Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The U.S. Defense Department (DoD) is launching a search for innovative technologies to help U.S. forces to maintain their advantage in the face of gains by potential adversaries, tighter budgets, and an increasingly complex landscape of security challenges.
At the top of the agency’s wish list are advances related to unmanned systems, including miniaturization and robotics as well as systems that can operate more autonomously.
By Inside GNSS
Cospas–Sarsat’s extension to MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) will extend its search and rescue coverage (the area outlined in red). On the ground the Galileo programme is contributing a Toulouse-based test bench, and a networked trio of MEOSAR ground stations – known as Local User Terminals (LUTs) – to cover Europe, based in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, Cyprus and the Canary Islands. Existing LUTs are distributed on a per country basis, but it is an advantage of MEOSAR that fewer ground stations will be needed for greater coverage. Cospas-Sarsat illustration The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced completion of tests that indicate the readiness of the European component of a modernized, GNSS satellite–aided search and rescue service known as Cospas-Sarsat.
ESA has completed construction and testing of a trio of located on three islands at the far corners of the continent, ready to pick up distress calls via satellite from across Europe and its surrounding waters.
By Inside GNSS
Efficient power transmission and distribution would benefit from synchronized near–real-time measurements of voltage and current phasors at widely dispersed locations in an electric power grid. Such measurements also could enable effective real-time system monitoring and control, which are considered to be the key to preventing wide-scale cascading outages like the 2003 Northeast Blackout.
By Inside GNSS
As a navigation satellite transmits multiple signals on single frequency (e.g., Open Service and Restricted Service over L5 Band), these are combined on a common carrier to comprise a composite signal. This composite signal passes through navigation payload subsystems such as an up-converter, traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA), filters, and so on. These subsystems may introduce adverse effects on the signal, such as amplitude and phase distortion, nonlinear effects, gain imbalance, IQ imbalance, and phase noise.
By Inside GNSS
GPS Space Service Volume (SSV) Requirements/Performance ParametersNew space missions such as the robotic repair and recovery of damaged or errant communication satellites may become possible with the aid of an emerging class of receivers that is able to use GPS signals for navigation in orbits thousands of kilometers above the middle Earth orbit (MEO) GPS constellation itself.
By Dee Ann Divis
Tables 1, 2, 3 & 4Q: What are the actual performances of GNSS positioning using smartphone technology?
A: “Where I am?” is the typical question asked by a person when visiting a new city or unknown place. Knowing one’s own location is generally a basic necessity for people, both in indoors and outdoors.
By Inside GNSS
GPS III core structure at Lockheed Martin facility. Lockheed Martin photoThe launch of the first GPS III satellite could slip to as late as March 2017, further delaying a modernization program that already has been pushed back repeatedly by budget cuts and technical problems.
“The first GPS III launch is tentatively considered for the first half of FY17, based on booster availability and Air Force launch priorities,” a spokesman for the Space and Missile Systems Center told Inside GNSS.
By Inside GNSS
U.S. Trade Representative Michael FromanTariffs on GPS devices in more than 70 countries could disappear in a matter of months now that the U.S. and China have worked through an impasse on expanding the Information Technology Agreement (ITA).
By Inside GNSS
Implementation of code-Phase structures for GLONASS signals ?/?, L2C and L3Topcon Positioning Group has announced that its latest GNSS reference receiver has tracked a new signal from the GLONASS constellation.
The GLONASS-M 55 satellite was launched in June and is equipped
with an experimental payload capable of transmitting CDMA signals in the
Russian GNSS system’s L3 frequency band centered at 1202.025 MHz. According to the company, Topcon engineers successfully tracked the signal using the NET-G5
receiver during a series of recent tests at the Topcon Technology Center
in Moscow, Russia.
Tallysman has introduced the TW5340 “smart” antenna that pairs Tallysman‘s Accutenna technology with STMicroelectronics’ Teseo II GNSS receiver.
The TW5340 is a multi-constellation GNSS antenna that provides simultaneous GPS/GLONASS/SBAS reception and is designed for use in professional grade applications such as precision timing, network synchronization, or low-current and tracking/positioning applications.
By Inside GNSS
Swiss-based u‑blox launched its new EVA‑M8M stand-alone positioning module today (November 6, 2014), bringing concurrent multi-GNSS capabilities into the company’s compact EVA footprint.
Technology to counter the threat of GNSS jamming is now available at Dover and along the east coast of the United Kingdom as the island nation continues to implement an enhanced Loran (eLoran) system that is setting an example for the world.
By Inside GNSS
Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime TransportationProdded by Congress, the federal government is reexamining its decision to abandon eLoran, a network of ground stations capable of supplying essential timing and positioning data to power, phone, and other critical networks if something happed to GPS.
By Inside GNSS
