Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
[Updated July 2] Appropriators in both the U.S. House and Senate have slashed next year’s funding for support of the civil portion of the GPS program. Lawmakers halved the portion of the Federal Aviation Administration budget dedicated to supporting the civil signals as well as the ground network monitoring of those signals.
By Inside GNSS
Independent truck operators and a general fear of government surveillance led to passage of an amendment today (June 29, 2012) that would prohibit U.S. agencies from implementing any rule requiring GPS tracking or other devices to be installed in passenger or commercial vehicles.
In a voice vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, congressmen approved the amendment to H.R. 5972, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2013.
By Inside GNSS
The organization formed to help protect GPS users from a proposed wireless broadband network likely to cause overwhelming interference to GPS devices will not disband. The Coalition to Save Our GPS not only plans to continue to operate but may expand the issues on which it works to incorporate additional topics, such as receiver standards, and perhaps even evolve into a full-fledged trade association.
By Inside GNSS
The convergence of mobile communications, information, and navigation technologies is driving the need to re-examine interference and jamming issues within a broader national and international cybersecurity framework, a U.S. homeland security official told a recent conference on GNSS vulnerability.
By Inside GNSS
Four months after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indicated its intention to backtrack on its conditional approval of LightSquared’s terrestrial wireless broadband network, a leading GNSS manufacturer is pressing the agency to finalize its decision.
By Inside GNSS
Dee Ann Divis, Washington View columnistDee Ann Divis, Inside GNSS’s Washington correspondent¸ was named the winner of the Society of Professional Journalists Washington, D.C., Professional Chapter’s highest journalistic award, the Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award, for her work with the magazine.
By Dee Ann Divis
Tied up in the long-running fight over reauthorizing the Highway Trust Fund is funding for a program to develop GPS-enabled crash avoidance technology for vehicles.
By Inside GNSS
As Desi Arnaz often said to Lucille Ball during an “I Love Lucy” episode on TV, “You’ve got some ’splaining to do.”
I refer, of course, to the untoward and unexpected initiative by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) to patent the technical innovations that underlie the planned next generation of civil GNSS signals.
By Dee Ann Divis
An increasingly urgent call to certify performance of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers is being heard from several sectors of the national political and business landscape. This issue has arisen now as a direct result of the LightSquared initiative that has generated so much attention over the last 18 months.
Instead of diving into those issues directly, however, a little historical perspective is in order first — and it’s amazing in itself that a technology as new as GPS in the public eye would actually have a history to reflect upon, but it does.
By Inside GNSS
STOP GPS-based monitoring device(Updated May 22) Amid a growing controversy over GNSS-aided tracking of private citizens, a recent study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) may point toward a politically acceptable, large — and largely untapped — market: monitoring criminals released early from prison.
By Inside GNSS
Legislation moving through Congress could reshape efforts to counter GPS interference as the government steps up its efforts to fight cybercrime and protect critical systems like the power grid and communications networks.
Though cybersecurity generally focuses on protecting information systems the broad definitions in some legislation now on the Hill appear to encompass GPS support systems, some user communities, and even the constellation itself.
By Inside GNSS
Variations on the common GPS/Galileo MBOC signalThe U.S. government is so unhappy about a British patent claim on the new civil GPS signal that, if things cannot be worked out, officals might consider abandoning the countries’ interoperable signal structure, sources told Inside GNSS.
By Inside GNSS
Variations on the common GPS/Galileo MBOC signalThe British military establishment is seeking royalties from GPS receiver manufacturers, asserting it holds a patent on the technology at the heart of the new GPS and Galileo civil signals.
Should U.S. manufacturers have to pay royalties, American GPS users, who have already paid for the GPS constellation and made it available to the world free of charge, could find themselves spending more to use its location capabilities. Sources said the development could undermine relations between the U.S. and the European Union (EU), which have cooperated for years to develop a common signal at the L1/E1 frequency centered at 1575.42 MHz.
By Inside GNSS
