Q: What significant new developments in positioning, navigation or timing can we anticipate in 2017?
Dan Conway, Executive VP, Guidance & Stabilization, KVH Industries
A: With increasing focus on robust and resilient positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), the industry must respond with improved access to accurate and trusted position and timing, particularly for the warfighter. For military vehicles, this translates to a requirement for improved navigation systems that will provide commanders and onboard vehicle electronic systems with resilient PNT in contested environments. Secure and more robust navigation systems must now, more than ever, assure position and timing regardless of access to satellites.
Jeff Martin, VP of Business Development & Sales, Spirent Federal
A: Global navigation satellite systems have continually evolved, and 2017 should be no exception. With the scheduled launch of GPS III satellites, the world will see two new signals: M-code from a directional antenna and L1C (new civil signal). The European Galileo system may become operational. Russia is not expected to launch the new GLONASS K-2 satellites in 2017, but it’s not far off. Developers, integrators and users will have lots of options in 2017!
A: With approximately 65 percent of mass-market receiver chipsets already capable of multi-constellation tracking — and with this figure set to rise significantly in the near future — the demand for cost-effective but highly capable consumer goods with GNSS capabilities is clearly growing at an exponential rate. The forthcoming civilian signals offer huge opportunity to many sectors, but also present a challenge in the test and validation of new products, which will require highly capable and flexible simulation equipment.
A: Next year will bring huge strides in autonomous navigation. Multi-band high-precision GNSS will be a key enabler for robotics applications. Customers are demanding navigation solutions that are accurate, fast, robust and affordable. Multi-band enables convergence times measured in seconds, not minutes. Rapid time to first fix and reacquiring fix quickly after passing under obstructions will be essential for autonomous driving applications. Low-cost L1/L2 RTK GNSS will help bring these autonomous robotic applications to life.
I write at an especially exciting moment for the Galileo satellite navigation system, as two flagship European programmes combine for the very first time.
Mid-November will see the very first Galileo launch using an Ariane 5 launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, in place of the Soyuz that has served the constellation up until now. Four instead of two Galileo satellites will be launched at a time: The number of satellites girding the globe will rise at a single stroke from 14 to 18.
Meanwhile, the European Union is set to declare Galileo operational for initial services at the end of this year, bringing the system to the point where it can finally start serving users.
Paul Verhoef, director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, European Space Agency.
When Galileo Meets Ariane
November’s launch has been years in the making, employing a specially customized variant of Europe’s heavy-lift workhorse rocket called the Ariane 5 ES (Evolution Storable) Galileo. It has more powerful lower stages and a reignitable upper stage, first used in 2008 to supply the low-Earth orbiting International Space Station.
This new launcher design, adapted beginning in 2012 for Galileo, will carry a lower mass payload — four fully-fuelled 738-kg Galileo satellites plus their supporting dispenser — but must haul it to the much higher altitude of medium-Earth orbit, 23,522 km.
This precisely targeted orbit actually lies 300 km above the Galileo constellation’s final working altitude, leaving Ariane’s upper stage in a stable graveyard orbit, while the quartet of satellites maneuver themselves down to their final height.
Satellites. The satellites continue unchanged from those preceding them: Galileo full operational-capability (FOC) satellites with platforms from OHB in Germany and navigation payloads from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd in the UK.
All 14 FOC satellites follow the first four in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites launched in 2011 and 2012; these four validated overall Galileo system design with the first wholly European navigation fix in March 2013.
Carrier. The four-satellite dispenser, the interface between the satellites and its launcher, is a wholly new design by Airbus Defence and Space. Its first role is to hold the satellites safely in position during their orbital flight and then to gently release them in separate directions. Its structure has been specially tuned to prevent harmful oscillations being triggered by the vibration and noise of launch. Its design was validated using complex finite-element modeling software, followed by practical testing of the dispenser together with dummy satellites.
Launcher. Ariane’s interstage Vehicle Equipment Bay, hosting the rocket’s avionic brain, underwent a redesign to reduce mass. Engineers also had to take into account this Ariane ES version’s flight time, much longer than any of its predecessors, more than four hours in all.
