Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The maritime sector drives the global economy, with ships transporting more than 80% of world trade. Ships and ports have come to rely on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for a huge array of applications relating to position, velocity and precise universal and local time.
By Ingo Baumann
The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is setting no records in government efficiency or speed. So, it’s time for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Congress, and partner agencies to change the verb tense and transform NextGen into an operational ThisGen.
By Inside GNSS
Federal budgeteers have made clear their support for satellite navigation though problems with military space programs in general, and GPS programs in particular, have lawmakers working to shake up the Pentagon’s management structure and put limits on new federal business to contractors whose projects go awry.
By Dee Ann Divis
A government report commissioned by Innovate UK, along with the UK Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation, entitled “Economic impact to the UK of a disruption to GNSS”, comes in the wake of troubling incidents for GNSS operators, both the United States and Europe.
Last year a problem with the GPS satellite timing signal triggered alarms and caused an unknown number of outages, and in Europe earlier this year the fledgling Galileo signal crashed due to unspecified ground facility issues.
By Peter Gutierrez
Q: How is Public Safety reliant on GNSS and is this a concern?
A: Much like many industries and organizations, as the nature of Public Safety grows and evolves, its members have looked to leverage available technologies that help them achieve their goals. In this case, the goals are first and foremost Public Safety followed closely by Member Safety whether it be police, fire or others.
By Inside GNSSFor several years the European Union (EU) has sought a waiver for its Galileo system from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing requirements — the so-called Part 25 rule to operate in this country.
Long-overdue approval of the request should be expedited by the FCC.
By Inside GNSS
No longer consigned to predicting what might one day happen, the folks at the Galileo program can now look at and talk about what is happening right now, starting with initial services. To help us understand what’s going on, we enlisted no less than Matthias Petschke, Galileo Program Director at the European Commission (EC).
By Peter Gutierrez
Though the United States has been working on a backup for GPS for years, and was actually close to completing an equipment update to that end in 2009, Europe may be the first to put in place a fully independent alternative for positioning and timing data — an economic insurance policy against satellite navigation signals being jammed or disrupted.
By Dee Ann DivisLooking over the initial budget of the Trump administration, we can safely say that the president and his timorous collaborators on Capitol Hill have a maximalist concept of providing for “the common defense” and a minimalist one for promoting “the general welfare,” two of the six missions enshrined in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
By Inside GNSS
Q: Would you prefer to have more signals or more satellites?
A: This is somewhat of a classic GNSS question, but before getting to the answer, let’s seek some clarity about what is being asked. First, by definition, “more” signals or “more” systems must be referenced against some baseline configuration. This is commonly assumed to be a GPS L1 C/A solution, and this assumption is also used herein.
By Inside GNSS
Speakers at the 9th Annual Conference on European Space Policy wasted no time in addressing the somewhat worrying failure of several Galileo onboard clocks, as revealed by European Space Agency Director General Johan-Dietrich Woerner at a press briefing earlier in January in Paris. He made clear at the time that the clock failures, while indeed troubling, had had no effect on the operational integrity of the Galileo system.
By Peter Gutierrez
Figures and ChartsThe GPS community and Virginia-based Ligado are weighing new and upcoming test results as the standoff over interference with satellite navigation services enters its seventh year.
The dispute centers on the company’s now modified proposal to build a terrestrial wireless network supported by frequencies originally allocated for satellites. Though there had been a move some years earlier to augment the satellite services with ground stations the company’s first plan envisioned some 30,000 high-powered ground terminals.
By Dee Ann Divis
