President Obama had a big day on October 28, signing 2010 bills for the departments of defense (DoD) and homeland security (DHS) that cut significant programs — eLoran, HIGPS, OCX — connected with the Global Positioning System.

President Obama had a big day on October 28, signing 2010 bills for the departments of defense (DoD) and homeland security (DHS) that cut significant programs — eLoran, HIGPS, OCX — connected with the Global Positioning System.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) measure allows for termination of the LORAN-C signal on January 4, 2010, after certification from the commandant of the Coast Guard that it is not needed for navigation and from the Secretary of DHS that it is not needed as a backup for GPS.

That may mark the end to a long-running battle by advocates of enhanced Loran (eLoran) to consolidate modernization of the system to improve its timing and positioning capabilities and offer GPS users a ground-based recourse in case of difficulties with the space-based system.

The conference agreement includes $12 million above the request for LORAN-C, instead of $36 million as proposed by the House and $18 million as proposed by the Senate.

The conference agreement includes and modifies a general provision (in section 559) proposed by the Senate continuing LORAN-C operations through January 4, 2010. Operations will continue beyond that date unless the Commandant of the Coast Guard certifies that the termination of the LORAN-C signal will not adversely impact the safety of maritime navigation and the DHS secretary certifies that the LORAN-C system infrastructure is not needed as a backup to GPS or to meet any other Federal navigation requirement.

If the Commandant and Secretary make such certifications, the Coast Guard is directed to begin a phased decommissioning of the LORAN-C infrastructure and provide a detailed termination plan for the system to the congressional committees within 30 days of certification.

If the required certifications are met, section 559 also permits the Secretary to sell LORAN-C property to offset the costs of environmental compliance and restoration, including costs of securing and maintaining equipment that may be used as a backup to GPS.

Meanwhile, the president also signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, which does not include the $59.1 million he requested for the High-Integrity Global Positioning System (HIGPS, also known as iGPS), a demonstration of the capability to use Iridium satellites to enhance current GPS navigation and timing capabilities. The bill also authorizes the GPS III/OCX program at $97.4 million below the amount sought by the White House.

This bill authorizes DoD spending to continue spending for various parts of the GPS program but does not actually appropriate funds from the Treasury. That comes with the defense appropriations bill, which is currently under discussion in a House-Senate conference committee.

The House version of the DoD appropriations also would strike the HIGPS funds, although at last report the Senate version expressed strong support for HIGPS. Both bills, however, also would cut the $97.4 million from GPS III/OCX.

The post Obama Signs Bills Cutting Funds for eLoran, HIGPS, GPS OCX appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

U.S. Air Force officials are moving to reconfigure the GPS constellation to create a 27-satellite geometry that will improve the availability and accuracy of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although the constellation currently has 30 operational space vehicles (SVs), not including the SVN49/PRN1 that has still not been set healthy, a number of the spacecraft are located nearby other satellites — effectively creating a 24-SV geometry. (See accompanying figure.)

U.S. Air Force officials are moving to reconfigure the GPS constellation to create a 27-satellite geometry that will improve the availability and accuracy of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities for U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although the constellation currently has 30 operational space vehicles (SVs), not including the SVN49/PRN1 that has still not been set healthy, a number of the spacecraft are located nearby other satellites — effectively creating a 24-SV geometry. (See accompanying figure.)

According to studies by an independent review team (IRT), a true 27-satellite constellation could substantially reduce the outages in 3-D positioning capability experienced by allied forces in mountainous Afghanistan.

The proposal was raised in a presentation to the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board on November 5 by Lt. Gen. Larry D. James, commander of 14th Air Force (Air Forces Strategic), Air Force Space Command (AFSC), and the Joint Functional Component Command (JFCC) for Space, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

A decision to move ahead with transitioning the constellation to could come within a matter of weeks, pending a briefing to and approval of the proposal by Gen. Kevin Chilton STRATCOM’s commander, who is responsible for the global command and control of U.S. strategic forces including GPS.

An announcement probably will not come at next week’s meeting of the National Space-Based PNT Executive Committee meeting, but the plan only needs Chilton’s authorization to be put into effect. Repositioning the satellites into a 27-SV formation reportedly would take about six months and would be implemented by the 2nd Space Operations Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado.

