Welcome to the first Topcon Technology Roadshow newsletter, highlighting the local happenings from tour stops all along Topcon’s 25+ multi-city adventure.

The 2018 Topcon Technology Roadshow features a 53-foot expandable traveling truck, which includes a theater and showcase room, packed with the latest technologies—all with a focus on the Intersection of Infrastructure and Technology theme.

We all know that in today’s environment, it takes more than business as usual to win and build today’s smart infrastructure. Those companies that are investing in technology and connected workflows are winning more bids, meeting and beating federal/state requirements and generating higher returns. That’s why every roadshow stop includes a demonstration of the latest construction, survey, civil engineering, architecture and design technologies designed to improve workflows and maximize productivity. These solutions include 3D machine control systems, UAVs, and Topcon’s Elite Survey suite.

But the roadshow is much more than a show-and-tell; it’s an interactive, hands-on event designed to engage industry professionals. Test the positioning and mapping systems or jump in a 3D-equipped dozer to learn how technology can help improve your business, drive profitability and build better infrastructure. In just a few hours, attendees see and, in some cases, operate:

• The latest tools and technologies available for the job site and office.
• The most accurate machine control systems in the industry.
• The latest BIM layout and 3D solutions.
• The latest in precision agriculture technology.
• High accuracy aerial mapping solutions.

Read on to see how the roadshow team helped industry professionals evaluate field computer technology and geo-positioning solutions to deliver smarter infrastructure in Arizona.

Desert Discovery

The Topcon Technology Roadshow heated up in Gilbert, Arizona. Temperatures in the high 90s didn’t stop area contractors, surveyors and engineers from stopping in to see the Topcon traveling technology truck at rental leader and Topcon authorized dealer Branco Machinery April 17/18.

Topcon experts gave attendees an inside look at what’s new with 3D machine control systems, UAVs, survey equipment and even some cross-over solutions—with a focus on building infrastructure. For instance, Topcon’s SmoothRide Modern Road Resurfacing System took center stage in the trailer demonstrating a complete integrated technology solution with the RD-M1 Road Resurfacing Scanner (data gathering), Mobile Master Office software (surface design), MAGNET Office Site (smoothness/thickness) and GNSS-guided paving and milling machines.

The highlight of the show was the demonstrations and hands-on, interactive opportunities to operate 3D-equipped machines in the Branco Machinery lot.

Inside the Cab

Roadshow attendees got an up-close look at the Caterpillar 140-M3 motor grader machine equipped with Topcon Positioning System (TPS) 3D Machine Control GPS solution—a combination that is faster, cheaper and easier than ever before.

Rob Binder at Branco noted that his company is taking advantage of the fact that today’s machines are smarter and more interoperable to reduce sensor redundancy when connecting positioning systems. He adds, “It used to take us a full day to equip a motor grader with complete GPS antennas and associated sensors. Now, it takes two hours or less—and costs around $20,000 less.”

Mark Jones, Western Regional Sales Manager for Topcon, further noted that many contractors don’t realize that the greatest 3D machine control ROI can be found in excavators. He added, “Too often, contractors over excavate because it’s safer—nobody wants to come back and rework. But, if you add up how much money/time is lost on over excavation, most find that they pay for a machine very quickly.”

He further demonstrated the value of fully integrated field-to-office workflow with Sitelink3D, an office-to-machine, machine-to office and machine-to-machine communication solution. With Sitelink 3D, companies can see all equipment on jobsites in real-time, provide remote machine support to solve operator problems instantly, transfer job files and deliver real-time project management information.

Flying High

The rotary-wing Falcon 8 UAS equipped with flight planning software and an AscTec high-performance GPS (GNSS) also went for a test flight at the Gilbert roadshow. Ideal for surveying and mapping applications, the Falcon 8 can fly for 12-22 minutes and map up to 35 hectares in a single flight with max payload of 800g. The octocopter is ideal for creating DEMs, ortho-photos, basic measurements, overlays, 3D models, cut/fill analysis and as-built design comparisons.

Brian Griffin, Topcon/Sokkia Central Regional Sales Manager, demonstrated the systems capabilities at the show and noted, “Contractors without a UAS in the next five years, will likely be out of business.”

Look for the Intel® Falcon™ 8+ Drone with its simple setup, fly, capture, transfer and analyze functionality at a future roadshow.

A Smooth Finish

The Gilbert roadshow also offered concrete professionals a chance at technology intersections beyond the big machines. The mobile, low cost, robotic laser-guided ScreedsaverMax Pro from Ligchine equipped with Topcon millimeter LPS was one such system.

The manufacturer notes that the machine with its 18-ft boom can screed up to 7000-sq-ft per hour. The automatic tracking robotic total station registers and maintains screed position from a machine mounted prism and sonic tracker. Height adjustments are transmitted to and from the screed at a rate of 20 times per second via radio signal to maintain accurate specifications on the defined jobsite plan. As the LPS system does not require a GPS signal, it operates without limitations whether it is indoors, outdoors, or in areas with obstructed GPS satellite reception.

Better yet, the ScreedsaverMax Pro costs less and more mobile than comparable systems. It can be hauled with a 3/4-ton pickup truck.

A Roadshow Near You

The Topcon Technology Roadshow continues across North America through October 2018. All events are free and include lunch!

A few of the near-term Roadshow stops in North America include: Pleasanton, California (May 8-11), Portland, Oregon (May 22-23), Kent, Washington (June 5-6), Regina, Saskatchewan (June 26-27); Bismarck, North Dakota (July 10-11) and Denver, Colorado (July 17-18).

The post Topcon Technology Roadshow Report appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Though this expanded effort has to fulfill a long established requirement — the Air Force must develop a multi-service, handheld receiver — the GPS program is now also working on a congressional mandate requiring that American military equipment also incorporate signals from other nation’s satellite navigation constellations, maybe even all of those constellations.

Progress So Far
Under the Military GPS User Equipment program (MGUE), the Air Force’s GPS Directorate is developing receiver cards that will plug into existing equipment, enabling them to utilize the new military M-Code. M-Code capable receivers, which are being developed in a two-increment process, will have enhanced positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities and be more resistant to jamming and other threats. The M-Code signal from the upcoming GPS III satellites is also supposed to be stronger.

Three contractors — L3 Technologies, Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, and Rockwell Collins — are working to create both the cards and the cyber-secure software that goes with them. However, once the initial cards are ready and tested the Air Force will not be doing the usual direct procurement. The three contractors instead will compete to sell the cards across all the different military users.

Increment 1 focuses on receiver cards for ground equipment and aviation/ maritime uses and includes testing in four lead platforms: the Army’s Stryker ground combat vehicle; the Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bomber; the Marine Corps’ Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV); and the Navy’s DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyer.

This summer Raytheon’s miniaturized GPS airborne receiver, the MAGR-2K-M, underwent a successful prototype and system functional check on the B-2 — confirming the card could draw power, put out the right data and that that data was being received by the B-2 systems in the appropriate format. A year earlier L3 successfully completed the security certification process, the first of the three contractors to do so, said Director Col. Steven Whitney of the GPS Directorate.

To achieve certification, Whitney told Inside GNSS, “we’re required to make sure that the unit properly decrypts the M-Code signal. More importantly with security certification we need to make sure that the unit doesn’t release any of the critical parameter information or that the key security information is not able to get out. We want these things to be unclassified when keyed because we want young airmen, soldiers, sailors and marines to take these things and use them in the field. And if it can only be done in classified environment that’s obviously not effective.”

Rockwell and Raytheon are “coming up real close” on certification, said Whitney. Each has submitted designs whose performance will be judged against test data. “So, we’re in that conversation with each of them and they’re at different stages, as you might imagine. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself, speculating when they’re going to be done — but I would expect it in the next year or so,” he said.

“Our small form factor MGUE hardware development for both airborne and ground is stable and validated in both developmental environmental test and in receiver signal performance testing using M-Code signal simulators,” said Jade Groen, principal program manager for MGUE at Rockwell Collins in a written comment sent before the holidays. “We have also validated the receiver has achieved very low power consumption while achieving high reliability mean time between failures. We are looking forward to completing our security certification with the GPS-D in 2018.”

Increment 1 will most likely be completed in 2022, said Whitney, though a lot remains to be done. “I’ve got to complete my testing program and then we’ve got to go into our integration efforts and we’ve got to go with the operational testing,” he said, noting that the first operational tests would probably be with the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

GAO: So, What’s the Plan?
Despite the progress made in Increment 1 the new cards are not ready, which creates a problem.

Concerned about slow M-Code adoption, Congress passed a law in 2011 that forbade the purchase of anything but M-Code capable receivers starting in fiscal year 2018 (FY18). Fortunately the Secretary of Defense was given the power to waive the requirement in some cases — including when M-Code receivers were not available. A blanket waiver has been granted “for at least a year,” said Whitney.

That waiver may well be extended as integration and the related engineering is shaping up to be the really complicated part of receiver modernization.

A December 12 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) underscores the enormity of upgrading the Pentagon’s vast inventory of GPS-enabled equipment. The overall effort will likely take more than a decade and “many billions of dollars to complete” — an estimate based on experience.

“DoD (Department of Defense) has previously transitioned its weapon systems gradually from one generation of GPS receivers to the next,” explained GAO. “For example, some weapon systems have either upgraded or are still in the process of upgrading to the current SAASM receivers that were introduced in 2003, while others are still equipped with older cards. DoD anticipates that the length of time necessary to transition to MGUE will require users to operate with a mix of receiver cards.”

So far the military has identified more than 700 types of weapons systems that will need to be upgraded — an effort requiring almost one million receiver cards. Moreover, there is significant work remaining to verify the new cards work as planned and to develop them further after the MGUE Increment 1 program ends. And, so far, the money to do all of this isn’t there.

“Of the 716 types of weapon systems that will need M-Code receiver cards,” wrote GAO, “only 28 — or less than 4 percent — are fully funded through fiscal year 2021. The remainder have either partially funded M-Code development and integration efforts (72 weapon systems), or do not yet have funding planned (616 weapon systems).”

The integration challenge is substantial, warned Cristina Chaplain, GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management and the lead on the December report.

“There’re technical challenges that include security and backwards compatibility,” Chaplain told a June meeting on space policy sponsored by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and FiscalTrak. “There’s a council in place to help organize all this user equipment, but they may not have the authority to really prioritize things. So, it’s a big issue because essentially you’re going to waste capability in space if you have M-Code satellites and you don’t have the receivers on the ground to take advantage of them. Once these receivers are developed and handed over to the military services, they’re going to have to do more development themselves to get them to fit the equipment that they have, and that’s going to take time. Then they have to install these receivers on all kinds of weapons platforms, which takes up to 10 years.”

Some problems could be ameliorated if there was a centralized coordinating organization that gathered up and shared solutions to integration issues. According to the report, the MGUE Increment 1 program is already capturing all the issues observed in receiver test card risk reduction testing and sharing this information through a joint reporting system. “However,” GAO wrote, “while non-lead platforms may also report deficiencies in this system, there is no requirement that they do so, nor is there an entity responsible for ensuring data from testing, design, and development is shared between programs.”

Without such sharing and coordination, said GAO, the Pentagon “risks paying to repeatedly find design solutions to solve common problems because each program office is likely to undertake its own uncoordinated development effort. Some duplicated effort may already be occurring. Air Force officials have expressed concern that work is already being duplicated across the military services in developing embedded GPS systems to be integrated.”

The Army also has approached GAO with specific concerns about coordinating MGUE, Chaplain told attendees.

“When you have the Army folks coming to GAO to tell you they need more centralized authority on user equipment, you know there’s an issue,” she told the meeting. “You don’t go to GAO unless something is wrong.”

And Now — Increment 2
Meanwhile, as planned, the Air Force has launched into Increment 2 wherein it is to develop compact receiver cards for uses where size, weight, and power are a constraint. As noted earlier, the GPS Directorate is also tasked with developing a handheld receiver to be carried by both U.S. and allied warfighters.

