wait to do the validation and development of the system,” Jing said in response to a question from the Munich audience.

The situation reflects the ill will that has arisen since the two sides signed agreements in 2003 and 2004 to cooperate on Galileo, including a €200-million Chinese contribution to program development.

In the session on competition among GNSS systems, Yin said that China’s industry had found it hard to compete for contracts in the Galileo FOC procurement, even though the nation had allocated €70 million for the in-orbit validation (IOV) phase. “Several IOV cooperation projects could not be implemented smoothly, due to obstacles and barriers,” he added.

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FY 2010 Budget Outline Proposes to End Loran

Glen Gibbons — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:24:57 +0000

Ready for another round?

President Obama appears to have weighed in on the long-running Loran/eLoran debate — on the side of terminating the terrestrial radionavigation system and, apparently, its enhanced version that had been proposed as a backup to GPS.

In a February 26 message to U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) members, Vice-Admiral V. S. Crea, USCG Vice Commandant and Chief Operating Officer, said the Fiscal Year 2010 (FY10) budget outlined in a document sent to Congress calls for termination of Loran-C in the coming year.

Ready for another round?

Specifically, Crea cited a passage from a section on potential savings across the federal government that proposed “the termination of outdated systems such as the terrestrial-based, long-range radionavigation (LORAN-C) operated by the U.S. Coast Guard resulting in an offset of $36 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years.”

During a question and answer period following his State of the Coast Guard address on March 3, the USCG Commandant, Admiral Thad Allen, was asked about the budgetary proposal that would “leave the nation without a primary backup to GPS.”

In his reply, Allen made a distinction between operating LORAN and a backup to GPS. “While one could be the other, it doesn’t necessarily have to be,” he said. “The policy decision was taken to terminate LORAN-C. Negotiations, discussions and outreach to stakeholders will continue for a requirement for a backup for GPS. Should that backup become eLORAN, that is something that will be addressed in the future.”

Noting that LORAN-C stations in Alaska are operating with 1960s vacuum-tube technology,” Allen called for an “up or down vote” on the system. Any requirements for a backup to GPS “need to be generated in the interagency [process],” Allen added, “and the Department of Homeland Security will have the lead on that effort.”

The Back Story
After efforts by several agencies to end the program in recent years, despite the recommendation of an Independent Assessment Team (IAT) that eLoran could serve as a backuup to GPS, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appeared to have embraced completing modernization of the system in former President Bush’s FY09 budget. (See the February 6 article on "2009 Budget Proposal Directs eLoran Implementation")

Language in the 2008 Federal Radionavigation Plan (FRP) released last month, however, made the status of the system appear a little ambiguous. (See the January 27 story on the 2008 FRP).

“Further details of the termination plan will be available upon the submission of the President’s full budget,” Crea said in his e-mail to Coast Guard members.

“The Commandant and I understand the uncertainty this planned termination creates among the highly dedicated men and women who operate and support our LORAN-C Stations, often under very challenging conditions,” Crea concluded. “We will ensure all Loran Station and program personnel are kept fully informed throughout this dynamic period.”

Despite its routine absence from administration budget proposals since 1994, Loran has been rescued by congressional advocates who have provided $160 million since 1997 to enhance the Loran system and conduct research to make eLoran a viable backup to GPS.

Those funds have helped modernize and add to the network of Loran transmitters that cover the United States, equipping every station with three cesium clocks, while encouraging miniaturization of Loran receiver technology able to use new all-in-view techniques that provide positioning and timing accuracy approaching that of GPS.

In a paper presented at the 2006 International Loran Association Convention and Technical Symposium, timing experts from the U.S. Naval Observatory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and a timing instrument manufacturer wrote, “[W]e have identified eLoran as potentially the best available backup provider to GPS as a reference source for precise time synchronization and frequency control.”

In August of that same year a white paper prepared for the Federal Aviation Administration, “GPS Backup For Position, Navigation and Timing,” endorsed eLoran as well.

The 11-member Loran IAT headed by Brad Parkinson, a Stanford University professor and founding program director for the GPS Joint Program Office, held a series of meetings with PNT equipment manufacturers and users to assess their ideas and sentiments about eLoran before unanimously endorsing the idea.