The idea of expanding the constellation has been around for many years. More than a decade ago, the Air Force GPS Modernization Acquisition Master Plan (AMP) made a preliminary recommendation to expand the GPS constellation to 30 satellites.  And a 2005 Defense Science Board Task Force on GPS reiterated that position.

But the concept has gained greater urgency as U.S. air sorties and ground troops use GPS to target adversaries in the steep Afghan terrain where satellite signals are frequently blocked by 45- to 60-degree hillside slopes. Reportedly, Air Force calculations of availability of GPS PNT on a global basis do not take into consideration local terrain features and assume only a five-degree masking angle for satellite-receiver visibility.

However, a series of computer simulations revealed that masking angles of 45 degrees rendered 3-D GPS positioning unavailable for between 90 minutes and 3 hours per day, and 60-degree slopes increased outages to between 5 and 11 hours per day, sources close to the constellation discussion told Inside GNSS. (A 30-satellite geometry would actually reduce the unavailability to about 20 minutes per day.)

Current GPS interface specifications would support operation of a 27-satellite constellation, although a 30-SV level would apparently require those specifications to be redrafted. The current operational control segment can handle up to 31 satellites and the next-generation system (OCX) will be able to operate many more.

The Obama administration and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of NATO troops fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, have set the goal of reducing fratricide and inadvertent civilian casualties there. The deterioration in available GPS position dilution of precision (PDOP) accuracies has forced operational changes in air and ground operations to avoid such casualties.

Resistance to managing a 27-satellite geometry have arisen from officials concerned that such an effort would commit them to sustaining that level as a requirement without adequate resources to sustain the effort.

Others have argued that the emergence of new GNSS systems such as Europe’s Galileo will greatly expand signal availability without the need for additional investment in GPS. While that might meet civil and commercial needs, however, the sovereign needs of maintaining a critical national infrastructure can probably not be met by relying on assets not under direct U.S. control.

Better satellite geometry achieved by managing for a 27-SV constellation would also benefit the needs of homeland security and other critical applications in U.S. urban centers and other signal-challenged environments.

The constellation management proposal also needs to devise a plan for transitioning back to a 24-SV configuration in case a shortfall occurs in the number of on-orbit satellites.

The post U.S. Air Force Plans to Improve GPS Constellation Geometry for Military Forces in Afghanistan appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Galileo program managers appear to have bowed to the unavoidable and acknowledged that completing the European satellite navigation system will take longer and cost more than their revised estimates of 2014 and  €3.4-billion ($5.04-billion), respectively

And, although a revised Galileo Open Service Signal-in-Space Interface Control Document (OS-SIS-ICD) will appear soon allowing manufacture and sale of Galileo equipment without a license, the ICD will still require a license for commercial use of the intellectual property contained in the document.

Galileo program managers appear to have bowed to the unavoidable and acknowledged that completing the European satellite navigation system will take longer and cost more than their revised estimates of 2014 and  €3.4-billion ($5.04-billion), respectively

And, although a revised Galileo Open Service Signal-in-Space Interface Control Document (OS-SIS-ICD) will appear soon allowing manufacture and sale of Galileo equipment without a license, the ICD will still require a license for commercial use of the intellectual property contained in the document.

The first two in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites are still scheduled for launch in November 2010 from the European Space Agency (ESA) facility in Korou, and the next two in April 2011. They will be placed in orbit by a European version of Russia’s Soyuz rocket.

However, program managers have down-sized their expectations and now anticipate that Galileo will field an initial constellation of only 16 satellites (out of a planned 30) by the end of 2013: 4 IOV and 12 FOC satellites.

The European Commission (EC) has divided the purchase of 28 additional satellites  (including two spares) planned for the fully operational capability (FOC) constellation into two work orders. The first work order will buy up to 22 satellites and the second work order, the rest.  The two remain bidders — competing teams of OHB System/Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. and EADS Astrium/Thales Alenia Space —  have until November 13 to submit their best and final offers for 8, 14, and  22 satellites.