“Increment 2 is currently in the requirements definition phase and we’re having a — we (meaning) the Department of Defense — is having a lengthy conversation about what needs to be in and what needs to be out in terms of the requirements,” said Whitney. As of last fall all the services were submitting requirements and discussions were underway, he said, about what was achievable versus what might be a technology leap too far. To support the debate the Air Force was doing research into the current state of technology.

Part of that research entailed a request for information on technologies available to support the handheld receiver. Special Notice 17-095, released in September, said the expected annual production rate was between 2,600 and 5,200 units per year. “There is a potential for procuring additional Handhelds (tens of thousands), the Air Force wrote, “that may be procured by other DoD Services, plus U.S. allies as Foreign Military Sales.”

Interestingly the Air Force seems open to expanding beyond its current contractor base. In addition to describing things like the needed battery life the Air Force asked responders about the business conditions they would need to enter the MGUE handheld market including the rate of return required on nonrecurring engineering investments and the payback period.

The GAO said in its report that the Air Force planned to deliver the acquisition strategy for Increment 2 in March.

That, however, was before Congress got involved. With the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 (NDAA) lawmakers tossed a brand new requirement into the mix.

Change in Plans
Language in the report accompanying the final NDAA bill ordered the Pentagon to ensure that GPS user equipment for the military had the capability to “receive trusted signals from the Galileo satellites of the European Union and the QZSS satellites of Japan.” The Secretary of Defense must also assess “the feasibility, benefits, and risks” of having user equipment be capable of receiving non-allied signals. The details for doing all this are to be in a plan due back to Congress in June.

On December 7, the Air Force issued a pre-solicitation notice on Fed Biz Ops (number 18-022), looking for information to help it devise an acquisition strategy.

The request asked responders to look at three use cases. In the first the GPS satellite Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) is insufficient or intermittent. Tactical units operating or traveling between Bagram Air Base and Kabul, Afghanistan experience GPS performance degradation due to signal blockage caused by mountains, foliage, and, in Kabul, urban buildings. The MGUE receiver knows its approximate position and is to acquire and track multi-GNSS signals for a PNT solution.

In the second use case, there is a problem affecting multiple GPS signals from multiple GPS satellites. The GPS signals are visible, but may have various anomalies that render some of them inaccurate or unreliable. The MGUE receiver is keyed, knows its approximate position and has successfully acquired one or more M-Code signals. The receiver is to remove the bad signals and attempt to acquire and track multi-GNSS signals for an improved PNT solution.

In the third case the GPS Master Control Station is dealing with an anomaly and has completely shut down its operations. The MGUE receiver has determined that the current accuracy of GPS signals is insufficient to perform the mission. With a keyed MGUE receiver and no available GPS signals the receiver must recognize the absence or degradation of usable GPS signals and attempt to use multi-GNSS signals for a PNT solution.

The non-military signals to be used for these sample cases, that is those multi-GNSS signals that can be tapped in addition to military and civil GPS signals, are:

• Galileo: E1OS, E5a
• Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS): L1C, L2C, L5 
• Space Based Augmentation System (SBAS): L1, L5

Whitney said that even though the requirements process for Increment 2 is underway there is time to include requirements for a new multi-GNSS receiver — if the Pentagon decides it wants to.

“What you would you have to have happen,” he said, “is you have to have the requirements process decide that this is a capability that the department wants to include in this increment.”

The post Congressional Mandate Means More Work on New Military GPS Receivers appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

“On the CS, we are dialoging extensively with EU member states, because there is a more and more consolidated view that there could be an advantage to providing the service for free,” des Dorides said.

At the lavish European Satellite Navigation Competition Awards Ceremony, we caught up with Carlo des Dorides, general director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA), who updated us on the status of the much-anticipated Galileo Commercial Service (CS).

“On the CS, we are dialoging extensively with EU member states, because there is a more and more consolidated view that there could be an advantage to providing the service for free,” des Dorides said.

For those who don’t know, the CS, from its conception and now for many years, has always been described and planned for as a fee-based, revenue-generating service. Indeed, the revenues to be generated by the CS have been described as offsetting to a measurable degree to the overall investment in the Galileo system.

Explaining the reasons for the shift, des Dorides said, “First and easiest, we believe that the induced value of providing the service for free will be far higher than if we provide it on a paying basis. If we go back to studies that were performed about two years ago, and then we continue to look over the past two years, the estimated revenues coming from the use of the Commercial Service have been looking more and more ‘thin’.”

Des Dorides said the GSA and the Commission see location and navigation technologies going in the direction of multi-system, multi-GNSS, which by itself will continue to provide better and better accuracy, ultimately limiting the draw of a fee-based high-accuracy system.

“So, the expected revenues are shrinking,” he said, “while on the other hand there is still the idea that Galileo can be the first mover to provide a high-accuracy service, but as a free service.”

“By high accuracy we mean around 20 centimeters,” des Dorides said, “not the 10 centimeters that you can find offered by various manufacturers in the market — these are different. We are talking about 20 centimeters with a convergence time on the order of five minutes, and you know that that 10 centimeter accuracy I mentioned comes with a 15-minute convergence time, so it’s a different market.”

Thus, he said, an accuracy on the order of 20 centimeters, delivered for free, could represent a competitive advantage for Galileo vis-a-vis the other GNSS systems.

“From the formal point of view,” he added, “there is a regulation [EU Regulation governing Galileo and CS] that clearly states that this is to be a commercial service, so we need to be sure that there is a political consensus among all member states,” because the regulation will have to be modified.

And therein lies the matter. The EU member states, soon to number 27 without the UK, need to go along with this fundamentally new direction for the CS, and we all know by now just how time- and energy-consuming EU wrangling of this sort can be. But des Dorides says he is optimistic: “It is difficult to tell you when this debate will end,” he said, “but I don’t expect it to go for 12 months. I expect in the next two to three months a decision will be made.”

EU Credibility in the Balance?
We also spoke to Philippe Jean, European Commission head of unit for Galileo legal and institutional aspects. He told essentially the same story, with some additional details, from the point of view of the Commission.

“There is a discussion that is taking place for the moment between the Commission and EU member states in order to fix the question of is the Commercial Service going to be free or is it going to be delivered for a fee,” Jean said.

“Since the beginning of the year, we at the Commission have been changing our minds and we think that now we have to go more in the direction of a free service, and we want to convince our member states to change their minds too. It’s an internal discussion, it’s an institutional discussion. But we expect to take a decision quite quickly, in order not to postpone the procurement situation.”

Jean said signs show Galileo’s competitors, in Japan for sure and perhaps in China, are likely to launch their own high-accuracy, CS-like services in the near future, and for free. So not only is it in Galileo’s interest to offer a free service, but also to do it quickly, to be the first to put such a service on the market. “What exactly is the asset if we are not doing it first?” Jean asked rhetorically.

He also cited the estimates mentioned by des Dorides, showing a negligible revenue stream for a fee-based service. “The income would be something like one percent of the actual Galileo budget, and for that we would lose the advantage of being the first to offer a free commercial service?”

That’s not to say that there aren’t voices opposing the move. There has already been significant investment laid out on building a CS based on incoming revenues, particularly among private companies.”I do understand the concerns of member states,” Jean said, “because they have been building a system with companies, and all of a sudden we are changing our minds, after so many years. Perhaps we will need to do some arbitration in order to manage the expectations of the companies that have been working on the system in the last two-three years.”

The pressure is real, Jean said; “What we are discussing is a key parameter, and when you go around, to events like this one in Tallinn, you can see it, you can feel it. There is a high level of expectation that the CS should provide a quality of service that is not offered by the Open Service (OS). So, it’s a problem of credibility. And the fact that there is an Open Service creates the expectation that the Commercial Service is going to come very quickly afterwards.”

“You have been following what we do for a long period of time, so you can guess that we now need to take a decision very quickly.” And yet, he said, the details of what the final product will look like are still not clear. “It’s not going to be with a fee for everything, but it will not be free for everything either, but something in between. I’m not expert in that, but we have understood there is a possibility to make a distinction between what is free and what is fee-based.”

Once the fee-free question and some further details about how authentication will work are sorted out, Jean said, it should be possible to launch a procurement process for the end of 2018. “Right now, no one can say when the system will become available. Of course everybody prefers 2018, but we need to wait and see how this current discussion goes.”

Both Jean and des Dorides described a relatively straightforward process, assuming minimal delay, but we would not be surprised to see that process being drawn out due to various circumstances. If it goes on for too long, the Commission could find itself being beaten to the punch by a Japanese or Chinese CS, and then its credibility will rightly be questioned.

Galileo Perspective
Back with des Dorides, we went over some recent and forthcoming milestones in the ongoing saga that is Galileo.

Standout moments in the past few months have included the announcement last September by Apple that the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X will be Galileo-compatible. “With that, Apple became the last of the big smartphone manufacturers to integrate Galileo,” des Dorides said. “We now have Huawei, Sony, Samsung and Apple, which was our goal from the beginning.”

The Apple announcement was followed quickly by Broadcom’s unveiling of the first mass-market, dual-frequency chip. “And this means we could see a dual-frequency smartphone as soon as next spring,” des Dorides said. “This also allows Galileo to be used at full potential, improving accuracy but also helping in complex environments, in cities, against multi-path effects.”

Here he mentioned the remarkable fact that Galileo is now operating more dual-frequency satellites than GPS. “I believe GPS has 11, if I’m not wrong. So we are truly on the technology edge,” he said.

Another fundamental milestone for Galileo was the successful transition last July from operations on a best-effort basis to the live exploitation phase, handing the GSA full responsibility for operational service provision.

Looking forward, the program will see its next launch on December 12, with four satellites to be lifted into orbit by the awe-inspiring Ariane 5 launcher.

“Then, in a couple of months, we will be awarding a new contract for the ground control segment, another tangible sign that Galileo is moving forward on pace,” des Dorides said. “And finally, in the last quarter of 2018, really the most important milestone for next year, we will announce the new enhanced service.”

This is essentially the next release of Galileo, he said, coming two years after initial services. It will include the OS authentication, and a new release for the ground segment, for the Galileo Security Monitoring Center (GSMC), entailing the distribution of keys for the PRS. There will also be a new SAR feature, the so-called “return link”, which will inform people calling for emergency aid that their call has been received.

A Rather Political Business Roundtable
Among the diverse highlights of EU Space Week in Tallinn was the Satellite Masters Conference, which kicked off with a “business roundtable” featuring some business people and a number of EU institutional representatives.

The word “integration” was repeated a number of times in the first minutes and throughout the session, as were other familiar words and phrases such as “diversity” and “freedom of movement” — words that have lately become more closely associated with political and social discourse in our part of the world.

After several repetitions of these words and phrases by a sequence of speakers, one began to get the impression that these popular buzzwords from the socio-political sphere were being systematically superimposed on the discussion, a discussion purportedly concerned with business.

To be sure, the meaning of these words was slightly shifted to fit the context; here, for example, the words “diversity” and “integration” tended more to refer to bringing in new companies with diverse visions, and integrating different groups in support of innovation, etc. “Freedom of movement” referred more to goods, services and specialized personnel than to just regular people.

And then one remembered that, after all, EU space policy in general, like the Galileo program in particular, are owned by a public body. Indeed we were reminded explicitly by GSA Head of Market Development Gian-Gherardo Calini, who, when asked to talk about the particular strengths of the Galileo program, replied virtually instantaneously, as if without needing to think, “It’s civil.” Galileo, unlike the United States’ GPS, is a civil program, owned and run by the European Commission, not a private one, and especially not a military one.

The language of the EU’s prevailing political and social agenda is written all over the EU space strategy, and it fills the mouths of its representatives. We only wish to point out that not serving a military master does not mean not serving a master. It only means serving a different master.