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CSR-SiRF Merger Pairs Struggling Bluetooth and GPS Powerhouses – and Shows Handset Platform Dominance

Glen Gibbons — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:11:29 +0000

CSR image

Merger plans recently announced by CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) plc and SiRF Technology Inc. connote more than the evolving fortunes and common future of a Cambridge, UK–based Bluetooth and WiFi provider and a San Jose, California GPS manufacturer.

It reaffirms the emergence of mobile phone handsets as a dominant location platform, the convergence of wireless communications and positioning at the chip level, and the trend toward absorption by semiconductor manufacturers of independent GPS technology providers who offer only single-frequency solutions.

It may also signal the failure — at least for the time being — of software GPS receivers to gain traction in mass market applications, the double-edged nature of lawsuits that can cut two ways, and the importance of cash reserves in an era when banks have sharply curtailed lending.

But first the news.

On February 10, CSR and SiRF announced plans to merge the latter company into the former in a pure stock deal, rather than a cash-out acquisition. SiRF shareholders will receive 0.741 of an ordinary share in CSR for each SiRF share, which values SiRF at approximately $136 million (£91 million).

That’s a premium of approximately 91 percent on the closing SiRF share price of $1.08 on 9 February 2009, and a premium of approximately 57 percent over the average closing SiRF share price over the prior three months. Following completion, SiRF shareholders will own approximately 27 percent of the enlarged CSR group.

Formally, SiRF will merge with a newly organized U.S. subsidiary of CSR. Completion of the merger is subject to the approval of both SiRF and CSR shareholders, clearance by regulatory agencies, and certain other conditions. CSR anticipates a one-time integration expense of $15 million.

Glen Gibbons is editor and publisher of Inside GNSS magazine, which covers the policies, programs, engineering, and most challenging
applications of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems: GPS, Galileo,
GLONASS, Compass/ Beidou, and related technologies. He bills himself as the "oldest living GPS journalist." Gibbons lives and works in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

SiRF’s interim CEO, Dado Banatao, is expected to join the CSR board as a non-executive member, and Kanwar Chadha, a SiRF founder and vice-president of marketing, as an executive director — that is, Chadha will become part of the post-merger CSR senior management. Both Banatao and Chadha have committed to vote their shares in SiRF — about 4.8 of the company’s issued share capital — in favor of the merger.

Both companies bring strong brand equities and market share (though less now than in the past) to the table. CSR, with a focus on handset manufacturers, says it ranks first in every Bluetooth market segment with a unit market share in excess of 50 percent.

The company also has a range of other “connectivity” technologies — FM, WiFi, ultrawideband (UWB), and near field communications (NFC) — in various stages of development that CSR groups in its Connectivity Centre.

WiFi is furthest along, with CSR’s third-generation UniFi6000 now sampling with customers. It has demo chips for its NFC offering. UWB is an active project with a small team behind it, but is part of CSR’s PC group, not its handset business.

The company has also introduced CSR Synergy, a wireless system software that enables customers to adopt a growing complement of wireless connectivity technologies. CSR estimates that the combined annual market for these technologies will grow from $3.5 billion in 2008 to between $5 and $7 billion by 2012.

SiRF, probably the industry’s most ambitious promoter of consumer GPS since its founding in 1995, has its SiRFstarIII chip technology embedded in leading portable navigation devices (PNDs), cell phones, and other mobile devices sold by such companies as Research in Motion (Blackberry), Mio, MiTAC, Pharos, and Motorola.

The CSR-SiRF merger will allow the companies to bring their new story to a high-profile industry event for a key market: the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 this week (February 16–19) in Barcelona, Spain. Indeed, on the first day of the congress, CSR unveiled its CSR9000, a which the company says will support 60-square-millimeter (or smaller) modules combining Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n), FM receive and transmit, and GPS.

Reversal of Fortunes
The announced transaction came near a recent nadir in the prospects of both companies — at least as measured in market capitalization and share value.