The options included in the EC request provide leeway for choosing both vendors to supply satellites — a prospect supported by OHB but opposed by Astrium, the presumed favorite candidate under a winner-take-all scenario. The decision on whether to have a single- or double-source selection for the satellites is still under consideration and will be resolved by the end of this year.

The schedule for full deployment of the system will become clear by the end of this year, but completion of the program will depend on the resources available to the program in the next funding cycle that begins in 2014, including the 8th Framework Program (FP8) overseen by the EC. Negotiations will almost certainly take place well ahead of time, so that the program will not need to wait until 2014 to have the necessary confirmations of funding.

The Commission had budgeted €840 million euros ($1.24 billion) for the contract to build the Galileo satellites when it wanted 28 to 30 satellites and that the bids received so far appear in line with that estimate. However, a €350-million-plus cost overrun in the IOV contract was not included in the overall €3.4-billion Galileo allocation, causing the program to return to the budgetary well.

Galileo services will be rolled out gradually, with the open service, encrypted public regulated service (PRS) and search and rescue (SAR) signals available in 2013 and the safety-of-life and commercial signals  sometime later.

A revision to the OS-SIS-ICD is under way and should be published within a few weeks, according to EC representatives. Carlo Des Dorides has lead responsibility for drafting the document.

Under the revision, a licensing document will no longer be required in order to manufacture and sell Galileo receiver equipment and signal simulators, according to the EC. However, a license will still be needed for using the intellectual property rights (IPR) contained in the OS-SIS-ICD for commercial purposes. The license agreement document will be downloadable on the Commission’s website.

As for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS, a space-based augmentation system), Europe is on track to provide additional services next year. When the EC declares the readiness of EGNOS’ safety-of-life service, users will be able to receive an integrity message warning of any malfunction of the GPS signal within six seconds. The EC also expects to launch the EGNOS Commercial Service next year, which is currently being tested by a number of European companies.

The post Galileo Program Recalibrates Schedule, Budget, Open Signal ICD appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Problems with a navigation payload on a recently launched GLONASS-M satellite appear to have become a greater cause for concern for Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) than previously expected, leading to a further delay in a scheduled September 25 launch until next February.

News reports from Russia and Europe cite a statement by Roskosmos this week that the launch will be postponed in order to carry out work to increase the reliability of the satellites.

The troubled on-orbit satellite — GLONASS #726 — was launched September 25, 2008, and began transmitting on GLONASS RF channel -3 last November 13, 2008. The problem with the signal generator was detected in late in August and the spacecraft taken out of service on August 31.

It remains uncertain whether the problem will affect the scheduled December 25 launch of three GLONASS-Ms.

The post GLONASS Launch Postponed until February appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Chinese- and English-language versions of a draft Interface Control Document (ICD) for China’s Compass open service signals have been written and will probably be released within a year, a speaker at the Stanford PNT Symposium said in an October 22 presentation.

Chinese- and English-language versions of a draft Interface Control Document (ICD) for China’s Compass open service signals have been written and will probably be released within a year, a speaker at the Stanford PNT Symposium said in an October 22 presentation.

The draft remains subject to further refinements before release, according to Cao Chong, a researcher with the China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation who works with the China Satellite Navigation Engineering Center responsible for building the Compass system.

Cao said the document would be published in a “step-by-step” fashion, beginning with the open B1 signals (at or near the GPS and Galileo L1/E2 frequency) and B2 signals (at Galileo E5b), and then other signals later on. The ICD will be publicly available via the Internet.

Meanwhile, the Compass/Beidou-2) launch schedule appears to have stretched out a little, now being characterized as 10 launches over the next two-three years. Earlier this year, Chinese speakers at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit indicated that the schedule would include three satellite launches this year and seven more in 2010.

China could still reach its goal of offering a 12-spacecraft regional system by 2012, comprised of five geostationary orbit (GEO), three inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO), and four middle earth orbit (MEO) satellites.

The fully operational capability (FOC) global system expected to be in place by 2020 will add another 23 MEOs to the constellation. Launch of another GEO is planned by the end of 2009, joining the Compass M-1 MEO satellite launched April 14, 2007, and the G-2 GEO launched April 14 this year.

Cao said told Inside GNSS that this initial configuration was chosen to take advantage of the north-south footprint of the IGSOs that will maximize coverage over China and adjacent areas.

