RIA Novosti is reporting that negotiations regarding the placement of a differential correction and monitoring GLONASS station in the United States have not yet been renewed. The news agency quotes remarks by Grigory Stupak, first deputy general designer of Russian space systems, during the Fourth International School on Satellite Navigation.
In all, 40-50 GLONASS stations are planned for placement around the world, Stupak said. “As for the United States, we now consider the option of placing a station in Alaska, but the lack of it does not significantly affect the performance of our system,” he said, adding that Russia has worked with the southern African region and South America on placement of GLONASS stations, with one station in Brazil already operational. “There also have Cuban colleagues to host GLONASS stations,” he said.
According to Stupak, taking into account developments in the world, it does not make sense to force the negotiation situation by placing a station in Alaska.
GLONASS Satellites Based Mainly on Russian Component Base
The prevailing share of the payload for both GLONASS-M and GLONASS-K spacecraft is created by JSC Russian Space Systems (CSW), but contains an element base of both domestic and foreign production, Stupak said, according to the the GLONASS Herald.
“If you take onboard equipment [for] GLONASS-M, a significant portion of its designers develop mainly on electronic components of domestic production,” Stupak said.
Including onboard equipment, while a significant portion of the GLONASS-M design is based on domestic electronic components, for the GLONASS-K, most of the components are Russian, but some foreign components are also being used.
In the June issue’s cover story, “Interchangeability Accomplished,” is a paragraph headed, “Satellite Intersystem Biases,” which appears to assert that Galileo System Time (GST) is 3 seconds ahead of UTC.
However, in the version of the Galileo Signal In Space Interface Control Document posted at: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/satnav/galileo/files/galileo-os-sis-icd-issue1-revision1_en.pdf, paragraph 5.1.2 appears to indicate that Galileo System Time (GST) was synchronized, at the second level, with GPS time on 22 August 1999 (that is, 13 seconds ahead of UTC). And, given that a) GST, like GPS time, does not step for announced leap seconds, and b) the IERS has, as of today, announced 3 leap seconds since 22 August 1999, such would appear to suggest that GST is presently roughly 16 seconds (vice 3 seconds) ahead of UTC.
— Stuart Eventhal Fountain, Colorado
Author Frank van Diggelen replies:
Yes! You are right, the article should have said 16 seconds for Galileo, not 3. Thanks for catching that. I’ve corrected the text that appears in the online version of the article, and the accompanying figure.
Media Scoop
The online article covering Javad Ashjaee’s input on the GLONASS situation makes a positive statement that clarifies what has been a horrible reporting job across the board by news channels.
Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC should all be ashamed that GPS World scooped them on what appears to be a simple story.
Good work.
— Mark Silver IGage Mapping Corporation Salt Lake City, Utah
To Consumer-Grade GNSS Chip Manufacturers
I would like you to consider including a very simple feature in your GPS functionality that will permit elevation to be identified to decimeter level in many instances. The changes needed to the chip are simply the ability to accept an accurate latitude and longitude input, and an elevation calculation function that uses input latitude and longitude.
In addition to enabling instantaneous calculation of an accurate elevation, it may be that a “residual better accuracy” will remain for some time after the calculation, and that this will permit substantially improved latitude and longitude identification at a close distance.
The geo-location scene has evolved rapidly over the past 20 years. It is now very commonplace to be able to locate the latitude and longitude of a location extremely quickly and extremely accurately. For instance, the Google Earth image from the front of my house shows the dotted dividing line in the center of the road. Measuring one of these lines in Google Earth gives a size of 3.1 meters by 20 to 30 cm wide. The lines actually measure 3.0 meters by 12 cm wide. From within Google Earth I can identify the latitude and longitude of the end point on the centre of this line to within ±10 cm with a high degree of confidence. In addition there may be some other small errors in Google’s reporting of the latitude & longitude (for example due to placement of the image or distortion of the image), but these are hopefully minimal.
Now if I place my GPS unit on the end center of this line in the road, I am provided with a result that I know is erroneous. The GPS horizontal location shown in Google Earth is very rarely within two meters of my known location. It is known that altitudinal accuracy is always some two times worse than horizontal accuracy.
If I can simply tell the GPS unit that I am at this known horizontal location, it is a relatively simple calculation to recalibrate the clock and pseudoranges to provide my elevation, which will have an accuracy of a two times the accuracy of the horizontal position. Decimeter horizontal accuracy will provide 2-decimeter altitude accuracy. This is close to 100 times better than the elevation accuracy currently available on any consumer grade stand-alone device and is also effectively instantaneous!
This functionality is simple to implement. I would hope that it could be implemented with nothing more than an upgraded ROM which includes a new API function to allow the input of “I know this is my current horizontal location” and an enhanced calculation process which uses this horizontal location to calculate altitude.
