GPS World

Tag: Mike Jones

  • Resilient PNT threats, solutions detailed in webinar

    New details are emerging from talks among the speakers slated for this Thursday’s free webinar Resilient PNT for Military Applications.

    Virtually everyone in the industry agrees that threats to military positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) are real; the threats continue to be newly emerging, and they are growing in complexity.

    “We value the idea of open architecture and universal communications buses to make it easier to incorporate the latest in technologies in a timely manner without system redesign,” said one webinar speaker, and the other three speakers agreed.

    Though designed with military applications in mind, the webinar will provide multiple points of relevant reference for non-military users and applications as well.

    Here’s an advance peek at the topics that participants will hear in detail at 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific) in Thursday’s webinar.

    Mikel Miller

    Vice President for PNT Technologies at Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S); Former U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory

    • Introduction to the problem
    • Situation today
    • Situation in the future (where we want to be in ~5 years?)
      • Open architecture
    • Communications problem/solutions overview
    • Cybersecurity problem/solutions overview
    • PNT problem/solutions overview
      • NetAssure introduction and details
    Excerpt from Miller’s presentation. (Credit: Mikel Miller)

    Lisa Perdue

    Product Manager and Applications Engineer, Spectracom

    • Introduce the categories of solutions – Protect, Detect, Mitigate, Test
    • Discuss several technologies in each category brief overviews
      • Protect – Antennas – AJAS and Horizon Blocking
      • Detect – receiver algorithms, multiple receiver integration, system level monitoring and alerting
      • Mitigate – Augmentations – STL and eLoran, system level mitigation
      • Test – just a reiteration that new threats are always emerging and we need to be able to test vulnerabilities to the latest emerging threats – in a timely matter
    • Discuss Layered approach that include not only the technologies, but also proper integration
    • System design to support easy addition of new technologies and advancements
      • Supporting the open architecture point that Mike made earlier
      • Victory bus

    Mike Jones

    Capability Lead for Array Processing, Roke Manor Research

    • Protect, Toughen, Augment strategy – related to the Protect, Detect, Mitigate, Test strategy introduced Lisa Perdue
    • Deeper dive and introduction into specific technologies
      • Augmented-Reality Jammer geolocation
      • Latest anti-jam antennas (I am only going to mention the fact that AJ antennas exist and their main purpose – feel free to provide more details in general or about specific antennas)
      • Anti-spoof (is this about M-Code, receiver algorithms, system algorithms, or all of these?)
      • Visual sensors
      • Inertial Sensors

    Randy Villahermosa

    Executive Director, iLAB, The Aerospace Corporation

    • Project SEXTANT: New Thinking on Alternative PNT
    • To Cope with increasing disruptiveness: Modify, Augment, Substitute, Reach a New Paradigm
    • Major Findings: GPS is vertically integrated, with no obvious ‘Drop-In’ replacement; Novel combinations of multiple approaches is fertile ground for PNT innovation. However, many experts have been working on GPS alternatives for some time with no clear consensus crystallizing on a path forward.
    • An independent body is needed to evaluate and coordinate Alternative PNT concepts for critical functions
    • The Basis for an Alternative PNT Framework
    • Creating a PNT Ecosystem
    • Open-Source PNT
    • An Alternative PNT Assessment Workflow

    Learn more about the webinar on our Webinars page.

  • What resilient means for defense applications

    Virtually all defense and security applications of GPS/GNSS require additional technology to protect assets and missions against signal interference, whether jamming or spoofing. The upcoming free webinar, Resilient PNT for Military Applications, gives a primer on several of these technology options. Mitigation in this context means that after isolating the unwanted signal, quickly rejecting and replacing it, causing minimal system degradation. In essence, this involves the use of augmentation technologies and diversification strategies to supplement GPS/GNSS, thus reducing the dependence on it.

    Applications relevant to this approach include:
    Airborne: Observation payload (radar, optronics, electronic warfare), flying test bench, flight analysis, tactical UAV navigation;

    Ground: Blue Force tracking, vehicle navigation, satcom on the move (SOTM), Anti IED jamming systems, mobile radios and C4ISR, robotics;

    Marine/Naval: Sensor support (radars, sonars, optronics, electronic warfare), communication networks, offshore/DSO platform.

    Possible sources of such additional technology include those shown in the accompanying figure:

    Click to enlarge.

    The webinar is targeted upon the needs of systems engineers, system integrators, communication engineers, information system security engineers, validation engineers, test engineers, defense engineers, contractors and consultants, application engineers, systems and requirements analysts and system administrators who wish to firm up their understanding of resilient PNT and expand upon the alternatives available to them. Speakers on the webinar will cover the topic from a range of perspectives.

