Tag: demonstration

UrsaNav trials eLoran as GNSS backup with ADVA grandmaster clock

Successful eLoran field trial using ADVA’s OSA 5420 Series demonstrates same accuracy and stability as GPS with much-improved resilience

UrsaNav and ADVA have conducted an enhanced long-range navigation (eLoran) field trial using UrsaNav’s eLoran receiver and ADVA’s Oscilloquartz grandmaster clock technology. The successful demonstration shows that eLoran offers a robust and reliable backup for GPS and other GNSS, and could be used to provide an assured position, navigation and timing (PNT) service.

The trial follows U.S. PNT Executive Order 13905 aimed at strengthening national resilience through PNT services, including protecting critical infrastructure such as electrical power grid and communication networks from rising cyber threats. By harnessing ADVA’s flexible OSA 5420 series, designed with assured PNT (A-PNT) technology, UrsaNav has shown that eLoran can provide a new layer of protection and significantly boost timing resilience and security.

“The success of this field trial demonstrates how eLoran, as part of ADVA’s assured PNT solution, can serve as a crucial backup for GPS,” said Charles Schue, CEO, UrsaNav. “We have shown how our technology enables ADVA’s grandmaster clock to receive UTC timing from the eLoran system for a period of several days with the same accuracy and stability as GPS. Of course, this capability is extensible to other GNSS as well. eLoran is far less vulnerable to unintentional jamming and spoofing disruptions or intentional attacks, thereby delivering nanosecond precision with even more resilience.”

“By partnering with ADVA, we’ve been able to show that our eLoran receiver interoperates with the best network timing toolkit available,” Schue said. “The OSA 5420 Series is a great product — highly efficient and easy to operate. Together with ADVA, we’re paving the way for tomorrow’s more robust assured PNT synchronization architecture. Now that UrsaNav has demonstrated the power of our OSA 5420 Series to utilize eLoran in the event of outages, we have another very important tool to ensure the quality and availability of time-sensitive services.”

UrsaNav’s latest trial used the OSA 5420 series grandmaster clock with built-in GNSS receiver. Timing stability from GPS was measured for several days. This was then replaced with eLoran for the same period with no loss of stability.

The test was conducted indoors where GNSS signals are not usually available, potentially extending the availability of precise UTC timing to many more environments.

“Commercially available GNSS jammers and spoofers are easy and cheap for attackers to acquire,” explained Nir Laufer, VP, product line management, Oscilloquartz, ADVA. “That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing a growing number of incidents across the world of blocked or misleading signals. If power utilities, enterprises, service providers and governments continue to rely on GNSS alone, it’s only a matter of time before the consequences become very serious. That’s why we’re committed to tackling GNSS vulnerabilities with advanced technologies like our ePRTC offering, cesium atomic clocks and our optical timing channel solution. Now that UrsaNav has demonstrated the power of our OSA 5420 series to utilize eLoran in the event of outages, we have another very important tool to ensure the quality and availability of time-sensitive services.”

The demo showed how ADVA’s synchronization technology enables protection for critical infrastructure that needs ultra-reliable aPNT solutions. (Photo: Business Wire)

July 27, 2021
Audi, Airbus and Italdesign test flying taxi concept

Audi, Airbus and Italdesign presented for the first time a flying and driving prototype of Pop.Up Next, a flying taxi. The companies demonstrated the concept at Drone Week, held Nov. 27-29 in Amsterdam.

The concept combines a self-driving electric car with a passenger drone. In the first public test flight, the flight module accurately placed a passenger capsule on the ground module, which then drove from the test grounds autonomously.

Photo: Audi

The demonstration was done with a 1:4 scale model. But as soon as the coming decade, Audi customers could use the flying taxi service in large cities — in multi-modal operation, in the air and on the road, without changing vehicles.

“Flying taxis are on the way. We at Audi are convinced of that,” said Bernd Martens, Audi board member for sourcing and IT and president of the Audi subsidiary Italdesign. “More and more people are moving to cities. And more and more people will be mobile thanks to automation. In future senior citizens, children, and people without a driver’s license will want to use convenient robot taxis. If we succeed in making a smart allocation of traffic between roads and airspace, people and cities can benefit in equal measure.”

To see what an on-demand service of this kind could be like, Audi is conducting tests in South America in cooperation with the Airbus subsidiary Voom. Customers book helicopter flights in Mexico City or Sao Paulo, while an Audi is at the ready for the journey to or from the landing site.

“Services like this help us to understand our customers’ needs better,” Martens said. “Because in the future, flying taxis will appeal to a wide range of city dwellers. With Pop.Up Next we are simultaneously exploring the boundaries of what is technically possible. The next step is for a full-size prototype to fly and drive.”

Audi is also supporting the Urban Air Mobility flying taxi project in Ingolstadt. This initiative is preparing test operations for a flying taxi at Audi’s site, and is part of a joint project of the European Union in the framework of the marketplace for the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities.