Just over two and half years ago, both SiRF and CSR were flying high. On May 11, 2006, CSR’s share value reached £15.22, then worth about US$28.65. Less than a month earlier, SiRF stock had peaked at $39.15 per share. By last November, however, CSR stock had dropped to £1.52 (US$2.26); on October 31, 2008, SiRF shares traded at $0.94.

Last week’s announcement has been good for both companies: on February 13, SiRF closed at $2.04, nearly double its price a week earlier; CSR closed the same day at £2.10 (US$2.99), up from just under £1.80 the day of the merger announcement.

The companies needed some good news.

CSR reported revenue of $140 million for fourth quarter 2008 (down from $205.5 million in the third quarter) and $695 million for the full year. The company had an operating loss $8.5 million compared to a 2007 profit (before tax) of $150.1 million on revenue of $848.6 million.

In a February 10 conference call with analysts, CSR CEO Joep van Beurden cited the global economic downturn and customers’ reduction of inventory as the main causes for the weakening performance and predicted that “2009 will be tough for all businesses.”

“In Q4 new orders were very low and we had a lot of requests for ‘push-outs’ [in order delivery dates] and cancellations,” van Beurden said. “The latter have now diminished and returned more to normal.”

As for SiRF, in the fiscal year ended December 27, 2008, using general accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the company had revenues of $232 million (compared to $329 million the previous year). Net loss before provision for income taxes was $360 million (versus 2007 loss of $6 million). This loss included a goodwill impairment charge of $216 million and an acquisition-related asset impairment charge of $43 million. After adjusting for these and certain other items, SiRF had a non-GAAP net loss of $36 million (compared to a non-GAAP profit of $60 million in 2007).

In the conference call, van Beurden underlined the positive, noting that the companies would have had pro forma combined revenues of $927 million and a pro forma $378 million in cash on hand at the end of fiscal year 2008. He said that CSR also expects at least $35 million in annual cost synergies will be achieved within 60 days of the merger closing. Approval of CSR and SiRF shareholders will be sought at a general meetings expected to take place in May or June 2009.

The parallel reversal in fortunes arose from both internal and external developments.

In their market-cap heyday, CSR and SiRF made a series of acquisitions designed to bolster their technology portfolios, particularly in the — respectively — GPS and Bluetooth expertise that they needed.

In January 2006 SiRF bought Impulsesoft Pvt. Ltd., a Bluetooth-embedded software company in Bangalore, for US$15 million in cash and stock. But the acquisition never led to products that caught fire in the marketplace.

SiRF also bought TrueSpan in March 2006 to acquire the latter company’s mobile digital audio and video technology, which it planned to leverage into a mobile television chip. A little more than a year later, SiRF paid $283 million in a combination of cash and shares to buy Centrality Communications, a Redwood City, California, company to add multimedia and system-on-a-chip (SoC) capabilities.

At the 2008 Mobile World Congress SiRF rolled out its SiRFprima multifunction platform, which exploited the Centrality technology by integrating a GPS/Galileo location engine with multimedia and 3D graphics capabilities and extensive peripheral support. However, at the last minute, the company canceled plans to launch SiRFTV, a mobile television chip that would have connected with SiRFprima.

On the GPS front, SiRF lost its exclusive supplier relationship to leading PND manufacturer TomTom in late 2006 when the Dutch company announced plans to switch part of its product line to Global Locate. In the wake of TomTom’s move, SiRF soon filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court charging patent infringement by Global Locate, Inc., which was acquired in a $143 million cash deal the following year by Broadcom Corporation.

The case is set for trial late next year, and van Beurden said CSR’s “assessment of our risk in district court is factored into the valuation of SiRF.”

Global Locate (later Broadcom) subsequently filed a complaint in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), alleging patent infringement and seeking a halt to SiRF’s importing chips, as well as imports of SiRF chips by customers. The ITC recently issued final a determination that applies the import ban to SiRF and four named customers: Pharos, Mio, MiTAC, E-TEN.

Van Beurden told the stock analysts that “SiRF has work-arounds for most patents; so, SiRF’s business should continue without material disruption.” He declined to elaborate on what the work-around are.