This involved a reworking of the launcher’s electronics and thermal subsystems, to ensure it maintains an optimal operational environment throughout a ballistic coast phase of more than three hours, between two firings of its EPS storable propellant upper stage. Two further Ariane 5 SE Galileo flights are planned to follow, one each for the remaining orbital planes.
Members of the joint Galileo Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOP) team at work in CNES Toulouse. A joint team from ESA and France’s CNES space agency oversee Galileo LEOPs – the initial switching on and checking and configuration of satellite systems. LEOP is run from either ESOC or CNES Toulouse, on an alternating basis. (Photo: ESA)
Ground Control. This launch will mark the first time that ESA carries out launch and early operations (LEOP) for four satellites simultaneously. Usually, simply shepherding a spacecraft through the first critical days in orbit is a demanding enough task. A combined team from ESA and France’s CNES space agency based in Toulouse will make contact, establish control, and then see the four satellites through their initial critical activities. Within the combined team, each position is paired with a counterpart from the other agency to provide three mixed shifts around the clock for these first crucial days. This same team has conducted all Galileo early operations to date alternately from Toulouse or ESA’s ESOC control center in Germany.
The work starts with an initial check of on-board health and attitude, progressing to ensure each satellite’s pair of 1 x 5-meter solar wings are deployed and tracking the Sun, and then to point their antennas back towards Earth. Next comes a series of thruster firings to set the satellites onto a drift course into their final orbit, at which point they can be handed over to the Galileo Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, for routine operations, and to ESA’s Redu Centre in Belgium to commence a few months of detailed payload testing.
Galileo at Your Service
Around the same time as this key launch, GSAT-210 and GSAT-211, the two previous satellites launched in May of this year, will have completed their in-orbit testing, allowing them to be formally certified as operational members of the constellation. The four new satellites should follow them into operational status by mid-2017. However, the Galileo system will reach initial operational status without these latest six satellites. The European Commission on behalf of the European Union expects to declare the system operational and ready to offer initial services before the end of this year.
This will mark a major milestone in the programme, awaited by many citizens in Europe and around the globe. Everyone with a Galileo-enabled receiver will be able to benefit from improved positioning, supplementing the already operational GPS constellation. ESA and the European GNSS Agency (GSA) have been working with European manufacturers of mass-market satnav chips and receivers to ensure that their products are Galileo-ready, offering detailed laboratory testing to close the loop between Galileo and industry.
Transition. In parallel to the declaration of initial services, there will also be an institutional change, as the GSA takes up its role overseeing the exploitation of Galileo. At the start of 2017, the formal handover of Galileo infrastructure will be initiated, targeted to conclude by the middle of the year. This mission includes not only the Galileo satellites in space but also the far-flung ground stations located on every continent, essential to the continued high-performance operations of the Galileo system. It also includes the two European Galileo control centers, with the signals overseen from Fucino in Italy and the platforms monitored from Oberpfaffenhofen, plus the communication infrastructure connecting them all together.
In the history of ESA, a research and development agency, this kind of handover to an operational body is not unprecedented; the agency handed Europe’s Meteosat weather satellites over to the newly created Eumetsat organisation, and pioneering telecommunication satellites came under the control of Eutelsat and Inmarsat. However, the Galileo ground segment will hold a special place in ESA history as one of the most complicated developments it has ever undertaken, serving to maintain the signals from the satellites to a nanosecond-scale of performance.
ESA will maintain its role of system design authority and system procurement agent, continuing to support system exploitation as it prepares for the follow-on Galileo Second Generation (G2G) design, supported through the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. For example, the current contract of Galileo’s ground support operator will end next year, so ESA is supporting the GSA in initiating the contractual process to select a replacement operator. This contract covers all the interaction between the ground segment elements which are vital to the system as a whole. Maintaining continuity of service with transition to the new operator will certainly present a big challenge to the entire team, but one we are confident of meeting.
Upgrade. In parallel, 2017 will see the upgrade of various elements of the Galileo Ground Segment to reinforce its robustness, including updated releases to the Galileo Control Segment overseeing the satellites and the Galileo Mission Segment, overseeing the navigation signals. A new release of elements of the Galileo Security Facility, for security monitoring of the system, as well as the secure Public Regulated Service, will be deployed at the two Galileo Security Monitoring Centres.