I am unsure whether a residual improvement in accuracy can be attained. Even an improved accuracy for 1 minute after the fix would be useful in many situations, and an improved accuracy for 5 to 10 minutes would be a boon.
On June 2, GPS World reported that GPS tracking stations co-sponsored by U.S. interests but located in Russia had stopped making their data available to scientists and others.
Now, “It looks like the tap has been turned back on, at least at slow flow,” reports Richard Langley, GPS World Innovation editor and University of New Brunswick professor. “Hourly and daily data files from the affected stations are once again being sent to IGS data archive centres. Grigory Steblov of the Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences has reported that ‘the transmission of the data from NEDA [North Eurasian Deformation Array] GPS sites [had] been temporarily suspended due to technical reasons.’
Now, after reorganization, the data flow is being resumed on hourly basis.”
Langley stresses, however, that the real-time flow of data from the NEDA stations has not been turned back on, which is important for some applications.
As announced by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on May 13, 2014, GPS tracking stations co-sponsored by U.S. interests have stopped making their data available to scientists and others.
The tap on the flow of data from 11 stations was turned off starting on May 31. The data flow included hourly and daily data files from the stations as well as the real-time flow of data over the Internet.
In an item entitled “On Execution of the Instructions of the Government of the Russian Federation,” the website of Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, reported:
“In accordance with the instructions of the Government of the Russian Federation, the Russian Space Agency in conjunction with the Federal Agency scientific organizations on June 1, 2014, implemented measures to avoid the use of information from the global seismographic network stations operating on the signals of the GPS system and located in the Russian Federation, for purposes not covered by existing agreements, including military uses.” (As translated by Google Translate.)
It should be pointed out that none of the affected stations contribute to the day-to-day running of GPS; that is, they are not part of the GPS command and control network. They are stations participating in the work of the International GNSS Service, which provides data and products to scientists and other researchers for different purposes including geodesy, geodynamics, orbital mechanics, and atmospheric studies.
It is believed that the Russian move is a tit-for-tat exercise in response to sanctions by western countries following recent events in Ukraine. However, the Russians say that the action was initiated by the refusal of the U.S. to enter into negotiations on the placement of Russian-operated GLONASS tracking stations on U.S. territory. Russia wishes to expand its global network of differential correction and monitoring stations, which could conceivably be also used to supply data for GLONASS command and control purposes.
What isn’t widely known is that Roscosmos already uses sites on U.S. territory for monitoring the availability and health of the GLONASS satellites as the map below clearly shows.
“Use any opportunity to create friendship and peace,” urged Javad Ashjaee, president and CEO of JAVAD GNSS, in a May 23 conversation with journalists. He decried the recent controversy about monitoring stations on both U.S. and Russian soil, saying it was based in misinformation and misinterpretations, inflated by a political crisis in a completely different area. “This [GNSS] is a good thing, that for 25 years kept us together. And if you see, there are lots of high-level meetings between U.S. and Russian officials, they are all very friendly meetings.”
A transcription of his remarks appears here, below the following main points and clarifications that he wished to make:
• Earlier this year, Russia sought GLONASS monitoring stations in the United States, not for uploading any data, but for monitoring GLONASS satellites to provide more accurate orbit and clock information, for the free and open benefit of all users.
• The Russian general who threatened to close down monitoring stations on Russian soil that contribute data to the International GNSS Service was immediately and roundly criticized by Russian scientists and surveyors. The general subsequently retracted his remarks.
• The 11-hour GLONASS outage on April 1 was not due to a wait for all satellites to pass over ground control stations on Russian soil to receive a fresh upload of data. GLONASS has the capability (as does GPS) to make such updates via inter-satellite communication. The delay was caused by the time it took to find the bug in the erroneous software that had been uploaded, and to correct it.
• Ashjaee also noted that “No military activity requires millimeter accuracy. It is only scientific applications for humanitarian tasks that require millimeter accuracy. Needing more monitoring stations, such as the IGS stations, is only for that purpose.”
The Background
Javad Ashjaee, founder and CEO of JAVAD GNSS, contacted GPS World on May 20 with a message: “I had a discussion today with the head of the GLONASS program in RosKosmos regarding the tracking sites that they wanted to establish in the United States, and the subsequent events. What has been published in most U.S. media is far from the truth. It is time that we contribute to defusing problems rather than putting more fuel on the fire. The world has enough problems already.”
The Full Statement
This is the story of GPS/GLONASS. It also gives some insight as to how things get out of control, and much, much bigger issues like war and things like Ukraine get created. It is just a tiny, simple example.
When I first heard the issue of GLONASS about 25 years ago and was invited by RosKosmos to Moscow, I didn’t think of Communism or anything political, I thought “30 satellites free, that they’re willing to give to the world, free of charge.” That’s how I got excited. Recently, GPS World published a wonderful history of the growing development of GLONASS and GPS.