Meanwhile, the recent slowdown in consumer spending has put PNDs on the “bleeding edge of that trend,” says Chadha. Despite a similar slowing in growth of handset sales, the increasing rate of GPS penetration in mobile phones still makes it an expanding market for GPS suppliers such as SiRF. Although global handset shipments are expected to drop by 4–5 percent in 2009, according to a January report by ABI Research, GPS-enabled phones will climb to 240 million units, an increase of 6.4 percent over 2008.

However, a strong push by Texas Instruments (TI) and other wireless semiconductor companies (e.g., Broadcom) into the mobile phone location marketplace began to erode SiRF’s market share in recent years, a situation worsened by turmoil at Motorola, an early SiRF customer for handset GPS. TI obtained a strong position providing GPS chips to leading handset manufacturer Nokia.

In its efforts to come up with an in-house GPS capability, CSR sought to solve its GPS technology needs by acquiring Swedish start-up NordNav Technologies AB in January 2007, for $40 million. NordNav had developed a software GPS receiver as well as a GPS/Galileo simulator.

Almost simultaneously CSR bought nearby Cambridge Positioning Systems Ltd. (CPS) for US$35 million. CPS had developed an assisted-GPS (AGPS) technology that could also provide a cellular network–based positioning solution — with both capabilities bundled as Extended GPS (eGPS).

The Market Waits for No One
Although their previous GPS and Bluetooth acquisitions showed up in some product designs, neither company felt that they had developed a winning combination in-house.

“Given enough time, we could have developed a good Bluetooth solution,” Chadha told Inside GNSS.

But time was something that the companies didn’t have. Bluetooth technology was becoming increasingly commoditized with a corresponding decline in margins on Bluetooth-only products. Leading handset manufacturer Nokia had become increasingly open about its plans to incorporate GPS into more of its phones along with the connectivity technologies.

Meanwhile, the wireless convergence trend continued to accelerate. TI and Broadcom launched combined GPS/Bluetooth/FM chips last year.

On February 16, Skyhook Wireless announced at the Mobile World Congress that TI will use Skyhook’s hybrid GPS/WiFi positioning technology in its mobile chips target for handsets.

Skyhook’s technology is used today on Apple’s iPhone, among other services and devices. (Indeed, SiRF licensed the Skyhook’s WiFi positioning technology two years ago for incorporation into its SiRFstarIII platform.)

By mid-2007 CSR was already looking for prospective partners that had a stronger GPS technology but lacked a solid Bluetooth offering, according to Stuart Strickland, former vice-president of CSR’s location based services strategic business unit. The first substantive contact with SiRF came in December of that year in discussions around a specific joint product development project.

“About a year ago, SiRF saw two things happening,” Chadha told Inside GNSS. “The economy began slowing down and customers became more cautious. Customers didn’t want to try new things; they wanted to go with proven solutions.”

By early 2008, lack of headway in developing their separate GPS/Bluetooth combinations led the companies to expand the conversation to potentially joining their businesses together. In fact, Tim McCarthy, director of SiRF’s wireless marketing group, reportedly dubbed the collaboration, BOB — the best of both.

Strickland says that SiRF was favored by one of CSR’s important customers, and another GPS acquisition/merger prospect was backed by another customer. Over the last four to five months, however, the conversation deepened and went in SiRF’s direction, leading to the February 10 announcement.

The Way Ahead
Assuming the merger goes through, van Beurden said that the companies will be fully engaged in cross-selling their customers by next year and bringing out their first “combined product roadmap — silicon jointly developed” by 2011.

The companies share many customers, he said, but offer them different products. With access to the SiRF IP, CSR would have more than 200 GPS-related patents.

During the rest of 2009, van Beurden said the companies will take advantage of cost reductions previously announced in 2008 for SiRFand CSR of $35 million and $25 million, respectively, in addition to the $35 million in cost synergies expected with the merger.

Chadha identified TI and Broadcom as its main direct competitors in the handset markets and, to a lesser extent, Atheros Communications (which acquired u-Nav in late 2007). He characterized Qualcomm as an indirect competitor because its convergent wireless approach focuses more on the modem rather than chip-level integration.