The Galileo Ground Segment will gain a sixth tracking telemetry and control facility, for monitoring the satellite platforms in Papeete, Tahiti, and additional processing chains for increased redundancy will be deployed across the Uplink Stations in Kourou, Reunion and Noumea used to update the navigation message information. Similar redundant chains will be finalized for all 15 current Galileo Sensor Stations, which perform continuous collection of Galileo signals to identify the tiniest clock error or satellite drift.
New Satellites. The production of the satellites themselves continues to maintain a steady rhythm, with a production line stretching from suppliers across Europe to OHB and SSTL and then to ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands for acceptance testing, based on a wide range of simulated space tests. The acceptance of the next satellites to launch is scheduled for this year’s end. Along with the two more Ariane 5 launches to come — one in the second half of 2017 and another in 2018 — the current plan is to commission further launch services as well as additional satellites in order to have Galileo fully operational by 2020. For these launches, Galileo may be the first customer of the new Ariane-6 launch vehicle.
EGNOS. Along with the progress of Galileo, contracts are planned to cater for the further development of the ESA-designed European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, Europe’s first navigation system. EGNOS was certified for safety-of-life aviation use in 2011, and is managed by the European Commission through a contract with operator the European Satellite Services Provider, based in France. ESA will support the technical evolution of EGNOS version 3, intended as multi-constellation in nature, again through the Horizon 2020 framework.
Finally, ESA is also addressing the challenges of satellite navigation beyond Galileo through the creation of the Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP), which will be proposed to Europe’s space ministers for approval in December. Applying ESA’s expertise from Galileo and EGNOS, the optional NAVISP will undertake research work in support of ESA Member States’ national objectives and industrial competitiveness in the upstream and downstream navigation sector, including the fusion of satellite navigation with various disruptive technologies and complementary positioning techniques.
Fugro’s laser airborne depth sounder (LADS) technology is being deployed in New Zealand to assist in relief efforts following the damaging 7.9 magnitude earthquake near Christchurch on Nov. 14.
At the request of the New Zealand Government, the Royal Australian Navy LADS flight is to conduct a rapid hydrographic survey of the seafloor in the coastal margins of the north east coast of the South Island.
“We will fly over the area and collect hydrographic survey data, which will reveal what has happened below the waterline, and identify any shifts in the ocean floor which mariners need to be aware of,” explained Flight Lieutenant Commander Susanna Hung, who is serving as the mission’s commanding officer.
The navy’s airborne lidar bathymetry (ALB) system has been developed by Fugro for safe, high speed and cost effective surveys of shallow coastal areas. Under a long-term contract to the RAN, Fugro provides the LADS technology, a de Havilland Dash 8-202 aircraft and support services.
Fugro’s LADS technology is being deployed following the Nov. 14 New Zealand earthquake.
The airborne survey equipment is operated by navy personnel from the main cabin of the aircraft to rapidly collect high resolution data of the seafloor. Fugro’s system incorporates sophisticated sensors that utilize a high-powered laser, innovative scanner and receiver optics technology.
The survey tool complements traditional hydrographic survey methods (such as hull-mounted multibeam echo sounders) to support nautical charting and coastal zone management applications in the nearshore/shallow water environment. The speed of deployment and safe operating capability make it an ideal solution to confirm the safety of navigation and locate new hazards such as is now required in the earthquake affected area.
“The New Zealand deployment by RAN LADS is an excellent example of how our innovative technology can assist in the safety of navigation and management of the marine environment,” said Paul Seaton, Fugro’s regional business development manager.
Reyax Technology, an industrial and telematics systems provider for aftermarket telematics, has launched a new industrial router platform that incorporates cellular, short range and GNSS modules from u-blox.
The RYW2000 4G LTE and Wi-Fi hot-spot router platform uses the EVA-M8M, a tiny concurrent GNSS module, a TOBY-L2 cellular LTE module that offers throughput of up to 150 Mb/s with LTE Cat.4, and an ELLA-W131 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module.