What bothers me now is some negative reactions that I see towards GLONASS. It seems that when they see something negative about GLONASS, they enjoy it. In the reports, read between the lines. When there is a problem with GLONASS, you sense some sort of happiness. There is something of “them versus us.”
There was the question, “Why do they need things in our country? Don’t they have them in their country?”
When people don’t know each other, they fear and they create fear.
One thing we should look at: GLONASS is good for all of us. As President Reagan offered GPS free of charge to the world, and everybody applauded him — the Russians have done the same thing. In Oklahoma, California, everywhere, farmers and surveyors are using GLONASS free of charge, the same as GPS. And GLONASS has been better, and I emphasize, it has been better because they didn’t encrypt their code so that we had to go behind and decipher and decrypt and all the trouble that we went to during the past 20 years, because GPS didn’t think that we need carrier phase.
GLONASS is good for America, for the world, as is GPS. If there is a problem with GLONASS, we must be unhappy, as we are unhappy when there is a problem with GPS. And if we can help GLONASS, we must help GLONASS. There is nothing to fear about war, nobody needs [millimeter-level] accuracy of GPS or GLONASS if there is a war between super-powers.
We should all want GLONASS to give precise information. We care about centimeter-level accuracy, the military doesn’t. Five-meter accuracy is good enough for them. To improve the precise-orbit information of GLONASS is the concern of surveyors and those that need precision GPS.
Now, what’s the issue? GLONASS needs 50 reference stations all around the world to monitor the orbits of its satellites, to make the precise-orbit information [furnished to users] better. Not to upload information to the satellites. For this, one station is enough, for both GPS and GLONASS, because both have inter-satellite connections that can do this.
There was speculation in early April that it took GLONASS 11 hours to correct a software bug because it took that long for all the satellites to pass over a control station on Russian soil. This was not the case, I have learned from conversations with their engineers and with the head person responsible for all of this. One engineer made a mistake and uploaded the wrong software. Until they could find it and debug it — and it took them 11 hours to do so — they could not upload correct software to the satellites.
What they are asking for from the United States is not an upload station. They need as many [globally-distributed] monitoring stations as possible; 50 is good.
The International GNSS Service (IGS) has 300. To have a good orbit determination for scientific work, to get to the depth of centimeter- or millimeter-level accuracy, the objectives of IGS reports is to have 200 or 300 monitoring stations. For military work, three or four is enough.
Russia already has more than 50 monitoring stations. They use IGS stations. They didn’t need to ask for anything. Even [data from] the units we have in our San Jose office is available to everybody.
So I asked the GLONASS people, “Why did you ask? You have [access to more than] 200 monitoring stations!”
This was the issue: it was only political. When RosKosmos made internal presentations in Russia to their [government and military] decision-makers, they were asked, “OK, these stations are controlled by who?” By the IGS, they answered. They were told “You must have stations under Russian control.”
I explained to them that IGS stations, for them, are more convenient and more secure. If President Obama told the IGS, told Stanford University and 200 other universities, to turn off their IGS stations, there would be a lot of disagreement! President Obama could turn off Russian stations on U.S. soil. I told them, IGS stations are more convenient and more secure for you than your own stations, and they understood. They are not pushing for it, they said those officials on the top, they know nothing. They were asking that we must have five stations under our control.
If you understand this: that the issue was [Russian internal] political, that they don’t need anything. They already get the precise orbit data from IGS stations.
Now, the second part or episode of this problem: when a Russian general heard that the United States said “No” to the request for Russian-controlled monitoring stations on U.S. soil, he said “Oh, now they don’t let us do this? We will turn off their stations in Russia.” All surveyors and all scientists in Russia jumped at that general, and he retracted what he had said.
But people who didn’t understand this [that IGS-participating stations in Russia have nothing to do with controlling GPS satellites or supplying GPS data to users], they put their own statements in the press, they added fuel to the fire.
The Q&A
When asked how surveyors in Oklahoma could help GLONASS, as he had urged, Ashjaee replied “They can write to their senators and ask, why didn’t you let monitoring stations be in the heart of Oklahoma too?”
Afterthought
Once the first version of this online story was posted, Javad Ashjaee sent in this further comment:
“Part of my admiration for the GLONASS team is that they managed to pull this project off amidst their worst economical, social, and political times. Compare their situation with GPS that had a huge budget (and still ran way over budget) and with Galileo that took several rich countries to put the budgets and technology together. GLONASS also offered this free and unrestricted service to the world without making any political gestures. No encryption of codes and no selective availability either.
“There is an abundance of opportunities to create hostility, and there are enough people to promote it. Situations like this are rare that we can grasp the opportunity to promote friendship.”