More Impertinence Inspired by the Roundtable
The program of the Satellite Masters Conference, put together we assume by conference organizers AZO, included a brief introduction, which read, in part, “Despite current tendencies that are threatening to pull Europe apart…” (followed by something about the benefits of staying together).

This somewhat cryptic reference to forces working to destroy Europe was echoed by broadcast journalist and roundtable moderator Louise Houghton, who, in her very brief opening remarks, invited all to consider the significance of 2017 for the European Union, “…at a time when many of the fundamental principles are being challenged”.

In neither case were the sources of imminent menace elaborated upon, and we won’t speculate here as to what they might be. But it might be a good idea for someone to look into this.

Less Political, Still Eyebrow-Raising
Dinka Dinkova, European Commission deputy head of unit for space data for societal challenges and growth, told the audience at the business roundtable, “Europe is the best place in the world to start a business.”

That’s a claim that might have been disputed by Rainer Sternfeld, founder of Planet OS, had he chosen to speak up at that moment. Instead, he waited until he was asked a separate question, to which he answered, “Europe is a big market and very quality-oriented, but it’s not always the best for young companies.”

Sternfeld is, by the way, a European, who went off to America to start an extremely successful high-tech company. We spoke to him after the roundtable and asked him to elaborate. “If you want to be a good chef you have to go to France,” he said. “There’s this place Silicon Valley and you just have to go there. We went there because of the market and the investors and the understanding of how to build these kinds of new-value businesses. And I wanted to push myself, you know, to the edge.”

Sternfeld volunteered more, saying, “If you really want to look critically at Europe, then, depending on your business, sometimes it’s like, OK you have 500 million people in Europe but it’s so distributed across these different countries and it’s not easy to trade because every country will very often have its own rules, even if you have free trade and now the European Union has a single market. In the U.S. you have one big market, so just knock yourself out.

“One example,” he continued, “you can ship wine very easily from one country to another all over Europe, but with digital it’s a little different. Say if you want to buy a song on iTunes, then in the U.S. I can be wherever I want, but Europe has put a system in place that basically forbids the free movement of such services. That’s a simple example, and in satellite data or data in general there are similar things.”

So, Europe still has a way to go when it comes to removing these types of borders.

Nägemist Tallinn
We leave Estonia with a positive message from des Dorides: “We are coming very soon now to the start of the debate on the space budget. It will not be an easy debate, first of all because of Brexit. But I feel that space has a favorable future. I sense the EU does believe in space and the forthcoming budget will be consistent with this.”

Galileo is delivering the expected results, he said. The program’s mid-term review was positive, and the other EU space initiatives are also viewed favorably. The days of the doubters seem well and truly gone.

The ESA budget, des Dorides pointed out, has remained relatively stable in recent years, while the EU has grown its space budget significantly. “We are in a position to be positive about space in Europe,” he concluded. And, all things considered, yes, so are we, until next time.

The post Fundamental Rethink for Galileo Commercial Service appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

A highly anticipated presentation by Ligado Networks to the nation’s leading satellite navigation experts took an unexpected turn when the company said it could not provide essential network information because it was looking to the government for technical direction and its business plans were still in flux.

The firm had been invited to address the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board after Ligado CEO Doug Smith sent a letter to board Vice Chairman Brad Parkinson suggesting that questions about what the firm was proposing reflected “willful blindness” to the details available about the firm’s plans. The firm also questioned why Iridium, a competitor and critic, had been invited to speak before the board.

Smith had originally accepted the invitation to address the board’s fall meeting in Redondo Beach, California but, according to sources, the lineup was changed at the last minute. The presentation was given instead by Valerie Green, Ligado’s executive vice president and chief legal officer and a frequent representative in regulatory matters.

Though members of the board complimented Green for her articulate presentation they were disappointed at the lack of technical detail.

“In our letter to you we asked certain specifics,” said Parkinson. “In particular we asked for your operating configuration — not for those numbers which are subject to analysis and a heck of a lot of controversy, but instead the spacing, the density, the antenna types, the power levels and what propagation model you’re using to say that you’d have demonstrated the capability.”

The letter sent to Ligado also asked, Parkinson said, for information on the radius around the tower within which GPS receivers would be affected — an approach taken by the Department of Transportation (DoT) for its Adjacent Band Compatibility Assessment.

“I still don’t know what you’re proposing,” Parkinson told Green. “I see some numbers on a board but I do not see a statement on how you achieve those numbers because the probability is we are going to have a great argument over how the propagation works, how the multi-path works, how multiple towers work — and without that data we can’t get around to saying yes to you folks.”

“The propagation model, that is the appropriate propagation model to be used to evaluate whether or not the proposal that we currently have actually will protect GPS — that’s to be determined by the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) and the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) who are the government agency experts on those sorts of things,” responded Green, who said the board might have input into that determination. “… I think that our sense is that the proper way to determine what is the right propagation model that should be applied to our proposal to see if it actually will do what we say is that the government should determine that.”

Also still to be determined, according to Green, is the number and distribution of the ground stations the firm will need to address its planned market. The firm hopes to provide Industrial Industry-of-Things connectivity to the manufacturing, natural resources, commercial transportation, supply management and utility industries.

“One of the things that we are focused on,” said Green, “is thinking about how to meet the needs of specific customers rather than just building and deploying a network and figuring out our theories on where it should go. We’re interested in meeting the specific needs of these industries — and their particular needs are emerging. So exactly how many towers we have will be determined by what our customers’ needs are. But it will be substantially lower than the number of towers necessary to build a nationwide network like the one that AT&T has, like the one that Verizon has or like the one that our predecessor proposed.”

It was also too soon to offer details on antenna types, she said. “I can tell you that the antennas will be developed to protect GPS, but in terms of where we are with that, it’s just too soon in the process to know exactly what the antenna will look like.”

FAA and Ligado
Some antenna characteristics were available, she said, based on the company’s work with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). That information included the antennas’ downtilt angle and the height of the antennas as well as how tall the towers would be.

“I think if you were to give us a representative high-density laydown of your towers — just in terms of a two dimensional, what kind of separation and maybe what kind of antenna height associated with that — we could use the antenna gain patterns from the FAA information and combine that with some of the testing results, including of some of the test results of the RTK receivers, in order to start getting a numerical handle on things,” said board member John Betz of MITRE.

That information is available in the FAA documentation, said Green, and the inter-site distance used in the FAA analysis was 433 meters between sites. “And as I said, the power levels were set to account for the aggregate effect of a network, right, so it isn’t just each tower individually it’s all of them all the way out to the horizon.”

Ken Alexander, chief scientific and technical advisor for satellite navigation systems at the FAA, who happened to be in the audience, described the agency’s analysis at the request of the board. He said the FAA had reached out to RTCA, its standards-setting body for both technical and operational inputs regarding Ligado Networks’ proposal. Those inputs, Alexander said, included their proposed assessment of the propagation models built upon earlier work done on the LightSquared proposal.

“The FAA assessed the maximum power level that would protect GPS use by certified aircraft receivers outside of a proposed assessment zone, he said. While GPS reception is not assured inside the zone, “the FAA-assessed maximum power level is consistent with the range of powers that Ms. Green has stated.”

Alexander said the FAA has not completed a comprehensive assessment of the potential operational effects of the proposed assessment zones on all certified aircraft receiver applications. They are continuing to review potential impacts to non-certified, fixed-wing, helicopter and GPS receiver applications for unmanned aircraft and the many other civil applications as part of the ongoing Adjacent Band Compatibility study”

“We (the FAA) have no agreement with Ligado Networks but we have assessed a number that will be in the DoT report that is within the range that she (Green) spoke to,” Alexander told Parkinson, noting again there was not an extensive operational assessment.

DoT’s Karen Van Dyke brief ly reviewed for the board the ABC Assessment results so far, having presented them at an earlier meeting. She noted that some high-precision receivers, which are a focus of concern for interference, could be impacted by a tower transmitting kilometers away.

Air Force Weighs In
The Air Force also spoke about the work they had done for the ABC Assessment including their participation in the planning and the testing they had done.

Though the results are classified, said Capt. Robyn Anderson, who is in GPS Spectrum Management at the GPS Directorate, the DoD test results support the conclusions briefed by the DoT and “we fully support and back those recommendations and encourage decisions to be made upon those data driven recommendations.”

The goal is not to prevent any type of innovation, said Anderson, but we cannot support innovation that will degrade GPS operations.

The Air Force also gave attendees a paper addressing the value of using a 1 decibel (dB) decrease in C/N0 as the appropriate interference protection criterion – that is a measurement intended to indicate when you are nearing a level of harmful interference as opposed to the level that causes harmful interference.

“So the Air Force does obviously support the 1 dB interference protection criteria,” Anderson said noting that by the time a military receiver experiences harmful interference it’s too late and the mission could be put at risk.

“When you’re talking about the framework of national security that to us is not acceptable at all,” Anderson said. “So our focus will continue to be on protecting the radio frequency environment instead of handpicking receivers and transferring the interference mitigation responsibility to the receiver manufacturers.”

NASCTN Controversy
Green answered a question about her characterization of the tests done by the National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASCTN) as showing that GPS operations could coexist with a Ligado network — an assertion made during her talk that has been said also in other forums.

“Although you referenced the NASCTN tests there,” said Betz, “I think it’s very important to understand what NASCTN itself said the objectives of that test were. And, as you know there were two objectives — one was to develop a test methodology and the other was to illustrate that test methodology. There was never an attempt to actually develop the definitive results that would lead to a compatibility assessment. And in fact, as you know, there were many comments that suggested things that could be done to make the test more comprehensive and lead to a compatibility assessment. They decided those were out of scope. So, I think it’s dangerous to list that as a test, with the implication that it leads to a compatibility assessment when that was not the specific intent.”

“I agree with you sir that it was not the specific intent,” Green said. “They did in fact develop a test methodology which, I happen to think is great and they did in fact do it (the testing). And as a result of that there was, in fact, data which our engineers interpreted. That’s what engineers do with data.” It was that interpretation, she indicated, that supported the assertion that GPS operators and Ligado could coexist

Signal expert Logan Scott followed a data-focused approach, using results from earlier tests to give a fuller picture of the NASCTN test results. In one example the data indicated high precision and RTK receivers with ordinary antennas would lose lock at about 8 kilometers from the interference source. Another example showed receivers performing better in the face of interference — suggesting, he said, based on his experience, false signal acquisition.

It’s All in the Details
In the end, the lack of technical specifics from Ligado played a role in the Advisory Board’s decision to draft a letter opposing allowing the firm to proceed under its modified concept of operations. Beyond the problem with being able to fully evaluate the plan there was concern about whether the proposed power levels would stay where they are and about interference with uncertified aviation receivers — including those to be used in the fast-growing drone industry.

The members broadly agreed, however, that should Ligado come back with a fleshed-out plan, one that addressed the interference concerns, then the Advisory Board should give them another opportunity.

“We’re a public board. We’re serving the taxpayer. If it’s an issue still on the table and we think it’s important to GPS — and they come in and say ‘Hey we got you this time. We’re really going to tell you’ — I think we’ve got to let them talk,” said Parkinson.

The letter is to go to the National Executive Committee or ExCom, the focal point for interagency decisions involving PNT. Comprising top leaders from across government the ExCom is co-chaired by the deputy secretaries of Defense and Transportation — Patrick Shanahan and Jeffrey Rosen, respectively. It is expected to meet sometime this January.

Though some Advisory Board members recused themselves all the remaining members voted to back the ExCom letter as outlined.

“The PNT Advisory Board strongly believes,” the draft said at the end of the meeting, “that approval of the new license modification application is not in the public interest and the proposed use should not be permitted. All members of the PNT Advisory Board who have not otherwise recused themselves are unanimous in this view.”

