Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
In the beginning, GPS was envisioned as a military program. A sign on the wall in the Joint Program Office where the system came into being during the early 1970s read: “The mission of this Program Office is to:
A Department of Homeland (DHS)-chartered May 2021 report concludes that PNT threat and resilience concerns are not as dire as some have made them out to be, and that funds for backup could be spent elsewhere. Why this runs counter to other recent government reports is not clear, nor is the fallout from this divergence of Congressionally mandated views. The Department of Transportation has distanced itself a bit from this report by the RAND Corporation—and even its issuer, the DHS, seems to have done so.
A new approach to achieving the safety needed for levels 3 and higher of autonomy builds on a thorough mathematical framework to support safety analysis, while delivering very tight position bounds.
A novel method to track Galileo E5 AltBOC signal phase adjusts and then combines the correlation results of the upper sideband and lower sideband signal to form a double-sideband correlation result, which is equivalent to AltBOC wideband receiving to some extent. Thus, a Galileo E5 wideband receiver can be achieved with only minor modification to a traditional GNSS single-sideband receiver. The method can be further applied to other binary offset carrier (BOC) signals.
By Inside GNSS
SAM PULLEN, Stanford University
A: Since at least 1997, the Global Positioning System (GPS) Control Segment (CS) has issued what are known as “Notice Advisor(ies) to NAVSTAR Users” or “NANU(s).”
By Inside GNSS
Multi-antenna carrier-phase differential GNSS (CDGNSS)-based pose (position and orientation) estimation aided by monocular visual measurements and a smartphone-grade inertial sensor form the core of a system designed for micro aerial vehicles. It can be applied generally for low-cost, lightweight, high-accuracy, geo-referenced pose estimation.
A consortium is preparing to ramp up production of Geonav IoT, a seamless indoor/outdoor positioning solution for sports applications, asset tracking and aiding drone traffic management. The GNSS module is a high-accuracy, dual-frequency system-on-chip with an integrated, low-power application processor.
One hundred days into the administration and the federal civil service crew has set the stage for the Biden team on the tough Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) issues they face: the Ligado debacle, interference concerns and a troubling lack of system redundancy or resiliency.
As stated in these pages last September, every GNSS user in every segment can benefit from the new modernized signals in the L5 band. Foremost among these are likely to be smartphone users.
By Alan Cameron
Inaccuracy in cities has been the persistent and lingering problem for GNSS, engendering many attempts at a solution and revealing deeply embedded difficulties. This article provides an overview of the Google solution, the rollout in Android phones, and before/after results.
The Department of Transportation Report on complementary and backup PNT technologies has good information but paints far from a complete picture. Several candidate technologies were not demonstrated, and market factors that will form an important consideration are not discussed.
eMobility services that provide on-demand eBikes and eScooters rentals are fast growing alternatives to traditional transportation modalities. As they are affordable, convenient, and very green, eMobility services will continue to grow in popularity. This article presents some of the challenges and useful solutions to accurately track eBike and eScooter location in the real world.
Dr. Rui Hirokawa is Deputy General Manager, Space Systems Department, at Kamakura Works, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. A fixture in today’s GNSS community, he manages several QZSS-related projects, including the centimeter-level augmentation service (CLAS), and has recently been deeply involved in the international standardization of high-accuracy GNSS.
By Peter Gutierrez