The project aims to convince the public of the benefits of the new technology and answer questions concerning battery technology, regulation, certification and infrastructure.

December 5, 2018
OriginGPS creates IoT-connected baseball

OriginGPS teamed with Friendly Technologies, an internet of things (IoT) and device management company, and Humavox, a wireless charging expert, to create an IoT-connected baseball in six weeks.

Friendly’s IoT platform interfaces the OriginIoT (cellular IoT) system to enable communication, management and a graphical user interface, while Humavox’s compact Wi-Fi-charging bowl re-energizes the system.

The demonstration — developed in six weeks without a single line of embedded code or RF engineering — was showcased at CTIA Mobile World Congress 2017, in San Francisco Sept. 12–14.

The OriginIoT effectively resolves inherent costly issues to IoT developments — namely long project cycles and required embedded software expertise. It expedites development cycles, and eliminates the need for embedded coding and RF engineering, resulting in substantial cuts in development resources, the companies said. With OriginGPS’ cellular-GNSS integrated in the IoT cellular system, the smart baseball is a proof of concept for rapid and accessible IoT development.

Friendly’s One-IoTTM platform enables service providers to manage the data and configuration of millions of devices on a single platform, accelerating deployment and streamlining IoT service management, while cutting operational costs.

December 1, 2017
Demonstration tests positioning in the far north

News from the European Space Agency

A sea-based test is demonstrating the potential of extending satnav augmentation coverage into north polar regions, offering a safety-of-life standard of navigation performance to users including shipping or aircraft in flight.

Norwegian research vessel Gunnerus, owned by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, is equipped to pick up satnav signals from GPS and GLONASS as well as augmentation signals specially generated for the test, modeled on Europe’s existing European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS).

Norwegian research vessel Gunnerus, owned by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. (Photo: ESA)

Gunnerus is making use of the signals during five days of sailing off Trondheim. The demonstration is part of the Arctic Test Bed project, conducted within the European Global Navigations Satellite System Evolutions Programme (EGEP) of ESA.

The ESA-designed EGNOS improves the precision of US GPS signals over most European territory, while also providing continuous and reliable updates on their integrity.

A 40-strong network of ground monitoring stations perform an independent measurement of GPS signals, so that corrections can be calculated and then passed to users immediately via a trio of geostationary satellites. The result is a several-fold increase in precision.

“Simply due to Earth’s curvature, EGNOS signals are not visible above about 70 degrees north, but they are needed to support polar routing,” explains Marco Porretta, overseeing the Arctic Test Bed project.

To investigate possible methods for improving Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) performance in this Arctic region, the test campaign will assess the benefits of augmentation for various types of satnav signals: single-frequency GPS; dual-frequency GPS; and dual-constellation dual-frequency, where GPS signals are combined with those of its Russian counterpart, thus increasing the number of observations.

“The planned next-decade upgrade of EGNOS, along with other augmentation systems operated over other continents (such as the U.S. equivalent Wide Area Augmentation System, WAAS), will perform multi-constellation augmentation as standard,” adds Marco. “That means data from this test case should be especially valuable to support interoperability between future augmentation systems.”

The Arctic Test Bed makes use of some EGNOS reference stations along the north of Europe, along with additional stations in locations including Greenland, Jan Mayen Island, Spitsbergen and Norway.

Model of the well-known Oct. 30, 2003, Halloween solar storm produced by the MIDAS tomographic ionospheric model from the University of Bath. (Image; ESA)

Marco explains, “These stations will allow specific monitoring of the ionosphere — the electrically active segment of Earth’s atmosphere — in the Arctic region. The ionosphere is significant because it is an important source of satnav signal delay, or in some cases can cause receivers to lose signal lock due to ionospheric scintillations.”

With geostationary satellites out of sight, navigation corrections for the Arctic Test Bed will be transmitted via terrestrial radio. In future, an operational version of the system could either stick with this solution or rely on other satellite-based means of dissemination from non-geostationary orbit.

The all-important generation of the augmentation correction message will take place at a processing center in Hønefoss, Norway, using adapted EGNOS algorithms.

An operational version of the Arctic Test Bed could potentially extend augmentation coverage to as high as 85 degrees north, as high as Greenland, extending to the edge of WAAS coverage.

The Arctic Test Bed project was initiated by ESA, with Kongsberg Seatex serving as prime contractor, GMV Aerospace and Defence, Thales Alenia Space France, Logica, Terma, the Norwegian Mapping Authority, Technical University of Denmark, Septentrio and the University of Calgary.

June 23, 2016
Coyote howls into the wind

NOAA, Raytheon deploy UAS for hurricane research

A team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Raytheon has successfully demonstrated advancements of the Coyote Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), verifying new technology that improves Coyote’s ability to collect vital weather data on hurricanes.