The post Ligado: Business and Network Plan Remain Unclear appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

There are many good reasons for getting excited about highly automated vehicles, or HAVs, which is the acronym used by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). HAVs can make driving more fuel- and time-efficient. They can significantly reduce traffic congestion and emissions by driving a precise speed, minimizing lane changes, and maintaining an exact distance to neighboring cars. They can also increase accessibility and mobility for disabled and elderly persons.

There are many good reasons for getting excited about highly automated vehicles, or HAVs, which is the acronym used by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). HAVs can make driving more fuel- and time-efficient. They can significantly reduce traffic congestion and emissions by driving a precise speed, minimizing lane changes, and maintaining an exact distance to neighboring cars. They can also increase accessibility and mobility for disabled and elderly persons.

Sharing an HAV instead of owning is projected to dramatically reduce a household’s yearly transportation budget, which currently ranges between approximately $8,000 and $11,000 per car. HAVs carry promises not only in improved road mobility, and accessibility, but also in producing architectural and societal changes that can make mass parking spaces and personal car ownership obsolete in urban areas. Above all, HAVs can help improve road safety by preventing car accidents that cause more than 30,000 deaths/year in the United States alone, cost approximately $230 billion/year in medical and work loss costs, and are caused by humans 90% of the time.

Press articles in the 1950s and 1960s predicted that autonomous cars and “electronic highways” would become widely available by 1975. Major milestones in the use of new sensor, computation, and communication technology have recently reenergized the eagerness for HAVs. This first started with the 2005 “DARPA Grand Challenge”, where four different HAVs designed by teams of engineers from industry and academia completed a 132-mile trip across the Mohave desert in less than 7.5 hours with no human intervention. The 2007 DARPA “Urban Challenge” saw six teams autonomously complete a 60-mile course in an urban environment, while following traffic laws. Most teams used a combination of LiDAR, cameras, differential GPS, and computation power that is multiple orders of magnitude higher than what is typically needed for a commercial passenger vehicle. In 2009, Google (now Waymo) began designing and testing “self-driving” cars, which have since accumulated more than three million miles in autonomous mode.

Currently, most car manufacturers have HAV prototype systems and Google, Uber, NuTonomy have HAV pilot testing programs, including fully autonomous systems for public transportation, which, for now, are confined to segregated lanes and geo-fenced areas. Multiple Tier-2 supplier companies have emerged, which specialize in autonomous car technology. In early 2017, 36 companies were registered to test prototype HAV systems on public roads in the state of California.

However, in Figure 1 (for all figures, see inset photo, above right), Gartner’s “2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies” shows that HAV technology might be at the “peak of inflated expectations”, approaching the “trough of disillusionment”. Hype cycle curves are non-scientific tools that have been empirically verified for multiple example technologies over many years. Two example emerging technologies, commercial unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and virtual reality, are included in Figure 1 for illustration purposes. The curve’s time scale may differ for each technology. One of many indicators of decreasing expectations on HAVs include a reduction in press coverage and the emergence of first negative news stories, in particular following the May 2016 crash of a Tesla Model S whose autopilot failed to distinguish a white trailer truck from the bright Florida sky. The Model S ran under the trailer causing its roof to be torn off and the operator to lose its life. The car kept going full speed on the side of the road through two fences until it hit a pole and came to a stop.

In parallel, until the end of 2016, Google was providing detailed reports of their self-driving car performance, which were designed to operate in real-world urban environments. These reports contain records of millions of miles driven autonomously, but also acknowledge “disengagements”, i.e., where the operator needed to take over control to avoid collisions. The data shows that HAVs are much more likely to be involved in collisions, even though these collisions are often of lower severity than in conventional human driving [HAVs typically get rear-ended because of their unusual road behavior] (see B. Schoettle, and M. Sivak, “A Preliminary Analysis of Real-World Crashes Involving Self-Driving Vehicles,” Additional Resources). Also, Uber’s autonomous taxis in Pittsburg have a reported rate of one disengagement per mile autonomously driven.

Moreover, the first fielded autonomous systems have revealed new safety threats. In particular, the technology’s functionality, as perceived by the human operator, does not always match the intended operational domain: for example, there have been cases of highway autopilots being used in urban areas and passing red lights without slowing down. In addition, human-machine interaction is at the heart of role confusion (is the operator or the HAV in charge?) of mode confusion (is the HAV in autonomous or manual mode?) and of the operator’s trust in this multimodal system. Misinterpretation may grow even wilder because a given functionality will not achieve the same level of performance across models and manufacturers, and operators may not be aware of the systems’ independently verified safety ratings. And, within the next few years, operators will be expected to anticipate hazardous situations and take over control. Thus, operating an HAV may require more education and different training than driving a car manually.

Current Safety Assessment Efforts
To focus this article, first consider the Society of Automotive Engineer (SAE) International’s classification of driving autonomy levels in Table 1 (see inset photo, above right). Under Levels 0 to 2, the human driver is responsible at all times, either for driving by himself, or for supervising the HAV in autonomous mode and taking control if needed. Under Levels 3 to 5, the system is self-monitoring and the driver is expected to take control, but only if requested by the system. Levels 0-4 provide partial automation under predefined driving modes and circumstances, whereas Level 5 is full autonomy.

The most advanced private car systems are currently Level 2, and pilot programs aim at achieving Level 3, although the mere presence of a kill-switch would imply that the system is actually Level 2. The transition from Level 2 to 3 is a remarkable leap that has significant implications on trust and comfort of human-machine interactions, on legal responsibility allocation between system and driver, and on technical challenges to overcome to guarantee passenger safety.

Over the past four years, the most publicized approaches to demonstrate Level 2 HAV safety have been experimental testing campaigns by Google, Tesla and Uber. Google’s approach to have HAVs drive millions of miles with minimal human intervention has been documented up until 2015. At this time, Google cars have autonomously travelled an impressive three million miles. Tesla’s autopilot is reported to have driven more than 130 million miles – on highways only – before it caused a fatality in May 2016.

In parallel, NHTSA reports about 3,000 billion miles travelled each year on U.S. highways by human drivers, with 30,000 deaths caused by traffic accidents; this corresponds to about one fatality in traffic accidents per 100 million miles driven in the U.S. But, this number accounts for incidents on all roads, in all weather conditions, and for all vehicle ages and types. Thus, a purely experimental, complete proof that HAVs match the level of safety of human driving would take about 400 years at Google’s current testing rate (of approximately 250,000 test miles per year), and would still take many decades if the testing rate increased exponentially. This is assuming that no fatalities occur during that time, that no major HAV upgrade is performed, and that the testing environment is representative of all U.S. roads. Thus, while an experimental proof is conclusive, it is not practical. Other, analytical, methods must be employed to ensure HAV safety.

Research Challenges In HAV Navigation Safety
Multiple technical aspects developed over decades for automated flying could serve as starting points for automated driving systems. Figure 2 shows research areas with overlap between aircraft (in blue) and car (in yellow) applications. Figure 2 is not intended to give a comprehensive list of all aspects of automation, but instead, it shows example technical areas that can be addressed using similar methods in aviation and automotive applications (in the green area). For example:

• performance standards set for software, communication, and electronic equipment are already being compared for aircraft versus cars in the NHTSA report by Q. D. Van Eikema Hommes, Additional Resources.
• the design of aircraft cockpit has been continuously improved over the past few decades, especially for highly-automated Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) with a remote pilot “in-the-box”; few car manufacturers envision futuristic car interiors where humans do not participate in driving, but as long as human-machine interactions are needed, lessons learned in cockpit design to avoid information overload are key. 
• while Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) will be mandatory on all aircraft by 2020, a petition for proposed rule making has been issued to mandate Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) by the same date. (ADS-B is a situational awareness system for collision avoidance, through which aircraft share their positions with Air Traffic Control and with other aircraft.) 
• GNSS/INS navigation systems, which are extensively used in safety-critical aircraft navigation, are also being investigated for HAVs.
• overall safety standards also have similarities for aircraft and HAVs, which are discussed again below.

The focus of this article is on navigation safety. In aviation navigation, safety is assessed in terms of integrity (as well as accuracy, continuity, and availability, which are not discussed for brevity). Integrity is a measure of trust in sensor information: integrity risk is the probability of undetected sensor errors causing unacceptably large positioning uncertainty (See RTCA Special Committee 159, “Minimum Aviation System Performance Standards for the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS), Additional Resources”). This top-level quantifiable performance metric is sensor- and platform-independent, and can thus be used to set certifiable requirements on individual system components to achieve and prove an overall level of safety.

The multiple separate efforts towards achieving Levels 3-to-5 HAVs reveal a compelling lack of coordination towards a common, uniform, quantifiable safety goal. Integrity can be used as an objective performance metric for open, transparent comparison and categorization across manufacturers. It can also provide a governmental regulating agency performance and testing standards for HAV certification, which would help accelerate the development, growth, and maturation of such HAVs, as displayed in Figure 3.

Moreover, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has developed analytical methods to evaluate integrity. This provides the means to:

• quantify safety of existing multi-sensor systems under a variety of operating environments, thereby reducing the need for experimental testing
• allocate safety requirements to individual system components to achieve an overall target level of safety, thereby enabling design for safety 
• perform risk prediction, which is a key operational feature to enable hazard avoidance maneuvers

Several methods have been established to predict the integrity risk in GNSS-based aviation applications, which are instrumental in ensuring the safety of pilots and crew. As an example, Figure 4 illustrates a simplified definition of the integrity risk for aircraft landing applications. The aircraft positioning prediction is uncertain because of sensor measurement noise. An alert limit (AL) requirement box is represented around the predicted aircraft position. This AL is set by the certification authority, i.e., by the FAA in this application. Simply put, the risk of the actual aircraft position being outside the AL box is the integrity risk. (In practice, the most challenging part of risk prediction is to account for potentially undetected sensor faults, such as excessive GNSS satellite clock drift.)

Unfortunately, the same methods do not directly apply to HAVs, because ground vehicles operate under sky-obstructed areas where GNSS signals can be altered or blocked by buildings and trees. In general, the HAV environment is much more unpredictable than the aircraft’s, for reasons that include:

• a changing environment: traffic lights, construction, impact of rain on road adherence, sensor masking and occlusions,
• environmental diversity: intersection topography, road conditions, markings on ground, various traffic signs 
• road users that may interfere with HAV motion: other cars, trucks, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc. 
• comparatively large number of car manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and vehicle models, as well as with shorter model cycles than aircraft, causing wide variations in vehicle age and maintenance levels 
• non-uniform vehicle and road regulations at both the state and federal levels in the U.S. coupled with different international standardization processes.

Thus, HAVs require sensors in addition to GNSS, including laser scanners, radars, cameras, and odometers.

The parallel between aircraft and car applications in Figure 4 illustrates the significant challenge that lies ahead when bringing aviation safety standards to HAVs. It took decades of research and considerable resources to bring the alert limit requirement box down to 10 meters above and below the aircraft using the FAA’s GPS augmentation systems (the Wide-Area Augmentation System and the Local Area Augmentation System). For a car to stay in its lane, the alert limit requirement box must be an order of magnitude smaller, and has to maintain this level of safety in a more dynamic and unpredictable environment.

HAV Taxonomy
Creating a path to successful automated navigation requires an overall methodology to prioritize on imminently achievable objectives, and then expand to more challenging missions. First in this HAV taxonomy, a classification using six SAE autonomy levels has been presented in Table 1. This classification is further refined by segmenting a car’s trip into basic driving competencies, and by specifying the conditions under which a given HAV shall achieve these competencies. A similar classification was made in the early days of GPS-based commercial aircraft navigation safety analysis, where distinctions were made between different phases of flight, weather conditions, vehicle equipment, and airport infrastructure capabilities.