“We selected u-blox modules because of their market-leading performance, excellent environmental tolerance characteristics and the fact they develop all of their technology in-house,” said Ritchie Chang, general manager of REYAX Technology. “Our RYW2000 router platform is designed for industrial and telematics applications where performance, reliability and conformance to changing environmental conditions are all critical to the success of our product.”
Front and back of the Toby L2 module.
The new router platform RYW2000 includes a router platform card for Industrial and telematics applications and measures only 50.95mm x 30mm. Its operating condition and power are DC 3.3V-5.5V.
Ming Chiang, country manager of u-blox Taiwan explains, “This is another example of our on-going collaboration with REYAX Technology and we are excited they have chosen to incorporate three of our modules into their RYW2000 product. Together we have a shared vision for the promotional of IoT and M2M technologies to benefit many industries and applications.”
Galileo satellites 13 and 14 have begun transmitting navigation signals as fully operational members of the constellation.
The pair were launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on May 24.
After launch and maneuvers to reach their final orbital altitude, their navigation and search-and-rescue payloads were methodically switched on and checked out. Their performance was assessed in relation to the rest of Galileo system.
Europe’s 13th and 14th Galileo satellites being encapsulated inside their launcher fairing. (Photo: ESA)
This lengthy test phase saw the satellites being run from the second Galileo Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, while their payloads’ output was assessed from the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Redu centre in Belgium, equipped for the tests with specialized antennas for receiving and uplinking signals.
The test campaign measured the accuracy and stability of the satellites’ atomic clocks — essential for the timing precision to within a billionth of a second as the basis of satellite navigation — as well as assessing the quality of the navigation signals.
Oberpfaffenhofen and Redu were linked for the entire campaign, allowing the team to compare Galileo signals with satellite telemetry in near-real time, according to ESA.
These two satellites were visible in the sky above Redu for a limited time each day, ranging from three to nine hours, so tests were scheduled accordingly.
Now that in-orbit testing is completed, the satellites are transmitting working navigation signals and are ready to relay any Cospas–Sarsat distress calls to emergency services.
The next four satellites, launched together on Nov. 17, are beginning the same in-orbit testing activity, with the aim of joining the network next spring.
GPS-enabled devices render large amount of assistance to a country’s armed forces on battlefields. In the modern-day scenario of combat, the need to be technically advanced and the ability to achieve precision strike with minimum self-loss are taking center stage.
This has resulted in greater use of GPS-guided devices and weapons by soldiers, which are considered in a new report by Research and Markets.
In Global Military GPS Device Market 2016-2020, analysts forecast the global military GPS device market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.69 percent between 2016 and 2020.
The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global military GPS device market for 2016 to 2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the expenditure of each of the three regions (Americas, EMEA and APAC) to acquire these military GPS devices for enhanced performance of warfighters.
The report has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. It covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years.
The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.
Key questions answered in the report include:
What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?
What are the key market trends?
What is driving this market?
What are the challenges to market growth?
Who are the key vendors in this market space?
What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?
Companies mentioned include:
BAE Systems
Lockheed Martin
Northrop Grumman
Raytheon
Rockwell Collins
Garmin
Harris
Thales
Buyers can request one free hour of the analyst’s time when purchasing thye market report. Details are provided within the report.
From left: Sergey Karutin, GLONASS designer general; Nicolay Testoedov, director general, SC Information Satellite Systems; and Andrey Tulin, director general, SC Russian Space Systems.
In October 2017 we will celebrate the 35th anniversary of the first GLONASS satellite launch. Since 1982, the capabilities provided by GLONASS satellites have multiplied and the system’s ground infrastructure has expanded beyond the Russian Federation.
Growing demand for satellite navigation services and increasing user requirements call for continuing modernization, which is only possible if advanced, technically complex solutions are employed, thorough efforts on design and in-orbit validation are made, and continuing dialogue with users is maintained to promptly react to their needs.
The stable operation of the third generation GLONASS-M satellites, the core of the today’s constellation, means more satellites are working beyond their design lifetime. In 2016, two single-satellite launches occurred, in February and May. Seven more satellites of this type remain in ground storage.
