Tag: Qulsar

Open PNT Industry Alliance launched to strengthen national resilience

Coalition gives voice to PNT companies seeking open-market approach to backing up GPS/GNSS for critical infrastructure

Several GNSS and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) companies have joined forces to create a new lobbying group, the Open PNT Industry Alliance. Founding companies include InfiniDome, Iridium Communications, Jackson Labs Technologies, NAVSYS Corporation, NextNav, OPNT, Orolia, Qulsar, Satelles and Seven Solutions.

In the United States, the coalition believes the Executive Order on “Strengthening National Resilience Through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services,” issued in February 2020 begins the process for a national alternative PNT policy.

The Open PNT Industry Alliance also agrees with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s findings and recommendations in its “Report on Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Backup and Complementary Capabilities to the Global Positioning System (GPS)” submitted to the U.S. Congress in April.

The report was criticized by some lawmakers for inaccuracies and lack of depth, but several companies whose solutions were referenced in the report defended it, and have now joined in creating this new alliance.

The alliance expects to support similar initiatives in other countries.

The coalition is designed to fortify economic and national security by supporting government efforts to accelerate the implementation of backup PNT capabilities for critical infrastructure. Other companies sharing these views are invited to join the alliance.

The Open PNT Industry Alliance will be introduced in an Orolia PNT Coffee Talk webinar on Thursday, Dec. 17, at 10 a.m. EST.

A serious problem facing nations around the world is that GPS and other GNSS are susceptible to inadvertent disruptions and deliberate attacks. Such incidents have the potential to impair or incapacitate communications networks, transportation systems, energy production and distribution platforms, financial services operations and other types of critical infrastructure.

With the scope, complexity and severity of disruptions and attacks evolving continuously, the combination of wide-ranging PNT solutions and emerging technologies offers superior protection to current threats by providing a backup to GPS/GNSS and improving national resilience.

“Multiple forms of alternative PNT deliver the broadest possible range of operational and performance characteristics to meet the diverse needs of applications across all industry sectors, plus they can better adapt to future threats than a single technology with its inherent vulnerabilities,” said Michael O’Connor, CEO of Satelles. “The mission of the Open PNT Industry Alliance is to promote open-market concepts that preserve industry’s long-term ability to harness its inventive talent to protect GPS/GNSS with multiple solutions that are technologically advanced, commercially viable, and based on a sustainable long-term funding framework.”

The Open PNT Industry Alliance will share its expertise with governments to aid their efforts to set policies, define regulations, and enact laws that achieve their national resilience objectives while preserving competition in the open market. A principal purpose of the coalition is to stimulate and capitalize on the collective intellect of industry in a collaboration between the public sector and private sector.

“The ingenuity of the private sector is spurred by competition and public and private investment, and this will drive the emergence of multiple GPS/GNSS alternatives that are cost-effective and evolve according to threat profiles, technological innovations, and market dynamics,” said Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia. “Similarly, unbridled innovation will address new and still evolving use cases not supported by GPS/GNSS.”

The coalition will work closely with governments as they consider plans for regulation of critical infrastructure sectors and funding for alternative PNT. Legislators and policymakers can best pursue national interest through a multi-technology approach to PNT resilience, the coalition stated in a press release. The coalition will advocate for the establishment of a robust and self-sustaining funding framework that allows for the development and adoption of multiple sources of PNT that meet the needs of various sectors and industries.

“We believe a multi-technology approach to PNT resilience not only meets a more diverse set of critical infrastructure needs but also ensures a more robust approach to security by providing multi-layer resilience,” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, CEO of NextNav. “Delivering alternative PNT capabilities on an equal footing with GPS will require government policies and funding that ensure these solutions are cost-effective for critical infrastructure providers and sustainable over the long term.”

The Open PNT Industry Alliance website has background on members and policy views, as well as information on how companies can join.

December 3, 2020
DHS on the mark with PNT report, industry says

DHS report cover

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security “did exactly what was required by Congress” in issuing its report in June on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), according to a letter sent by numerous PNT companies to the DHS.

The July 17 letter to Chad F. Wolf, acting secretary of Homeland Security, refutes a previous letter from Congressional representatives that the report contained numerous errors and failed to address many of the things Congress had required.

“We believe that some key claims made in the members’ letter of June 9 are either exaggerated, irrelevant to the report’s Congressional tasking, or simply wrong,” states the July 17 letter, which is signed by senior executives of Satelles, Orolia, Iridium, Navsys, Jackson Labs, Seven Solutions and Qulsar.

The group takes on the claims of the representatives point by point, finding them exaggerated, irrelevant or incorrect.

For instance, the letter critical of the DHS report states:

“The report focuses on the needs of ‘industry’ largely ignoring the needs and impacts on public services (including first responders), government operations, and individual citizens.”

In response, the industry representatives state:

“The focus of the report, as directed by the NDAA, is on the requirements of the owners and operators of national critical infrastructure. This includes “public services, government operations,” and its beneficiaries, “individual citizens.” To the extent that the report focuses on incentivizing the industry, it is in order for it to be able to meet these requirements.

“While the report only highlights PNT use cases from a subset of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors, their pragmatic recommendations address a range of requirements across all sectors. With respect to PNT needs for backing up GPS, DHS acknowledges the differences between and commonalities among the sectors and offers exceptional guidance for leveraging the capabilities of diverse forms of commercially available alternative PNT rather than endorsing a single, anti-competitive, government-imposed solution.”

Read the full text of the industry letter here.

July 21, 2020
Qulsar software enables timing in GPS-challenged areas

Qulsar announces precision time protocol (PTP) software availability for Qualcomm FSM platform.

The QNgine-S precision time protocol (PTP) software by Qulsar is now available on the Qualcomm FSM9xxx platform, which is used in small-cell designs worldwide.

With QNgine-S, products based on the FSM9xxx platform have access to a precision timing solution that will enable indoor and urban canyon deployments of small cells, where GNSS signals are rather weak.

As operators continue to upgrade and modernize their networks, there is an increasing demand for a packet-based timing solution (such as 1588 PTP) to support LTE-TDD and LTE-A deployments.

The QNgine–S made available by Qulsar to use with the FSM9xxx platform is designed to enable operators to deploy small cells cost effectively and without a hardware upgrade to existing networks (such as on an existing timing unaware network), especially in locations where GNSS signals are unavailable or impeded.

Qulsar’s 1588 PTP slave technology already powers many eNodeBs and mobile backhaul infrastructure.

QNgine-S is a software-only solution that integrates with the baseband software of the FSM9xxx platform to provide an IEEE 1588-2008 PTP solution capable of recovering both time and frequency from a remote PTP grandmaster.

According to Minoo Mehta, Qulsar’s VP of Sales and Strategic Partnerships, “QNgine-S is optimized to operate in networks that haven’t implemented full on path PTP support. Qulsar’s advanced time recovery servo uses adaptive algorithms to allow time recovery to better than the required 1.1 μs for TDD applications, coupled with frequency alignment better than 15 ppb to meet the air interface requirements — a level of performance that typically cannot be achieved with unsophisticated servos and/or open source PTP solutions.”

“QNgine-S provides an increasingly important solution for synchronization of small cells and remote radio heads,” said Puneet Sethi, senior director, product management, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc. “We applaud Qulsar’s approach to delivering precise timing performance to customers using the FSM9xxx platform without new specialized hardware requirements, as this will help accelerate the global adoption of these platforms.”

Qulsar also provides design engineering services to tailor QNgine-S to variant architectures and platforms as needed and offers lab testing services to validate PTP performance.

May 1, 2019