    Mike Jones has worked on a variety of UK and US military airborne platforms around the world. He specializes in the simulation, modeling and hardware implementation of advanced signal processing algorithms, and has led a number of FPGA and ASIC designs for radar, GPS and communications systems.

    Mikel Miller began his career as a satellite systems engineer with the U.S. Air Force, holding numerous test, research and development, and program management positions. He retired with a Ph.D. and rank of lieutenant colonel. He worked until recently as chief scientist for PNT Technologies for the Air Force Research Lab Sensors Directorate, and is now a vice president at Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S).

    Miller will broaden the discussion to encompass all three technologies that evolved military applications and platforms now require for synchronized, precision operations: resilient PNT, resilient communications, and resilient cyber. A system-of-systems architecture that integrates and optimizes these three technologies is required to provide trusted and resilient PNT information in GNSS denied/degraded environments.

    Randy Villahermosa, executive director, iLAB, The Aerospace Corporation, will speak on research concepts in complementary PNT, including open-source frameworks and the potential role of signals-of-opportunity navigation. The iLab is a venue for “exploring, prototyping, and collaborating.”

    Lisa Perdue, an expert in testing critical GPS and GNSS systems,  has trained hundreds of engineers and technicians who are responsible for high-reliability positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) applications. Perdue is Spectracom product manager at Orolia, where she directs the organization’s GNSS simulation activities and contributes to its entire portfolio of resilient PNT solutions. She has more than 15 years of navigation and RF systems experience, including 10 years of service with the U.S. Navy, where she was a certified master training specialist.

    Spectracom’s perspective on secure military systems is concisely set out in a whitepaper, “Making Military PNT Systems Resilient Against Threats: Recent Advances.”  After an overview of the field in which many terms and concepts are carefully and helpfully defined, the whitepaper explains the advantages of the new Satellite Time and Location (STL) service. This is a paid option available on the company’s VersaPNT hardware unit, combining a GNSS receiver, inertial measurement technology and high-performance timing oscillators to provide assured PNT in GNSS-degraded and denied environments.

    STL is a new technology available today to harden GNSS-based timing and frequency systems, and in some cases even to replace the GNSS reference; the adaptation of this technology to positioning and navigation applications on slow-moving mobile platforms is currently under development. The STL signal is broadcast by the Iridium constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit.

    VersaPNT reduces size, weight and power (SWaP) by combining the the PNT functions of multiple independent subsystems  in one portable unit with a modular architecture. For improved resiliency, optional interference detection and mitigation (IDM) software can be added, as well as other services such as STL and BroadShield.

  • Spoofing: Black Sea maybe not, Baltic maybe so

    Spurious signals in the Black Sea have repeatedly placed seagoing vessels, according to their navigation systems, on the site of an airport hundreds of miles from their true positions.

    The incidents were reported in the August and October issues of this magazine, and in Mike Jones’ Defense PNT e-newsletter column for October. Experts initially concluded the problems probably indicated a spoofing attack in the area.

    Satellite image of the Black Sea.

    A reader of the Defense PNT e-newsletter commented, “We have been following this case for quite some time now. We track all merchant vessels worldwide on the basis of Automatic Identification System (AIS), 24/7. The AIS transponder uses the GPS receiver for its position report.”

    Our correspondent is the director of a company that offers server- and web-based tools that can be incorporated in GIS and asset tracking and tracing systems.

    “The ‘spoofing’ is still going on,” he continued. “Even today ships were placed on the airport runway. In total, over 600 vessels were placed on the runway since early June. Our preliminary conclusion is that the ‘spoofing’ is probably not done on purpose. The most likely cause of this spoofing is a GPS re-radiator transmitter located in the hanger close to the end of the runway. This device is used for testing GPS when planes are placed inside the hanger. So, line-of-sight interference?”

    The comment drew the immediate interest of security consultants who continue their investigations.

    Baltic Incidents. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported that a disruption of Latvia’s cellular network and emergency-services hotline may have resulted from a test of Russia’s ­electronic-warfare capabilities.

    A 16-hour outage in October occurred at the time of major Russian military exercises. If substantiated, this could reveal electronic-warfare assets with capacity to disrupt civilian communications remotely. Such a tool could severely hamper authorities’ ability to organize a quick civilian response in case of war.

    “Because of maneuver warfare’s reliance on communication, Russia has invested heavily in electronic warfare systems which are capable of shutting down communications and signals across a broad spectrum,” stated a December 2016 publication by the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group. “The Russians layer these systems to shut down FM, SATCOM [satellite communication], cellular, GPS and other signals.”