For example, in the early 1990’s, 40% of aircraft accidents were occurring during final approach and landing, and 26% during take-off and initial climb, which only represented an average of 4% and 2% of flight time, respectively. The FAA therefore concentrated their efforts on improving safety during these phases of flight. GPS augmentation systems were designed, with varying capabilities depending on airborne equipment and airport infrastructure, to guide the aircraft under the cloud ceiling, or to bring it all the way to touch-down. Similarly, the “first and last mile” are identified as the most challenging parts of HAV operations, whereas highway auto-drive systems have already been developed and implemented. In its 2016 Federal Automated Vehicles Policy, NHTSA identifies 28 HAV behavioral competencies, which are particularly challenging to meet in the first and last miles of a typical trip. These competencies are basic abilities that an HAV must have to complete nominal driving tasks; they include, for example, lane keeping, obeying traffic laws, and responding to other road users.

To better describe an HAV’s ability, the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy further specifies that basic driving competencies should be available under an HAV’s predefined Operational Design Domain (ODD), described by its geographical location, road type and condition, weather and lighting condition, vehicle speed, etc. The ODD captures the circumstances under which an HAV is supposed to operate safely.

Such classification is key to safety analysis. It can allow HAVs at different stages of their development to be simultaneously fielded, and for them to evolve by expanding their ODDs. The classification can also help in identifying geographical areas where improved road infrastructure is needed for automated operation, similar to airports requiring equipment for instrument navigation to deal with higher traffic density.

Furthermore, standards for electronic equipment, measured by Automotive Safety Integrity Levels, have been issued and compared with the aviation’s Design Assurance Levels (DAL). And, overall system safety levels have been codified, which in aviation account for both the severity and probability of occurrence of an incident, and in automotive applications account, in addition, for “controllability”, which is a measure of how likely an average driver is to maneuver out of a given imminent danger.

All of the above elements: (a) HAV autonomy level, (b) basic driving competency, (c) operation design domain, (d) vehicle electronic equipment, and (e) overall safety risk requirement must be specified to carry out a formal HAV safety analysis. Still missing from the HAV documents are clear guidelines, or example methods, on how to implement these safety requirements.

A Path Towards HAV Navigation Safety
When quantifying the safety of HAV navigation systems, such as in the example displayed in Figure 5, every component of the system including raw sensors, estimator and integrity monitor, and safety predictor, can potentially introduce risk. Unlike aircraft, HAVs require multiple and varied sensors to compensate for GPS signal blockages caused by buildings and trees. These sensor types must be integrated, and new methods to evaluate the integrity of multi-sensor systems must be developed. Furthermore, HAVs must have the ability to continuously predict integrity in a dynamic HAV environment.

In general, research on analytical evaluation of HAV navigation safety is sparse. For example, J. Lee et alia, Additional Resources use the concept of a “safe driving envelope,” but the approach focuses mostly on collision avoidance. The paper by O. Le Marchand, et alia, evaluates ground vehicle navigation, but shows an “approximate radial-error” of tens of meters, far exceeding the necessary sub-meter alert limit. A multi-sensor augmented-GPS/IMU system is used in the paper by R. Toledo-Moreo, et alia with “horizontal trust levels” of 7 meters to 10 meters, still an order-of-magnitude higher than the required HAV alert limit.

Multi-sensor integrity is addressed by M. Brenner, Additional Resources, but for a sensor combination specific to aviation and insufficient for terrestrial mobile robots. Other approaches to multi-sensor integration show promise, but do not provide rigorous proof of integrity. In fact, most publications use pose estimation error covariance as a measure of performance, which is understood as not being sufficient, but is the only metric currently available. Most critically, the metric does not account for fault modes introduced by feature extraction and data association, two algorithms commonly used in mobile robot localization (and discussed again below).

Unlike GPS, which gives absolute position fixes, IMUs, LiDAR, radar, and cameras provide relative displacements with respect to a previous time-step, or with respect to a map. Thus, measurement time-filtering is required, which makes integrity risk evaluation more challenging since past-time sensor errors and undetected faults can now impact current-time safety.

Example LiDAR Navigation Safety Evaluation
While safety quantification for GNSS and GNSS/INS has been rigorously performed for aviation applications, and is being researched for HAVs, navigation safety for LiDAR, radar, camera, and multi-sensor navigation is a widely unexplored research area. To provide a specific example on the research work that lies ahead, we have started developing safety risk evaluation methods for LiDARs. We selected LiDARs because of their prevalence in HAVs, of their market availability, and because of our prior experience. However, the techniques we are developing are general enough that radar, cameras, or any future sensor that returns range data can be substituted.

Raw range data must be processed before it can be used for navigation. One technique, visual odometry, establishes correlations between successive scans to estimate sensor changes in pose (i.e., position and orientation). These processes are highly computationally intensive, and have the same problems as other dead-reckoning techniques, such as wheel odometry over time. Thus, they can become inaccurate or cumbersome for HAVs moving over multiple time epochs. Although proprietary information regarding the use of visual odometry by HAV manufacturers is unavailable, the research literature suggests that it is only used for short time scale operations. A second class of algorithms provides sensor localization by extracting static features from the raw sensor data and associating those features to a map. This is typically done in two steps, as illustrated in Figure 6: feature extraction (FE) and data association (DA). The resulting information can then be iteratively processed using sequential estimators (e.g., Extended Kalman filter or EKF), which has been readily used in many practical applications.

There are several problems that the FE and DA algorithms are addressing. First, landmarks in the environment are unidentified, and their observations are not tagged in a manner similar to a GNSS satellite signal’s Pseudo Random Noise (PRN) number. Thus, the feature extraction algorithm must isolate the few most consistently identifiable, viewpoint-invariant landmarks in the raw sensor data. These features must be identifiable over repeated observations and distinguishable from one landmark to another. Features that are difficult to distinguish from each other can be found easily, but the possibility that the association is incorrect will greatly negatively impact the integrity risk.

Second, range data based on extracted features must match those features with those from a feature database or map. Data association algorithms accomplish this; however, incorrect associations commonly occur. These can lead to large navigation errors, as illustrated in Figure 6, thereby representing a threat to navigation integrity.

FE and DA can be challenging in the presence of sensor uncertainty. This is why many sophisticated algorithms have been devised. But, how can we prove whether these FE and DA methods are safe for life-critical HAV navigation applications, and under what circumstances? These research questions are currently unanswered. The most relevant publications on DA risk are found in literature on multi-target tracking. For example, in the paper Y. Bar-Shalom and T. E. Fortmann, an innovation-based nearest-neighbor DA criterion is introduced, which serves as basis in many practical implementations. The article by Y. Bar-Shalom, et alia, “The Probabilistic Data Association Filter,” provides a detailed derivation of the probability of correct association given measurements. However, this Bayesian approach is not well suited for safety-critical applications due to the lack of risk prediction capability, and to the problem of bounding the a-posteriori probability of association (a similar issue is encountered in the paper by F.C. Chan, et alia. Another insightful approach is followed in the paper by J. Areta, et alia). However, it makes approximations that do not necessarily upper-bound risks, hence do not guarantee safe operation, and it presents exact solutions that can only be evaluated using computationally expensive numerical methods, not adequate for real-time navigation. Also, the risk of FE is not addressed.

In response, we have been developing a new, computationally-efficient integrity risk prediction method to ensure safety of localization using LiDAR-based FE and DA. We have derived a multiple-hypothesis innovation-based DA method that provides the means to predict the probability of incorrect associations considering all potential landmark permutations. (For more details on these methods, see the following four papers in Additional Resources, Nos. 31, 49, 50 and 51.) We also determined a probabilistic lower bound on the minimum feature separation, which is guaranteed at FE, with pre-defined integrity risk allocation. The separation bound can be incorporated in an overall integrity risk equation. This new method was analyzed and tested to quantify the impact of incorrect associations on integrity risk. It showed that the positioning error covariance can be a misleading safety performance metric since cases were found where the contributions of incorrect associations to integrity risk far surpassed that of nominal errors accounted for in the positioning error covariance. In addition, the following key safety-tradeoff was illustrated: the more measurements are extracted, the lower the integrity risk contribution is under the correct association hypothesis, but the higher the other integrity risk contributions become because the risk of incorrect associations increases in the presence of cluttered, poorly-distinguishable landmarks. Finally, being surrounded by many landmarks increases the probability of continuous, uninterrupted navigation. The next step of this research aims at dealing with unmapped and non-static obstacles, and at quantifying the continuity risk of FE and DA.

Conclusion
Looking at the emergence of future HAV technology with the prior experience of aircraft navigation safety provides the means to scale up the challenges that lie ahead in the development of fully autonomous (Level 4 and 5) driverless cars. Many parallels can already be drawn between aviation safety requirements and early HAV standards and regulations. Still, the methods to fulfill these standards and regulations have to be established. If analytical methods are pursued, the following tasks need to be accomplished: (1) establish high-integrity raw sensor measurement error and fault models for non-GPS sensors; (2) develop analytical methods to quantify the safety risk of feature extraction and data association algorithms required in LiDAR, radar, and other pre-processing steps in camera-based localization; (3) design multi-sensor pose estimators and integrity monitors to evaluate the impact of undetected sensor faults on safety risk; and (4) derive, analyze, and experimentally implement integrity risk prediction in dynamic environments.

If these challenges are overcome, one will be able to quantify and prove the performance of an HAV’s navigation system — an essential part of safety. Proving navigation system integrity will also help give humans more confidence to trust HAVs, thus further developing the symbiotic relationship between humans and co-robots. Finally, as HAV technology progresses from driver’s aids such as active brake assist to full autonomous driving, this research is relevant now and will remain essential throughout the evolution of HAV technology.

Additional Resources
[1] Abuhashim, T.S., M.F. AbdelHafez, and M.-A. AlJarrah. Building a robust integrity monitoring algorithm for a low cost gps-aided-ins system. International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems, 8(5):11081122, 2010.
[2] Ackerman , E., “Self-Driving Cars Were Just Around the Corner—in 1960”, IEEE Spectrum, September 2016
[3] Ackerman, E., “After Mastering Singapore’s Streets, NuTonomy’s Robo-taxis Are Poised to Take on New Cities,” IEEE Spectrum, 2016.
[4] Areta, J., Y. Bar-Shalom, and R. Rothrock, “Misassociation Probability in M2TA and T2TA,” J. of Advances in Information Fusion, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2007, pp. 113-127.
[5] Bailey, T., Mobile Robot Localization and Mapping in Extensive Outdoor Environments. PhD thesis, The University of Sydney, 2002.
[6] Bailey, T., and J. Nieto. Scan-slam: Recursive mapping and localization with arbitrary-shaped landmarks. In Workshop at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Robotics Science and Systems (IEEE RSS), 2008.
[7] Bakhache, B., A Sequential RAIM Based on the Civil Aviation Requirements. In Proceedings of the 12th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1999), pages 1201–1210, 1999.
[8] Basnayake, C., M. Joerger, and J. Aulde, “Safety-Critical Positioning for Automotive Applications”, Inside GNSS Webinar, 2016.
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1996 soccer game in the Midwest, (Rick Dikeman image)

Nouméa ground station after the flood

A pencil and a coffee cup show the size of NASA’s teeny tiny PhoneSat

Bonus Hotspot: Naro Tartaruga AUV

Pacific lamprey spawning (photo by Jeremy Monroe, Fresh Waters Illustrated)

“Return of the Bucentaurn to the Molo on Ascension Day”, by (Giovanni Antonio Canal) Canaletto

The U.S. Naval Observatory Alternate Master Clock at 2nd Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB in Colorado. This photo was taken in January, 2006 during the addition of a leap second. The USNO master clocks control GPS timing. They are accurate to within one second every 20 million years (Satellites are so picky! Humans, on the other hand, just want to know if we’re too late for lunch) USAF photo by A1C Jason Ridder.