Launch of all five GEOs in the first phase will also enable Compass to provide a wide-area augmentation system capability at an early stage employing the data communications channel planned for those spacecraft.

In response to a question from the invited symposium audience, Cao said that about 20 Chinese manufacturers were producing Compass receivers, most of which include GPS capability. About one-third of those produce equipment for China’s defense establishment.

By next year, about 200 million GNSS receivers will have been deployed in China, with more than 700 million users expected by 2020, according to market data that Cao presented.

The post China Will Release Draft Compass/Beidou-2 ICD on ‘Step-by-Step’ Basis appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

News reports about the U.S. Department of  Transportation (DoT) Distracted Driving Summit now underway in Washington, D.C., (September 30–October 1) have focused on the role of mobile phones in vehicle accidents. According to transportation officials, driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes during 2008.

News reports about the U.S. Department of  Transportation (DoT) Distracted Driving Summit now underway in Washington, D.C., (September 30–October 1) have focused on the role of mobile phones in vehicle accidents. According to transportation officials, driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes during 2008.

But the growing number of portable navigation devices (PNDs) and onboard navigation systems have not escaped the scrutiny of DoT and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

In a September 2009 NHTSA research note distributed at the summit, “An Examination of Driver Distraction as Recorded in NHTSA Databases,” onboard navigation systems are identified as one of eight factors related to distracted driving in the agency’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System.

Other NHTSA research publications have focused on GNSS-based navigation systems even more closely. An April 2008 technical report,“Driver Distraction: A Review of the Current State-of-Knowledge,” authored by Thomas A. Ranney, Transportation Research Center, Inc. (TRC), in Ohio, observed that “secondary tasks” that require drivers to look away from the roadway (for example, to view a navigation map display) are likely to interfere with drivers’ abilities to visually monitor the roadway ahead. “Moreover, the effort devoted to interpreting the map display is likely to interfere with drivers’ ability to interpret an emerging hazardous situation ahead,” the report said.

Although such systems may be helpful to drivers in unfamiliar locations, they have the potential to distract drivers in several ways. Those identified in the TRC report include the physical distraction associated with manual destination entry, which typically uses a keyboard; the visual distraction when looking at the display while entering a destination or viewing a map or directions; the aural distraction when listening to auditory turn-by-turn instructions, and also the cognitive distraction when the driver thinks about the information presented by the system.

“There is also some evidence to suggest that the mere presence of a navigation system in a vehicle might encourage increasingly frequent and unnecessary use of the system, including browsing through lists of attractions,” the report states, and suggested that “destination entry can be a time-consuming process and is considered the most distracting component of using in-vehicle navigation systems.”

A March 2007 NHTSA technical report — “Characteristics of Voice-Based Interfaces for In-Vehicle Systems and Their Effects on Driving Performance” — examined the results of a track test experiment on the disruptive effects on driving of complex secondary tasks — specifically simulated in-vehicle navigation and mobile phone use.

In the test, 36 drivers in three age groups (18-25, 30-45, 50-60) drove an instrumented vehicle while performing a combination of car following, peripheral target detection, and secondary tasks on a closed track.

GPS position readings were also used to evaluate the results of the test, by determining lane position, deriving vehicle speed, and providing precise time tags.

Four variations of the navigation task were used, including combinations of two factors: (1) mode of information acquisition (auditory vs. auditory + visual map), and (2) system reliability (no recognition errors vs. 20% errors). All secondary tasks were implemented with a hands-free voice interface.

The results indicated significant degradation of driving performance associated with all secondary tasks. Specifically, drivers exhibited higher levels of steering entropy, which measures the number and magnitude of steering corrections relative to a baseline drive, and slower car-following responses.

Secondary tasks that required drivers to look at a map while interacting with the traveler information system were consistently more disruptive than similar tasks that did not require the map for all performance measure categories.

Ironically, the Distracted Driving Summit website provides a link to an associated Twitter site where viewers can “join a live interactive webcast” — presumably not doing so by using a PDA or smart phone while driving.

The post GPS Not Off the Hook at U.S. Department of Transportation’s Distracted Driving Summit appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.