Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Legal filings suggest the U.S and the United Kingdom may be well on their way to working through a heated dispute over patents that, if left unresolved, could scuttle efforts to make GPS and Galileo interoperable.
By Dee Ann Divis
A combined conference and trade fair, European Space Solutions — scheduled for December 3–5 in Central Hall, Westminster Storey’s Gate, London, England — will bring businesses and the public sectors together with users and developers to explore how space technologies and applications, including satellite navigation, can make a difference in the lives and livelihoods of people across Europe.
By Inside GNSS
University of Texas-Austin Radionavigation Lab drone used in GPS spoofing demonstrations. University of Texas photoA September report on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighted the potential risks posed by GPS jamming and spoofing but failed to make any new recommendations on how the issue should be addressed. Associated privacy issues, however, have gotten more attention.
By Inside GNSS
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is expected to ask its top advisors on signal interference to help map out the allowable power limits for applications using frequencies close to those used by the satellite navigation community.
By Dee Ann Divis
In one of three separate filings on Friday (September 28, 2012) would-be broadband provider LightSquared asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to set “operating parameters” leading to “revised technical rules” to enable it to operate in the lower of the two frequency bands where tests last year showed its operations would interfere with GPS.
Those rules and parameters should, the filing intimated, include standards for GPS receivers.
By Dee Ann Divis
With the debacle surrounding LightSquared’s now-stymied proposal still reverberating through Washington, federal agencies are studying ways to repurpose the spectrum adjacent to the satellite navigation frequencies without causing debilitating interference to GPS receivers.
By Dee Ann Divis
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has told those awaiting their slice of the GPS civil program budget that the funds are on the way.
The money, which is supposed to support that portion of the GPS program springing from the needs of civilian users, has been held up for months. In fact, as of late August — with less than 40 days left to go in the fiscal year — the money had not been transferred to either the military’s GPS Directorate or the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT).
By Dee Ann Divis
TABLE 1. Spoofer antenna requirements for various hardened GPS signal types
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.”
– A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Is our faith in the integrity and infallibility of the Global Positioning System misplaced or, perhaps, insufficiently grounded?
By Inside GNSS
To help counter pressures from federal budget cutters and wireless advocates searching for more broadband spectrum, the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board is crafting a study documenting the economic benefits of GPS.
“We have a new assignment . . . to discover and disclose the economic contributions of the Global Positioning System,” Chairman Jim Schlesinger told the board at an August 15, 1012 meeting of the advisory board.
By Dee Ann Divis
A new U.S. appellate court decision could bring the issue of warrantless tracking of suspects using GPS and other positioning data derived from mobile phones back before the Supreme Court.
And if the case — United States of America v. Melvin Skinner — is appealed to and accepted for review by the “Supremes,” they would probably have an opportunity to more directly address the question of whether U.S. citizens have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their personal location information garnered surreptitiously from GPS-enabled cell phones by police.
By Inside GNSS
China will build a testing and certification network for its BeiDou satellite navigation system over the next three years as part of an effort to make the GNSS system more competitive globally.
By Inside GNSS
A congressional committee overseeing activities at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appears poised to push the agency into a more substantive role in overseeing the use of drones in the United States — a move that could force DHS to move more forcefully to protect GPS users from spoofing.
The Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigation and Management within the House Homeland Security Committee is looking to DHS to manage the civil use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.
By Dee Ann Divis
Tim Farrar, TMF AssociatesWhile members of the GPS community are pushing to formally end the threat of signal interference from LightSquared’s proposed wireless network, the political realities of an election year suggest they will have to wait for a decision.
“There are not a lot of reasons to rush,” said Tim Farrar of TMF Associates, a consulting firm that closely follows mobile communications industry, adding it was “unlikely” there would be any progress ahead of the vote in November.
By Dee Ann Divis
