Optional Categories Archives - Page 5 of 28 - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

March 9, 2013

Mike Veth: Engineering Meets the Wild Blue Yonder

Veth proudly poses with his RV-8A fuselage components securely fastened in a jig. The RV-8A is a two-place, tandem, experimental aircraft that is home-built from kit components. When completed, he plans to use the aircraft as an experimental navigation testbed.

SIDEBAR: Mike Veth’s Compass Points

Over the course of Lt. Col. Michael Veth’s 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force (USAF), certain navigation technologies may have changed dramatically, but working toward increased accuracy has remained a constant.

By Inside GNSS

RedBlade

Anyone who has gone to college is probably familiar with the idea of a capstone course. A final hurdle to clear in receiving a degree, students take such a course to demonstrate their practical knowledge by pulling together all of the main concepts taught throughout the program of study.

By Inside GNSS

The PNT Boom

FIGURE 1: Potential components of a multisensor integrated navigation system

The navigation world is booming with new ideas at the moment to meet some of the greatest positioning challenges of our times. To realize demanding applications — such as reliable pedestrian navigation, lane identification, and robustness against interference, jamming and spoofing — we need to bring these different ideas together.

By Inside GNSS

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November 18, 2012

Taking Turns at the Fiscal Cliff

The GPS program has taken a fiscal hit that will delay critical plans to begin multi-satellite launches and could ultimately hamper the Air Force’s ability to keep the constellation at its current level of service.

The shortfall is just one of the challenges facing the program over the next four months as the current six-month budget extension winds down, the government’s ability to borrow runs out, and, barring a fast political deal, the onerous budget cuts set up under sequestration kick in.

By Dee Ann Divis

November 14, 2012

Non-Gaussian Noises

View the Equations for this article

Various designs of inertial/GNSS integrated navigation systems exist, with different architectures depending on the quality of sensors, the mission, the dynamics of the vehicle, and the non-linearity of the dynamics model, measurement model, or both.

By Inside GNSS

Navipedia — The GNSS Wiki

Javier Ventura-Traveset introduces Navipedia at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit on March 14, 2012. He is responsible for managing Navipedia’s development as well as GNSS education activities for ESA.

Working Papers explore the technical and scientific themes that underpin GNSS programs and applications. This regular column is coordinated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Günter Hein, head of Europe’s Galileo Operations and Evolution.

In the last 30 years, satellite navigation applications have grown in number and kind, entire new systems have emerged, and existing systems have modernized.

By Inside GNSS

November 1, 2012

UK Revokes Key GNSS Patent That Sparked Dispute over Cooperation, Interoperability

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

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October 29, 2012

Indoor Navigation Smartphone App wins 2012 Galileo Masters Prize

Presentation of the 2012 €20,000 Galileo Master prize: (L to R)) Thorsten Rudolph, head of AZO, the contest organizers; Carlo des Dorides, head of the European GNSS Agency; winner Dirk Elias, Fraunhofer Portigal and Ulrike Daniels, AZO business development. (photo: Simone Hörmann/AZO).

The 2012 ESNC awards ceremony at der Residenz, Munich (AZO photo)

Finding your way will be even easier with a new smartphone app from two Portuguese research institutes that augments GNSS with ultra-low magnetic field communication (ULF-MC) for reliable navigation in office buildings, airports, underground parking garages and other indoor locations.

By Inside GNSS

October 16, 2012

RTCA on Path to Study RF Interference Limits and Tougher GNSS Receivers

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

September 29, 2012

LightSquared, FCC Appear to Align on GPS Receiver Standards in Continuing Spectrum Battle

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

September 28, 2012

The Fallout from GPS vs. LightSquared

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

September 21, 2012

NextGen Equipage Fund Takes Off While FAA Works to Cut Program Delays, Cost Overruns

Future of air traffic control (FAA image)

A public-private partnership created to reduce the financial burden involved in implementing the nation’s GPS-based, next-generation (NextGen) air transportation system has raised its first rounds of financing and is now negotiating contracts with its charter customers.

“We have . . . closed our first tranche of equity,” said Jim Hughey, senior vice-president of the NextGen Equipage Fund. The fund has secured a total of $100 million in commitments with some $40 million of that coming from leading aerospace companies.

By Dee Ann Divis

September 3, 2012