Detail of Compass/ BeiDou2 system diagram

Hotspot 6: Beluga A300 600ST

1. Mangrove Tree-Planting Drones
Myanmar (Southeast Asia)

1. Mangrove Tree-Planting Drones
Myanmar (Southeast Asia)
√ For about five years now, a group of villagers in the delta of the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar (also known as Burma) has painstakingly planted 2.7 million mangrove trees with the hopes of beginning to restore an ecosystem that has been disappearing for decades. But this work is rather laborious, and the local nonprofit guiding the work wants to cover a much larger area — so they’re turning drones to help with their large-scale tree-planting project.

The drones, from the startup BioCarbon Engineering, can plant as many as 100,000 trees in a single day, leaving the local community to focus on taking care of the young trees that have already started to grow, according to the company, which has offices in Oxford, U.K., Sydney, Australia and Dublin, Ireland. In September, the company will begin a drone-planting program in the area along with Worldview International Foundation, the nonprofit guiding local tree-planting projects. To date, the organization has worked with villagers to plant an area of 750 hectares, about twice the size of Central Park. The drones will help cover another 250 hectares with 1 million additional trees. Ultimately, the nonprofit hopes to use drones to help plant 1 billion trees in an even larger area.

In the past villages have spent years replanting mangroves along the Irrawaddy River. With drones, their work will now go much faster.

2. Laser-Mapping Landscape Changes
Gargoyle Ridge in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica
√ With the help of LiDAR, researchers led by Portland State University (PSU) have publicly released high-resolution maps of Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys, a unique desert region. The high-resolution maps cover 3,564 square kilometers of the McMurdo Dry Valleys and allow researchers to compare present-day conditions with the last surveys conducted more than a decade ago.

The research project led by PSU, and funded by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), mapped the area using LiDAR, a remote-sensing method that uses laser beam pulses to measure the distance from the detector to the Earth’s surface. The data, collected by aerial survey missions flown in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2014-2015, provides detailed imagery of the perpetually ice-free region, where changes, such as rapid erosion along some streams, have been observed in recent years.

The LIDAR maps are publicly available on two NSF-funded facilities: Open Topography, and the Polar Geospatial Center.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are interesting to a wide range of scientists from biologists to geologists to glaciologists. The valleys are, for example, one of the few places on the massive continent—which is the size of the U.S. and Mexico combined—where bedrock is exposed, allowing geologists to reconstruct the continent’s geological history.

The region also is home to one of NSF’s Long Term Ecological Research sites, which support studies of its unusual habitat, dominated by microbial life, both in the soil and in unique ecosystems under at least one of its glaciers and in several of its highly salty lakes.

Evidence of past glacial advance and retreat is also more easily observed in the Dry Valleys, which provides window into the past behavior of the vast Antarctic ice sheets, the activity of which can influence global sea levels.

3. Fries with Your Drone Delivery?
Reykjavik, Iceland
√ Impatient Icelanders are getting help from Flytrex, an Israeli startup, that just started delivering small orders like takeout food by drone in a partnership with Aha, Iceland’s largest instant delivery platform. The drones, technically hexacopters, were approved by the Icelandic Transport Authority to pick up orders from restaurants and stores on one side of Reykjavik, where Aha has its offices, and fly them to a drop-off point in the suburb of Grafarvogur.

While Flytrex and Aha don’t offer direct store-to-home-delivery, the companies said that even on a trial basis the service would slash waiting times in a city whose bay delivery trucks must skirt to reach their destinations. A drone cuts delivery times by flying across the water to a truck that will complete the delivery.

Flytrex doesn’t make drones but develops autonomous, drone-based delivery systems. The drones can carry packages weighing up to three kilograms, about the size of a mailbox, so they can only handle smaller orders or takeout food.

The single drone now in use can make between 20 and 60 flights day, according to Flytrex, which has developed hardware that is installed on the drone and links it to a cellular network via a SIM card that enables a controller to locate, monitor its speed, altitude and other parameters in real time.

4. Tough Testing for Galileo
Noordwijk, the Netherlands
√ Each Galileo satellite must go through a rigorous test campaign to assure its readiness for the violence of launch, airlessness and temperature extremes of Earth orbit. Each one is dispatched to a unique location in Europe to ensure its readiness prior to launch: a 3,000-square meter cleanroom complex nestled in sandy dunes along the Dutch coast, filled with test equipment to simulate all aspects of spaceflight.

The test centre in Noordwijk – Europe’s largest satellite test site – is part of ESA’s main technical center, but it is maintained and operated on a commercial basis on behalf of the Agency by a private company created for the purpose: European Test Services (ETS) B.V.

ETS has been responsible for supporting many historic test campaigns – including space-certifying Europe’s 20-metric-ton ATV space truck and Envisat, the world’s largest civilian Earth-observing mission. But in terms of scale alone, its work with Galileo is the company’s greatest challenge.

ETS is about to complete its contracts with OHB System AG, covering the environmental test of 22 “Full Operational Capability” Galileo satellites, preceded by the testing of the very first of the first-generation “In-Orbit Validation” Galileo satellites on a previous, separate contract.

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Today’s headlines frame my thoughts about securing GNSS assets, which one expert has characterized as our “least visible and most vulnerable infrastructure.”

In the Columbia River Gorge, a National Scenic Area spanning the Washington-Oregon border, a 15-year-old boy has been accused of intentionally tossing fireworks into tinder-dry grass thereby starting a (thus far) 33,000-acre forest fire that has devastated a natural treasure. Meanwhile, in the latest incident of large-scale identity theft, credit-rating agency Equifax has belatedly acknowledged a months-long breach of its database in which 143 million personal records were reportedly accessed.

In one case, an individual — obliviously or purposefully — creates outsized havoc, in the other, a skilled team of professional thieves disrupt a global enterprise and endanger the financial well-being of millions.

Of course, we have headlines closer to the point, such as “Reports of Mass GPS Spoofing Attack in the Black Sea,” or “South Korea developing eLoran Network to Protect Ships” from North Korean GPS jamming.

These latter incidents, of course, arise from state-sponsored or –enabled actions. But, as with the Columbia gorge fire, personal behaviors — often harder to detect and prevent — can similarly afflict GNSS capabilities. In recent years, considerable attention has focused on the use of small GNSS jammers, also known as “personal privacy devices.” Perhaps the best-known case is that of a trucker trying to jam his vehicle’s own receiver who interrupted GPS-aided landing operations at Newark International Airport.

As the articles on jamming and spoofing mitigation in this issue of Inside GNSS reflect, the motives and methods of perpetrators vary. But, given the natural progression of information-sharing and widening expertise in GNSS — along with our cultural soft spot for making heroes out of rebels and outlaws — we can probably assume that the trend toward disruption will only get worse.

Some GNSS user groups have struck out on their own to ensure the security of their constituencies and their particular needs. Military users benefit from a variety of alternative PNT technologies such as geomagnetic mapping, vision- and image-based navigation, and chip-scale atomic clocks and inertial measurement units. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has decided to retain, for the time being, a minimum operational network of VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) facilities originally planned to be phased out with the introduction of GNSS.

Over time, some of these alternatives may migrate into the commercial and professional space — then again, they may not. And the vast majority of individual GNSS consumers have no organizations to advocate for their needs.

So, what is to be done? How can we ensure that the positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) utility is available to all users, and not just those sectors with the resources to develop solutions for themselves? The future of location-based applications and enterprise — and the associated economic benefits — depend on a satisfactory answer to that question.

Multi-level threats clearly require multi-tiered responses that fit the corresponding scope and scale of different domains. At the system level, GNSS providers are exploring such measures as encryption, signal authentication, stronger signal power, and advanced signal designs.

National and international legal/initiatives include such efforts as regulating the sale and use of GNSS jammers and spoofers. Alternative PNT systems — for example, enhanced Loran (eLoran) — represent a potential multinational approach to the problem.

At the level of user equipment, several GNSS manufacturers are incorporating interference detection and mitigation (IDM) and antispoofing capabilities into proprietary products.

The variety of these initiatives and their advocates illustrates the breadth of concern about assured PNT, but also reflect the fractured nature of responses to the threats to GNSS. The situation calls for leadership with the expertise and stature to bring comprehensive solutions before the wider GNSS community.

The International Committee on GNSS has the membership and forum, if not yet the clear mandate, to impose such solutions globally. At the national level, the U.S. Space-Based PNT Executive Committee assisted by its expert advisory panel seems the most likely candidate for this role.

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After several years of shifting plans the competition to build the next tranche of GPS III satellites is poised to start, though the context in which that contest will take place has changed markedly from when planning first began.

The Request For Proposals (RFP) will go out in November 2017, the Air Force told Inside GNSS in response to a query. If that seems somewhat later than expected, it is. In a June 28 presentation, the GPS Directorate’s Deputy Director Col. Gerry Gleckel told the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board the RFP would be out by the end of the 2017 fiscal year — that is by Sept. 30, 2017. Other than a delay, the November release should not create any new issues.

Gleckel also told the PNT Advisory Board that for cost and scheduling reasons the Air Force plans to select, and stick with, one contractor to build all 22 satellites.

“Every time we restart that (process), it’s billions of dollars in nonrecurring engineering costs,” Gleckel said. “There’s delay going through the satellite design process and in qualification. We want to get some more stability in our satellites.”

If the Air Force does indeed choose a winner-take-all approach, it will add to the pressure on would-be contractors. Not only will unsuccessful bidders lose out on what promises to be a multibillion dollar contract, but the plan puts losing firms at a long-term disadvantage when it comes to future GPS-related deals. Key personnel and expertise will naturally coalesce around the new prime contractor, which according to Gleckel’s presentation, will be developing and then building and launching GPS III satellites into 2033 — that is for the next 16 years. That’s a long time for a losing bidder to maintain resources while it waits for another chance.

A Long Process
The initial GPS III contract won by Lockheed Martin in 2008 was for two research and development satellites plus five options to build pairs of additional spacecraft for a total of 12 GPS IIIA satellites. The next phase, which was to be the GPS IIIB tranche of eight more spacecraft, was to be awarded in roughly 2011 followed sometime later by the final contract for 16 GPS IIIC spacecraft. The Air Force, however, retained the right to re-compete the procurement for GPS IIIB and GPS IIIC — a hedge against poor performance or the need to secure the industrial base for future space developments. That turned out to be a wise decision.

Work on IIIA started off smoothly but internal interference problems developed in the payload as ITT Exelis, the payload subcontractor, worked to add new signals. (Exelis became part of Harris Corp. in 2015). There were other problems as well including a failure to qualify and then properly test a ceramic capacitor — an oversight that added four months to the program’s already delayed schedule. The Air Force became increasingly annoyed and didn’t mind saying so in public.

“Obviously, we want a GPS III that does what it’s supposed to do, delivered on time,” said Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, during the 2016 National Space Symposium, according to Defense News.

By 2014 GPS officials were so frustrated they went out of their way to boost competition for Lockheed Martin, creating a two-phase process for the follow-on procurement. Under Phase 1 they planned to award up to two Production Readiness Firm Fixed Price contracts worth $200 million each. The winners were to go through critical design review for the space vehicle and navigation payload with demonstrations and qualification of the satellite subsystem boxes. Then, in Phase 2, the Phase 1 firm or firms would compete against Lockheed Martin (which, along with Exelis, was barred from competing in Phase 1). The prize, after all of this, was a deal for as many as 22 satellites.

That plan, however, did not last. In May 2015, under budget pressure from sequestration, the Air Force reframed the competition to allow Lockheed Martin to compete — but shrunk the award from $200 million to a scant $6 million per firm. That money was to enable them only to demonstrate that they had, or could attain, a long list of capabilities, including the ability to produce an average of two satellites a year (down from the previous requirement to be able to produce two to three spacecraft annually).

The Air Force went ahead with the scaled-down awards, inking Production Readiness Feasibility Assessment contracts with Boeing Network and Space Systems, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, and Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in May 2016.

