March-April 2008 - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

March-April 2008

COMING UP in the March-April 2008 issue…
To advertise, contact glen@insidegnss.com
Find out more about advertising

COVER STORY

Developing a High Accuracy Pointing System for Maneuvering Platforms
Joseph M. Strus, Michael Kirkpatrick, and James W. Sinko
SRI International

COMING UP in the March-April 2008 issue…
To advertise, contact glen@insidegnss.com
Find out more about advertising

COVER STORY

Developing a High Accuracy Pointing System for Maneuvering Platforms
Joseph M. Strus, Michael Kirkpatrick, and James W. Sinko
SRI International
A C130 needed to maintain unbroken communications with an Inmarsat satellite during missions. Engineers from SRI International designed and tested a high-accuracy GPS/inertial pointing system for the plane’s antenna – one capable of 0.1-degree 3-D pointing accuracy with small external form factor, roll-on capability and reasonable cost.

TECHNICAL ARTICLES
SAASM on Trial: Test Regime for GPS Military Receivers
Paul Benshoof, 746th Test Group
How reliable is the new-generation Selective Availability Anti-Spoof Module (SAASM) when it’s integrated with a GPS receiver? The USAF 746th Test Squadron designed and developed a new test bed that performins end-to-end functional tests on weapon systems with integrated SAASM-based receivers within the platform and/or its munitions. Here’s what their new mobile laboratory asset can do.

ARTUS: An Advanced Galileo/GPS Receiver
Thorsten Lück, Jón Winkel, Michael Bodenbach, Eckart Göhler, Nico Falk
IFEN GmbH, Poing, Germany
Angelo Consoli, Francesco Piazza, Danilo Gerna, NemeriX, Manno, Switzerland
Robin Granger, Peter Readman, Steve Simpson, Roke Manor Research, New Hampshire, UK
Hans-Jürgen Euler, inPosition GmbH, Switzerland
ARTUS is a second-generation receiver for scientific and professional applications that provides all-in-view, all-frequencies tracking of Galileo and GPS signals, including AltBOC tracking of the Galileo E5 frequency in a bandwidth of 72 MHz. Engineers from Swiss, German, and British companies discuss its development and testing results using laboratory-simulated signals and signals in space simulated within the German Galileo Test Environment (GATE).

Tracking BOC Signals – A New Receiver Principle
Stephen Hodgart and Paul Blunt, University of Surrey
Martin Unwin, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
Receiver designers describe an innovative approach to signal tracking and processing issues associated with the binary offset carrier (BOC) modulation that will be used on modernized GPS and Galileo services.

WORKING PAPERS
Using GNSS Indoors — Fighting the Fading (Part I of II)
Andreas Teuber
The GNSS signal received indoors often fades – experiences reflections, diffraction, or scattering when entering the building and propagating indoors. This column covers existing channel models and recent experiments that show how fading is affected by building materials, shape of the environment, and incident angle of the signal.
See previous articles in this series

GNSS SOLUTIONS
What does “geometry-based” and “geometry-free” mean in the context of GNSS?

Solution by Dennis Odijk, Delft Institute of Earth Observation and Space Systems.
How will the Open Service Galileo signal in space change the acquisition process in GNSS receivers?
Solution by Daniele Borio and Letizia Lo Presti, Politecnico di Torino.
See previous articles in this series

HUMAN ENGINEERING
Another in our popular series about GNSS engineers (including their favorite equations) 
by Melody Ward Leslie
See previous articles in this series

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS DISTRIBUTION
March 17-20
U.S. Department of Defense Joint Navigation Conference
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
April 7-8I
International Satellite Navigation Forum
Moscow, Russia
April 21-22
GNSS Signal 2008
Toulouse Space Show, France
April 23-25
European Navigation Conference
(ENC)
European Conference on Time and Frequency
(EFTF)
Toulouse Space Show, France

Advertising home page

IGM_e-news_subscribe