Another prospective competitor is the recently completed 50/50 joint venture that united the wireless semiconductor division of STMicroelectronics and the mobile platform division of Ericsson, which will move forward as ST-Ericsson. Announced in August 2008, the agreement between the parent companies merged Ericsson Mobile Platforms and ST-NXP Wireless. The latter company had been formed earlier that year, shortly after NXP had acquired GPS technology supplier GloNav, Inc.

As an outside observer who had an insider perspective until he left CSR last December, Strickland believes that both companies will benefit from (and needed) the merger, but will bring new challenges to old ways of thinking.

“Having a strong and proven team with outside expertise [SiRF] will be healthy” for an engineering-driven CSR, he told Inside GNSS, “and it will pose a challenge to SiRF’s culture to have people other than the founders in charge.”

Although the NordNav technology may continue to play a role in CSR product development, the engineering team from that acquisition will probably be absorbed into other efforts, predicted Strickland, who had joined CSR with the NordNav acquisition where he had responsibility for strategic planning. Chadha’s comments seemed to suggest the same.

“People underestimate the challenge of the software solution,” said Chadha. “If you go too soft, you use a lot of processing power. You end up trying to use a large machine to do a very specific task” — signal processing to achieve a position fix. “That conflicts with the power requirement and shortens battery life.”

SiRF has moved the navigation algorithm onto the host, but that requires relatively few interrupts of the CPU operation. “But if you try to move the whole signal processing onto the host, that’s very inefficient,” he added.

After a merger, CSR “will have to go through a process of rationalization of technologies,” Chadha told Inside GNSS. “It will have to make some tough decisions.”

As for the eGPS solution brought over from CPS, Chadha said that it will fit will under the company’s multimode platform umbrella.
Chadha, who long served as SiRF’s “visionary-in-chief,” seems likely to play a similar role at CSR. He sees the future location platform as an all-purpose “mobile Internet device that is not a computer, but a computer; not a phone, but a phone; not a data processor, but a data processor; not a navigation device, but a navigation device.”

Location will be critical to give context to more activities, he said, including mobile gaming and entertainment platforms and “location-tagging every image.”

Social networking will make users “active participants with location,” providing user-generated content that can be distributed. In these developments, the “generational impact” will be substantial as younger users who have been raised on the Internet and mobile phones shape the applications of the future.

Glen Gibbons is editor and publisher of Inside GNSS magazine, which covers the policies, programs, engineering, and most challenging applications of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems: GPS, Galileo,GLONASS, Compass/ Beidou, and related technologies. He bills himself as the "oldest living GNSS journalist." Gibbons lives and works in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

The post CSR-SiRF Merger Pairs Struggling Bluetooth and GPS Powerhouses – and Shows Handset Platform Dominance appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Satellite Collision Raises Issue of Similar GNSS Risks

Glen Gibbons — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:58:25 +0000

GPS Orbital Decay. Aerospace Corporation

The February 10 collision of an active Iridium satellite and a defunct Russian military communications satellite underlines a concern raised recently at the International Committee on GNSS (ICG) about the need to include coordination of space vehicle (SV) operations.

In comments during a session of Working Group A (compatibility and interoperability) during the ICG’s recent meeting in Pasadena, California, Professor Grigory Stupak of the Russian Institute for Space Device Engineering (RISDE), noted that Russia’s “position is that compatibility includes more than just signals,” among other things, “the sharing of orbits and disposal of satellites.”

Similar concerns have been expressed in recent years by organizations that have studied the possibility of GNSS satellites, particularly those that have been “parked” in disposal or graveyard orbits, to drift and possibly collide with one another.

More than 2,000 satellites, active and decommissioned, are currently orbiting our planet and many times that amount of sizable objects characterized as space debris — mostly within a few hundred miles of Earth.

To be sure, the low earth orbits (LEO) of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251, which collided at an altitude of just under 500 miles, comprise a much smaller space more heavily populated by SVs than the middle earth orbits (MEO) in which GNSS satellites operate. The volume of a spherical space increases as a cubic function of its radius or, in the case of orbiting satellites, their distance from the center of the Earth.