Phase 2
Earlier this year, in an April 19 Special Notice posted on Fed Biz Opps, Air Force Space Command announced the next step in its two-phase selection process — an Industry Day for potential GPS III bidders to be held May 4, 2017 in El Segundo, Calif. The Air Force wanted to share information on its plans with potential bidders and get feedback from them on what it intended to do. According to the notice, an RFP for a fixed-price contract to begin delivering GPS III spacecraft in 2025 was to be released later in 2017 with an announcement of the winning contractor to be made late in 2018.

Interestingly, the notice made clear that the three winners of Phase 1 were not the only ones being invited to compete. “Participation in Phase 1,” the Air Force wrote, “is not a prerequisite to participation in Phase 2.”

Even so, it’s unlikely that firms outside of the Phase 1 winners will compete, said Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project and of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They are leaving it open that another company could bid,” he told Inside GNSS at the time, “but it doesn’t mean that some other company would actually be able to crack into this acquisition. There is still a substantial barrier to entry for building a GPS satellite.”

Circumstances Shift
Whoever bids on Phase 2 will be competing to provide spacecraft to an Air Force whose operational environment has sharply changed in just the last several years.

In April 2016, not quite a year after the Air Force released its Phase 1 RFP and month before the Phase 1 winners were revealed, Gen. John Hyten, then the commander of Air Force Space Command, announced the Space Enterprise Vision (SEV). The SEV framed how programs across the full range of military space activities were to take action to meet the threat posed by a more space-capable China and Russia

“In the recent past, the United States enjoyed unchallenged freedom of action in the space domain,” Hyten said in a statement formally announcing SEV. “Most U.S. military space systems were not designed with threats in mind, and were built for long-term functionality and efficiency, with systems operating for decades in some cases. Without the need to factor in threats, longevity and cost were the critical factors to design and these factors were applied in a mission stovepipe. This is no longer an adequate methodology to equip space forces.”

China became a particular focus of concern in 2007 after the nation used an anti-satellite missile (an ASAT) to destroy one of its own spacecraft, an aging weather satellite in low Earth orbit. And defense officials have made clear China is working hard to expand its military capabilities in space.

“The PLA (People’s Liberation Army) is acquiring a range of technologies to improve China’s counter-space capabilities,” the Department of Defense (DoD) said in its annual report to Congress on military and security developments in China. China was working on directed-energy weapons and satellite jammers, DoD wrote, and navigation satellites were among the targets suggested in Chinese PLA writings.

“The potential adversaries we have around the world know very well how important space is to us and how important it is to our alliances and to our partners and how we would operate and fight,” confirmed Deborah Lee James, who served as secretary of the Air Force from December 2013 to January 2017.

China has been watching and learning from U.S. space operations for the last 25 years, James told a September 6 symposium on organizing military space.

“They’ve not been sitting still when it comes to investing and testing capabilities which ultimately could threaten our ability to be able to use space, our space assets, in the event of conflict,” she told the audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In addition to the ASAT test in 2007, she said, China in 2013 tested a direct-ascent, anti-satellite system that could reach geosynchronous orbit — where key military satellites reside. Both China and Russia have also demonstrated their ability to do robotic rendezvous and proximity operations and, James told the audience, a year or two ago a Russian satellite showed an unusual pattern of movements in GEO orbit including loitering near several U.S. commercial communications satellites.

“Space is no longer a peaceful domain if it ever was one,” said James. “It is now contested and congested.”

Must Go Faster
“In the not-too-distant future, they (the Chinese) will be able to use that capability to threaten every spacecraft we have in space. We have to prevent that, and the best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war,” Hyten told an audience in January at Stanford University in California, according to a DoD summary. “So, the United States is going to do that, and we’re going to make sure that everybody knows we’re prepared for war.”

Now the commander of United States Strategic Command, Hyten is pushing the service to make that happen. Though America still enjoys a significant advantage in space, he told the Washington Free Beacon, that advantage is eroding and space defense requires moving much more quickly than the Pentagon’s acquisitions processes currently allow.

“Can we go fast enough as a nation to stay ahead of our adversaries?” Hyten said in an interview. “We have to go fast.”

That sense of urgency was underscored in an SEV-related Sources Sought announcement posted August 30 by Air Force Space Command.

Defense officials reached out to determine what systems engineering and integration (SE&I) services industry had available to support, among other activities “new and on-going efforts in all phases of the acquisition life cycle and standardize systems engineering processes.” The eventual contractor would work on three programs: the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN), the Launch and Test Range System (LTRS), and the Space Training Acquisition Office (STAO). Though not specific to the GPS III RFI, the work would cover a long list of mission areas including navigation satellites, next generation space navigation systems, navigation user equipment and satellite ground stations among its mission areas.

“The purpose of this Synopsis is to gain insight into existing Industry capabilities and systems,” Space Command wrote. “It is aimed at receiving feedback from industry on the capabilities out there to perform SE&I support within a diminished timeline due to the urgency of this Space Enterprise Vision (SEV) requirement directed from Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) leadership.”

The Air Force may also be looking at other ways to speed up replenishment of the GPS constellation in a pinch. On July 31 Space Command posted a Special Notice asking for feedback on reducing the design life of the GPS satellites. Shorter-lived spacecraft can be made smaller, perhaps enabling more than one satellite to be launched per spacecraft. Though the July 31 notice asked for ideas for the generation of satellites after GPS III, the notion of building smaller GPS satellites has been discussed for years. Quick replenishment is one way to address the risk of losing satellites and also a way to update the constellation with important new technology.

In fact, the current GPS III work schedule, according to Gleckel, specifically incorporates “tech insertion points” aimed, at least in part, at adapting to the new, contested nature of space operations.

“That’s where we can add additional capabilities into a future flow,” Gleckel said during his presentation. “Again, with the same contractor without starting over, without the costs and time that go along with that — but still allowing us to change with the threats.” 

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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.

It is perhaps not surprising that the fallout from GNSS failure in the maritime sector over a five day-period could cost GBP£1.1billion in lost gross value added (GVA) in the United Kingdom alone (or about 1.4 billion USD) – according to a recent study by London Economics, commissioned by Innovate UK, the UK Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation. [For more on this study, see Brussels View in the July/August 2017 issue of Inside GNSS.]

The threat of GNSS disruption to ships themselves is a real one. GPS interference in the Black Sea was reported earlier this year, affecting as many as 20 ships. And the United States Coast Guard warned that a sudden loss of GPS signal had occurred on multiple outbound vessels from a non-US port in 2015. Loss of GPS input to the ship’s surface search radar, gyro units and Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS), resulted in a lack of GPS data for position fixing, radar over ground speed inputs, gyro speed input and loss of collision avoidance capabilities on the ECDIS radar display.

However, ships do not rely on just GNSS alone for position fixing. A shipmaster can also deploy radar, or cross bearings using compass; terrestrial radio navigation; even sextants. This allows ships to mitigate the impact of GPS disruption.

Regulations in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) require merchant ships to carry a receiver for a GNSS or a terrestrial radionavigation system, or other means, suitable for use at all times throughout the intended voyage to establish and update the ship’s position by automatic means. But they must also carry a compass, a device to take bearings, and backup arrangements for ECDIS.

The organization which oversees SOLAS and has the remit for adopting carriage requirements, operational requirements and performance standards for world shipping is the International Maritime Organization (IMO). IMO (originally known as the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, or IMCO) is the United Nations specialized agency with responsibility for developing the regulations for ship safety and maritime security, and the prevention of pollution from ships.

IMO does not operate GNSS systems, but has an important role in accepting and recognizing worldwide radionavigation systems which can be used by international shipping.

When IMO began its work as the international regulatory body for shipping in 1959, one of its first tasks was to adopt a revised SOLAS treaty, to update the 1948 SOLAS treaty. (The very first SOLAS treaty was adopted in 1914, in the wake of the Titanic disaster, while another version was adopted in 1929.)

When the 1960 SOLAS was adopted by IMO, terrestrial radio navigation systems – including Decca Navigator and Loran A – were already in operation. In these systems, a ship’s radio receiver would measure transmissions from groups of radio transmitters sending signals simultaneously or in a controlled sequence. By measuring the phase difference between one pair of transmissions a line of position can be established. A second measurement, from another pair of stations, gives a second line and the intersection of the two lines gives the ship’s position.

In its chapter V on Safety of Navigation, SOLAS 1960 included a requirement for ships over 1,600 gross tonnage on international voyages to be fitted with radio direction-finding apparatus – a requirement dating back to the 1948 SOLAS Convention. The apparatus was required to comply with system requirements set out in SOLAS chapter IV on Radiotelegraphy and Radiotelephony (SOLAS Chapter IV is now called Radiocommunications).

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Loran C and Differential Omega radio navigation systems were also becoming operational in major areas of the world’s oceans and they were combined with early computer technology to provide electronic printouts of the ship’s position. The then-Soviet Union’s Chayka system also became operational.

During this time, IMO Member States increasingly recognized the importance of using navigation systems in maritime safety and preventing marine pollution, for example as an aid to avoiding hazards. In 1968, IMO recommended that ships carrying oil or other noxious or hazardous cargoes in bulk should carry “an efficient electronic position-fixing device” (Assembly resolution A.156(ES.IV) Recommendation on the Carriage of Electronic Position-Fixing Equipment).

IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee was also noticing the potential for accurate position finding which satellites could provide. As with other developments in technology with shipping applications, IMO’s concern was to ensure that the user would benefit from the new technology and that such new systems would at least meet agreed performance standards.

A recommendation on accuracy standards for navigation, adopted by the IMO Assembly in 1983 (resolution A.529(13)), provided “guidance to Administrations on the standards of navigation accuracy for assessing position-fixing systems, in particular radionavigation systems, including satellite systems”. Outside harbour entrances and approaches, the order of accuracy was set at “4% of distance from danger with a maximum of 4 nautical miles”.

This was a fairly moderate requirement compared to today’s systems.

The Maritime Safety Committee had, in the meantime, begun to consider whether ships should be required – on a mandatory basis – to carry means of receiving transmissions from a suitable radio navigation system throughout their intended voyage.

A study was initiated to look at the operational requirements (including the need for reliability and low user cost) and how such systems could be recognized or accepted by IMO.

The Report on the study of a World-Wide Radionavigation System was adopted by the IMO Assembly in 1989 (resolution A.666(16)). It gave a detailed summary of the different terrestrial-based radio navigation systems then in operation (Differential Omega, Loran-C, Chayka), and also the satellite systems in development. These were the Global Positioning System (GPS) (United States) and GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System) (then Soviet Union – now under the Russian Federation). It was agreed that IMO would develop performance standards for GPS and GLONASS receivers.

The study concluded that it was not feasible for IMO to fund a worldwide radio navigation system. However, IMO’s role would be to review radionavigation systems against set criteria, before they could be accepted. A radionavigation system adopted by IMO should be reliable, of low user cost, meet general navigation needs, provide accuracy not less than the standards adopted in 1983, and have 99.9% availability.

The study also recommended that changes to carriage requirements should not be considered until world-wide coverage had been achieved by a radionavigation satellite system.

In 1995, an updated study was adopted as the IMO policy for the recognition and acceptance of suitable radionavigation systems intended for international use in the world-wide radio navigation system (resolution A.815(19)). This study additionally recognized the need for provision of position information to support the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), by locating vessels in distress. The needs of high speed craft, such as fast ferries, were recognized and the study noted that ships operating at speeds above 30 knots may need more stringent accuracy requirements.

Performance standards for shipborne GPS receiver equipment were also adopted in 1995, and for GLONASS receivers in 1996. GPS became fully operational in 1995 and GLONASS in 1996. Both systems were recognized by IMO as components of the world-wide radionavigation system in 1996.

Meeting Maritime User Needs
IMO Member States acknowledged that there was a need to look ahead, to ensure that any future GNSS would meet maritime user needs. “Maritime Requirements for a Future Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)” were developed and adopted by the IMO Assembly in 1997 (resolution A.860(20)). This emphasized the need for IMO to play a continued role in monitoring the developments and ensuring that any future GNSS meets IMO requirements, including those for navigational accuracy, integrity of the service, availability, reliability and coverage.