Coyote drops out of a P-3 weather surveillance plane, spreads its wings and flies straight at a hurricane, braving violent winds and punishing rain to gather weather data and beam it back to meteorologists.

Drew Osbrink and Eric Redweik of Sensintel and NOAA hurricane researcher Joe Cione monitor data from the Coyote as it flies into Hurricane Edouard in 2014. (Photo: NOAA)

Coyote solves a problem that has limited forecasters’ ability to tell how hard a hurricane will hit. The secret behind the storm’s punch lies in what is known as the “boundary layer” — a low-altitude area that includes the surface of the ocean. Because hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean water, information collected at the interface of atmosphere and ocean is vital to the understanding and prediction of a storm’s strength.

“That’s where the energy is extracted from the ocean to the atmosphere,” said Joe Cione, a NOAA hurricane researcher. “Unfortunately, it is too difficult for us to go with manned aircraft to fly down there.”

The Coyote can maneuver in the most violent regions of a hurricane.Traditional weather instruments parachute from a plane and grab only a snapshot of humidity, wind speed and other factors, but Coyote’s winged design enables it to linger and return to certain areas for more measurements.

“Coyote will gather data specifically in the eye wall where it can provide information for forecasters to predict intensity from a safe distance,” said John Hobday, Raytheon. “This is a significant difference for researchers: instead of providing a snapshot of data, it’s a full-length movie.”

The Coyote after a successful flight on Jan. 7. (Photo: NOAA)

Operational Upgrades

In a Jan. 7 test, the Coyote was released from NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter P-3 aircraft and flew over the Avon Park Air Force Range in Florida, to measure the transmission range of upgraded technologies. It set a new distance record for flight control and data transmission to the P-3, and provided hurricane forecasters with real-time data on atmospheric air pressure, temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction as well as surface temperature.

Data collected will help improve the accuracy of forecasts. “Here at the National Hurricane Center (NHC), we are keenly interested in obtaining measurements from the Coyote of the strongest winds near the center of the storm,” said Chris Landsea, science operations officer at NHC. “Coyote could help us paint a better picture of current storm intensity for our storm updates.”

In 2014, NOAA deployed four of the Coyote planes into Hurricane Edouard, a Category 3 storm, at controlled altitudes as low as 400 feet. Scientists on board the P-3 received meteorological data in both the eye of the storm and the eye wall.

However, the P-3 had to fly 5 to 7 miles from the Coyote to pick up its signal. So engineers at Raytheon and the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center upgraded Coyote’s sensor systems and improved its communications package to allow it to talk to the plane over longer distances. Now, Coyote can fly for 50 miles away from the launch aircraft, which will be free to continue its own mission.

Coyote also was outfitted with an upgraded instrument package that includes an infrared sensor to measure sea surface temperature, which will help scientists understand how a hurricane extracts energy from the ocean — and how it might intensify or change. The team also is working toward optimizing battery life.

The test flight verified the Coyote’s ability to transmit the data collected from its instrument package to operators aboard the P-3 as well as at the NHC, where personnel monitor storms and develop forecasts.

NOAA scientist Paul Reasor demonstrates the Coyote. (Photo: NOAA)

February 15, 2016
Lockheed Martin conducts collaborative unmanned systems demonstration

Lockheed Martin has demonstrated its ability to integrate unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operations into the National Airspace System (NAS) using its prototype UAS Traffic Management (UTM) capabilities.

During the demonstration on Nov. 18, the Stalker XE UAS provided data and a precise geolocation to the unmanned K-MAX cargo helicopter, which conducted water drops to extinguish a fire, while the UTM tracked the UAS operations and communicated with Air Traffic Control in real time.

The Stalker UAS directs the unmanned K-MAX cargo helicopter to conduct water drops at a precise location to extinguish a fire. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)

“This demonstration represents the path forward for flying UAS in the NAS using Flight Service-based UTM capabilities to extend the technology and systems that air traffic controllers know and understand,” said Paul Engola, vice president, Transportation & Financial Solutions. “We were able to successfully modify the existing K-MAX and Stalker XE ground control software to connect to the UTM services and conduct the firefighting mission.”

For more than 80 years, manned aircraft have supported firefighting missions during daylight hours. Because unmanned K-MAX can fly day and night, in all weather, its insertion into firefighting operations offers the potential to triple the amount of time ground firefighters can receive aerial support.

The Stalker XE UAS worked in tandem with K-MAX to identify hot spots and fire intensity with its electro-optical, infrared camera. Its stable, high-definition imaging capabilities enable day and night operations. Powered by a ruggedized solid oxide fuel cell, Stalker XE achieves more than eight hours of flight endurance.

The Stalker and K-MAX operated in collaboration with a prototype UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system, which provides essential capabilities to enable safe UAS operations. (Photo: Lockheed Martin)

December 11, 2015