In comparison to LEOs, GPS satellites orbit at an altitude of approximately 12,600 miles (20,200 kilometers); Russia’s GLONASS SVs, at 11,842 miles (19,100 kilometers); Galileo 14,397 miles (23,222 kilometers); and Compass, 13,113 miles (21,150 kilometers). Moreover, because of their system design, GNSS spacecraft transmit their orbital positions (ephemeredes) as part of their navigation messages. Consequently, operational satellites are readily trackable.

Decommissioned satellites are switched off and placed into a disposal orbit higher than the operational constellation. Out-of-service GPS satellites, for instance, are placed boosted about 500 kilometers (310 miles) further out into space.

With implementation of a new launch, anomaly resolution and disposal operations system (LADO) in 2007, operators with the U.S. Air Force 2nd and 19th Space Operations Squadrons at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, took over that responsibility for GPS. LADO successfully performed its first disposal — for GPS SVN 29 — in November 2007.

Nonetheless, satellites can drift out of their disposal orbits over time. Although initially circular, as with those of operational SVs, disposed satellites’ orbits eventually become increasingly elliptical, mostly as the result of sun-moon gravitational effects on the spacecraft.

In studies for the Air Force early in this decade, Aerospace Corporation researcher Chia-Chun (George) Chao and colleagues predicted that GPS satellites placed in disposal orbits will eventually — in 20 to 40 years — drift down into the operating constellation. Besides intersecting the GPS constellation, these satellites eventually could pose a threat to operational satellites in low Earth and geosynchronous orbits, Chao said.

GLONASS, which has about 100 failed satellites within its constellation, is located about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) lower than GPS and could pose a collision problem in 40 years, the Aerospace studies showed. Similar issues are associated with the Galileo and Compass constellations — both active and defunct spacecraft.

The tendency for circular orbits to become elliptical is strongly dependent on orbit inclination and altitude, according to Chao and fellow Aerospace researcher Anne Glick. The effect becomes more pronounced for Galileo orbits due to their higher altitude.

Chao suggested that the deterioration of GNSS satellites orbits could be ameliorated by reducing the initial eccentricity of the disposal orbit through precise satellite burn maneuvers. Further, the growth of orbit eccentricity could be reduced by circularizing the initial disposal orbit as much as possible and by achieving a more favorable “argument of perigee,” or orientation of the perigee relative to the equatorial plane.

In a 2004 report on upper stage disposal of satellites, the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) working group on mitigation considered MEO disposal for navigation satellites, but felt that “further work is required to characterize the collision risk in the region before recommendations can be formalized.”

Citing Chao’s proposed strategies for design of stable disposal orbits, the IADC noted that the required additional propellant and orbit-adjust maneuvers might not be desirable or operationally practical. For instance, GPS operators have traditionally jettisoned the excess fuel in decommissioned satellites before boosting them into disposal orbits.

Shifting the inclination of the operational orbits by a few degrees was also shown to be effective in avoiding large eccentricity growth, although the potential for affecting constellation coverage was noted.

A 2003 study by the Russian Space Agency’s Mission Control Center on the long-term evolution of GPS and GLONASS orbits also showed future interpenetration of the two constellations’ operational zones and recommended circularization of the disposal orbits.

In 2007 the IADC, an international association of 11 member space agencies, published updated voluntary guidelines for GEO disposal and identified two “Protected Zones in Space” for GEO and LEO regions, but made no further recommendations on managing MEO GNSS systems.

Coincidentally, the Iridium system is also the subject of a Department of Defense–funded effort to enhance the robustness of GPS and space-based positioning by retransmitting GPS system time over the higher powered Iridium communications channels. The so-called High Integrity GPS Technology Concept — known more commonly as iGPS —also also seeks to refine narrow-band ranging techniques using the Iridium satellite broadcasts directly, as well as broadband ranging in the future.

The ICG Working Group on Compatibility and Interoperability will meet next on March 2 and 3 in Munich, Germany.

Glen Gibbons is editor and publisher of Inside GNSS magazine, which covers
the policies, programs, engineering, and most challenging applications of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems: GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Compass/ Beidou, and related technologies.He bills himself as the "oldest living GNSS journalist." Gibbons lives and works in Eugene, Oregon, USA.