In 2000, with both GPS and GLONASS systems now fully functional and providing the required degree of reliability, IMO moved forward with adopting mandatory carriage requirements for GNSS.

A revised SOLAS chapter V (Safety of Navigation), which entered into force in 2002, requires ships to carry a GNSS or terrestrial radionavigation receiver, to establish and update the ship’s position by automatic means, for use at all times throughout the voyage.

IMO also adopted MSC resolutions on updated performance standards for Shipborne Global Positioning System (GPS) Receiver Equipment (MSC.112(73)), for GLONASS Receiver Equipment (MSC.113(73)), for Shipborne DGPS and DGLONASS Maritime Radio Beacon Receiver Equipment (MSC.114(73)) and for shipborne combined GPS/GLONASS receiver equipment (MSC.115(73)).

Reflecting the increased positional accuracy provided by GPS and GLONASS, an updated resolution giving the IMO policy for the recognition and acceptance of suitable radio navigation systems intended for international use was adopted in 2003 by the IMO Assembly (resolution A.953(23)).

This resolution made the accuracy standards required more stringent (revoking those agreed in 1983): in harbour entrances, harbour approaches and coastal waters, positional information error should not be greater than 10 meters with a probability of 95%. In ocean waters, the system should provide positional information with an error not greater than 100 meters with a probability of 95%.

In 2011, IMO further updated the IMO policy for recognizing and accepting suitable radionavigation systems intended for international use (resolution A.1046(27)), inviting Governments to keep IMO informed of the operational development of any suitable radionavigation systems which might be considered for use by ships worldwide.

The resolution also specifically requested the Maritime Safety Committee to recognize systems conforming to IMO requirements. Such recognition would mean IMO recognizes that the system is capable of providing adequate position information within its coverage area and that the carriage of receiving equipment for use with the system satisfies the relevant requirements of the SOLAS Convention.

New GNSS Providers Recognized
The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), proposed by the People’s Republic of China, was developed in the 2000s and IMO was requested to develop performance standards for BDS receivers. The performance standards were adopted in 2014 (resolution MSC.379(93)).

BDS was recognized as a component of the world-wide radio navigation system in 2014. Full operational capability for BeiDou is anticipated to be reached by 2020. The IMO recognition (SN.1/Circ.329) notes that the static and dynamic accuracy of the system is 100 meters (95%) and it is therefore not suitable for navigation in harbour entrances and approaches, and other waters in which freedom to maneuver is limited.

The European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System was developed and presented to IMO as a future component of the GNSS in the early 2000s. Performance standards for Galileo shipborne receivers were adopted by IMO in 2006 (resolution MSC.233(82)). The MSC recognized Galileo in 2016 (SN.1/Circ.334), noting that, in future, the static and dynamic accuracy of the Galileo system is expected to be better than 10 meters with a probability of 95%, with integrity provided by Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) techniques. Once full operational capability is met, it will be suitable for navigation in harbour entrances, harbour approaches and coastal waters. Full operational capability for Galileo is also anticipated to be reached by 2020.

A further system, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) — now also known in India as NaVIC (Navigation Indian Constellation) — is now being considered by IMO. Performance standards for IRNSS receiver equipment will be developed by 2019, and its possible recognition as part of the world-wide radio navigation system will be assessed.

Multi-System Shipborne Radio Navigation Receiver Equipment
Meanwhile, in June 2015, the Maritime Safety Committee adopted performance standards for multi-system shipborne radionavigation receiver equipment to ensure that ships are provided with resilient position-fixing equipment suitable for use with available radionavigation systems throughout their voyage (resolution MSC.401(95), updated by MSC.432(98)).

Such equipment can allow the combined use of current and future radionavigation as well as augmentation systems for the provision of position, velocity and time data within the maritime navigation system.

The World-Wide RadioNavigation System for the Future
As technology continues to develop, the world-wide radionavigation system can also be seen in the context of the wider IMO strategy for e-navigation, approved in 2008, which is intended to meet present and future user needs through harmonization of marine navigation systems and supporting shore services.

A key element in the e-navigation strategy relates to position fixing systems, which will need to meet user needs in terms of accuracy, integrity, reliability and system redundancy in accordance with the level of risk and volume of traffic.

A detailed e-navigation Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP), approved in 2014, sets out a framework and a road map of tasks that would need to be implemented or conducted in the future to give effect to five prioritized e-navigation solutions, one of which is the improved reliability, resilience and integrity of bridge equipment and navigation information, and another being the integration and presentation of available information in graphical displays received via communication equipment.

IMO will continue to oversee the world-wide radionavigation system and to have a role in recognizing systems that may be developed in the future. IMO also has a role to ensure the reliability, integrity and resilience of such systems.

The development of satellite-based position systems — GNSS — has enabled a leap forward in the accuracy standards required of such systems and has no doubt contributed to improved safety, efficiency and environmental protection at sea.

This has implications for both carriage requirements for navigational equipment as well as for the human element, in terms of training requirements.

IMO will continue to provide the forum for careful consideration of any requirements, in order to maintain carriage requirements recognizing the significant value and use of GNSS, but also to ensure that alternative systems continue to be mandated, for more resiliency and redundancy.

IMO
The International Maritime Organization – is the United Nations specialized agency with responsibility for the safety and security of shipping and the prevention of marine pollution by ships.

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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.

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.

Hand in hand with the benefits of new technologies comes the dependency on said technology and the need to plan for the “what if” scenario should technology fail or let us down as it can on occasion.

One technology that is not new to Public Safety but is growing in its use is GNSS. The most obvious use of GNSS is to support location services for staff and assets — the tracking of team members and vehicles. However, with the latest advances in technology it has also become a necessity for precise timing to support basic radio/communications system operation. This aspect or use of GNSS/GPS is often overlooked.

This article provides some examples of how Public Safety can be threatened by over-reliance on GNSS and justifies why contingency plans have been put in place. Although the examples are specific to Public Safety services in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada, they can be expected to be similarly relevant in other jurisdictions in Canada, the United States, and abroad.

GNSS Timing in Public Safety
Public Safety users are still very dependent on reliable LMR (Land Mobile Radio) radio communications to provide a high level of public safety while ensuring their own safety.

Modern Public Safety LMR systems make use of two key elements that are very dependent on precise timing and both are used in the current APCO (Association of Public Safety Communications Officers) standard (APCO 25) that is often referred to as “P25 Phase II”. APCO applies in Canada and the United States, and thus covers most of North America. Other jurisdictions (e.g., Europe, Asia, etc.) may use different standards, but it is expected that they all have similar reliance on GNSS, as described below.

The first of these key elements is the fact that P25 Phase II is a TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) technology and uses a modulation scheme that time slices a 12 kilohertz radio channel to allow two conversations, or talk groups, to exist in the same spectrum. This is a way to increase the radio channel and system capacity allowing more users access to the system, higher availability and a higher grade of service.

To ensure that this time slicing of the spectrum is possible, the system must have a very precise time standard that is identical across the network and the same at all nodes or radios sites. In Canada, these networks can span cities, regions or provinces and have hundreds of sites. At each of these sites and nodes there are two GNSS receivers — a main and a standby — that are used to keep all radio transmissions in time.

Without this timing reference and without the accuracy and precision afforded by GNSS, the time slots and corresponding voice conversations that they contain would start to bump into each other and the users would have garbled, missed and/or lost radio transmissions. From a Public Safety perspective, any disruption to communications is of course concerning and compromises the two prime goals listed in the opening paragraph.

The second use of precise timing is for the purpose of Simulcast. Simulcast is the process in modern Public Safety radio systems where radio signals on the same frequency or channel from two different sites intentionally overlap the same geographic area. This overlap is to ensure that Public Safety members have radio coverage at all times with no gaps. This approach is different than a cellular network when the handset “hops” from site to site rather than listening to multiple sites.

In order for the Public Safety portable radios to listen to multiple sites that are located random distances away and still properly decode the incoming transmissions, the timing of these overlapping signals must be stable, synchronized and well known. The GNSS receivers located at each site are also used to provide the required timing for this aspect of the radio system operation.

Considering the above, the dependency of Public Safety on GNSS-derived time signals is obviously very high — should the time standard drift or become unavailable for an extended period of time the system would become unstable and fall into a mode that shuts down sites and reduces coverage and capacity. This is often referred to as “fail-soft”. When in this mode, it can seriously affect user communications and in turn the ability to maintain the key goals of Public and Member Safety.

To prevent fail-soft and degraded/ limited service, the system has many built-in redundancies and contingencies.

The first of these is having multiple GNSS receivers distributed across the network to provide geo-redundancy and help to reduce the impact of single unit failure or local interference.

The second is to have these receivers equipped with a rubidium standard that allows them to “free run” without a synchronizing signal for some days while still maintaining the required synchronization.

The third is to have the GNSS devices equipped with receivers that span multiple bands and constellations in case of a constellation failure or issue.

Examples of Over-Reliance
Despite these contingencies, GNSS outages and disruptions can and have occurred and caused local and even wide spread outages across the radio networks. Below are several examples where Public Safety services in the GTA experienced short-term problems that, thankfully, did not adversely affect Public Safety.

In one case, in January of 2016, an incorrect satellite code upload to the GPS constellation triggered an error in the time standard. For additional details, read “GPS Glitch Caused Outages, Fueled Arguments for Backup”. GNSS receivers in many LMR systems saw this as a valid fault or error in the time standard and if they were pre-set in a particular way (the factory default) they would shut themselves down as a preventative measure.

The issue in this case for many systems was that all receivers in the system were programmed the same way and so all GNSS receivers in the system perceived the timing as a local anomaly and took themselves offline — assuming other GNSS receivers in the same system would take over. The operational impact of this and the short-term — I dare say — panic that ensued was very disconcerting, to say the least.

To avoid this from occurring in the future there have been changes made to the GNSS receiver programming and they have been configured to ignore short-term timing anomalies and marshal on for as long as possible relying on their internal rubidium standards to provide the required synchronization. This of course would be sufficient and work in the short term, but the system would eventually fall back to fail-soft if it persisted.

In another case that occurred over a 6-hour period on Good Friday 2017 (starting late-morning and ending mid-afternoon in the Eastern time zone), there were local disruptions to GNSS receiver availability due to local in-band radio interference. Fortunately, this was a short period of time and on a holiday like this the system traffic was low and the potential disruption and impact was nominal.

The concern over this particular event is that it occurred very close to a strategic node in the system that is key to the systems operation and affected a large number of GNSS receivers including the one that provides timing to the Public Safety services’ internal IT network. Had it persisted and if the source could not be found there was a contingency plan in place to “fail over” to the redundant node — located some distance away — that would have been able to provide the timing required.

The cause of the interference was never found and it disappeared as suddenly as it appeared — 6 hours later — and has not been seen since. It could have been as sinister as a “GPS jammer” that is known to exist or as simple as a rogue unlicensed wireless mic or cordless phone. We have polled the surrounding area to no avail.

A similar event to this some months ago that affected the main dispatch channels was traced to an older and inexpensive TV antenna amplifier that had been plugged in by the home owner after being out of service. The device was voluntarily removed by the home owner.

Summary and Outlook
In summary, the dependency of Public Safety users on GNSS constellations and the timing that they provide is growing and becoming more critical for basic operations and are no longer nice-to-have capabilities.

This dependency has made it necessary to be vigilant and monitor the health of these data streams and the systems that are dependent on them. It has also prompted the development of strategies to ensure that there are redundancies and fallback solutions should the GNSS data stream be disrupted for long periods of time.

Some of these strategies may include the use of multiple frequency GNSS receivers, GNSS receivers that can make use of multiple constellations or even alternative time signals from terrestrial based systems.

I would encourage the custodians of all Public Safety systems to investigate the potential vulnerability and conduct a risk assessment when it comes to GNSS and its use.

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