Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Christine Edwards and Peter Hall of Sci-Tech Systems, Ltd.A UK start-up company, Sci-Tech Systems Ltd., gathered three prizes in the 2008 European Satellite Navigation Competition — including the overall Galileo Master Award — with a tracking system designed to help rescue persons who have fallen overboard from ships at sea.
By Glen Gibbons
NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) has recently added 43 GPS tracking sites into the Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) network overseen by the federal agency.
By Glen Gibbons
Neuchâtel, Switzerland–based SpectraTime, a member of the Orolia group, has received a €2.5-million research contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop critical technologies for future space-qualified active maser, a critical component of the ACES (Atomic Clocks Ensemble in Space) scientific program.
By Glen Gibbons
A new GPS Standard Positioning Service Performance Specification (SPS PS) — the first new version since 2001 — brings the level of expected GPS service closer to real-world expectations, although still with conservative margins.
By Glen Gibbons
Baseband Technologies, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, has announced its GPS/PC Jr, a real-time software GPS receiver IP solution.
By Glen Gibbons
u-blox AG has selected the NavX-NCS, a multi-constellation and multi-frequency GNSS RF navigation constellation simulator from IFEN GmbH, as the Galileo reference for its receiver development and testing.
By Glen Gibbons
The 746th Test Squadron (746 TS) will conduct its sixth JAMFEST, an innovative GPS jamming exercise at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), New Mexico, in mid-January, 2009 — a rescheduling of the event that had been planned to take place next month.
JAMFEST programs are aimed at providing low-cost, realistic, GPS jamming scenarios for testing GPS-based navigation systems, as well as training personnel in unique GPS denied environments.
By Glen Gibbons
NaviForum, China’s large GNSS industry event, has been postponed from this December until next year.
“Due to the big earthquake and Olympics game in China, the Chinese government decided to postpone the NaviForum to sometime next year,” NaviForum organizer Peter Zhou told Inside GNSS. Zhou is executive secretary of the conference’s organizing committee.
By Glen Gibbons
After a series of rescheduled launch dates, U.S. Air Force (USAF) officials have placed the final two GPS Block IIR-M satellites on “indefinite” status, pending the replacement of ordnance timers used in the Delta II launcher.
In a response to inquiries from Inside GNSS, spokespersons for the GPS Wing at the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, and Launch and Range Space Wing said that “based on the parts production and qualification schedule, we project the GPS IIR launches will occur in Spring and Summer 2009.”
By Glen Gibbons
Spirent Communications plc has announced that its UMTS Location Test System (ULTS) is now able to validate all assisted-GPS (AGPS) test standards by providing a single test platform that runs all the validated A-GPS test cases required by the Global Certification Forum (GCF) and the PCS Type Certification Review Board (PTCRB).
By Glen Gibbons
Applanix has introduced a major new release of POSPac MMS (Mobile Mapping Suite), its GNSS-aided inertial postprocessing software for mobile mapping and surveying applications.
The new release adds features and functionality for land-based mapping and surveying to the existing suite, making it fully equipped for processing mobile mapping data from the air, sea, and land platforms.
By Glen Gibbons
One is tempted to paraphrase Julius Caesar, “Galileo est omnis divisa in partes tres,” because, as with any global navigation satellite system, Galileo as a whole is divided into three main parts: the political, the infrastructural, and the user application marketplace.
By Inside GNSS
Spain’s leading IT company, Indra, has begun a €1.5 million, 18-month project for the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the feasibility and definition of the European Geostationary Overlay Service (EGNOS) looking ahead towards a future multiconstellation regional system (MRS).
By Glen Gibbons