The reliability of on-orbit satellites forces us to develop new ground storage technologies since some satellites were manufactured more than three years ago, while the need for their launch may not arise until 2018. Therefore in the next two years the constellation will be sustained with this type of satellite.
The performance of the on-board atomic frequency standards (AFS) carried by the latest GLONASS-M satellites is considerably better than that of those carried by the first GLONASS-M satellites (see Figure 1). Their relative one-day stability has improved from 10-13 to 2.4× 10-14, contributing to smaller signal-in-space range errors (SISREs).
FIGURE 1. Estimation of the Allan Variation versus GLONASS System Timescale.
In February 2016, flight testing of the fourth generation GLONASS-K satellite was completed. It carries not only a cesium atomic-beam tube but a rubidium AFS for the first time in GLONASS history. The relative daily stability of this rubidium AFS is 4×10-14. As a result the SISRE for this satellite is about 1 meter.
We are also proud of the success of the passive hydrogen maser (PHM), which we have been building for almost 7 years (Figure 2). Multiyear ground tests displayed its excellent reliability and one-day stability of 5×10-15. It is expected to contribute to 0.3-meter SISRE. The PHM for flight tests measures 360×180×630 millimeters and weighs 25 kilos. Its power consumption is 54 watts. The PHM will be validated onboard the GLONASS-K2 satellite set for launch in 2018.
FIGURE 2. Passive hydrogen maser.
Passive hydrogen maser plot.
User Needs. On the threshold of the first GLONASS-K2 launch, new GLONASS reference documents were published in October 2016, describing the family of code-division multiple-access (CDMA) radionavigation signals. The draft GLONASS Open Service Performance Standard has been developed. The GLONASS User Information Support System continues to evolve.
The system transmitting CDMA navigation signals is referred to in four interrelated interface control documents containing general information on signals and the detailed description of signal structures and digital message data. The new signals make it possible to include 63 satellites in the constellation, not only in circular medium-Earth orbit but also on geostationary and high-Earth orbits.
The transition to the flexible string-type structure of the message data produces 2-second periodicity of integrity information delivery to users. The increased number of digits occupied by the ephemeris and clock parameters contributes to a better orbit and clock broadcast accuracy. The ephemeris broadcast precision improves from 0.4 to 0.001 meters. Time-stamp length in CDMA signal has increased to 30 bits, compared to 12 bits of frequency-division multiple-access signals.
The GLONASS Open Service Performance Standard, being drafted according to recommendations of the International Committee on Global Satellite Navigation Systems (ICG), is harmonized with the Performance Standard Template elaborated by the Working Group on Systems, Signals and Services of ICG with the active involvement of the Russian Federation.
As a result, it is also harmonized with the GPS, Galileo and BeiDou performance documents — in addition to international parameters like the horizontal and vertical availability, user positioning error (average and worst over Earth’s surface) and UTC broadcast error. The Draft Standard also includes:
PDOP availability (PDOP availability for the worst point on the Earth’s Surface, global average);
User Equivalent Range Error for the worst point of a satellite visibility cone (95%);
UTC(SU)-GLONASS Time offset broadcast error (global average 95%);
21 healthy satellites availability;
Per-slot availability;
24 healthy satellites availability;
Continuity (probability that a healthy satellite becomes unhealthy without notification 48 hours in advance);
Major failure probability (SIS URE of >75 meters).
GLONASS User Information Support infrastructure development is a complex program that covers establishing User Information Centers to raise awareness of all categories of users of the capabilities GLONASS provides and its guaranteed performance through www.glonass-iac.ru in Russian, English and Chinese languages.
The network of GLONASS-based navigation and information service providers is being developed. Services include satellite navigation activities, from emergency response to control of autonomous unmanned vehicles.
Trimble has introduced itsDPS900 Machine Control System for Dynamic Compaction, a dedicated 3D system for dynamic compaction applications such as airports, roads and large structures.
The DPS900 increases worker safety by eliminating the need for surveyors to work in close proximity to large machines. The number of drops per location and the depth of the hole can be accurately and automatically tracked and recorded, reducing errors from a manual reporting method.
In addition, the DPS900 system reduces setup time for each drop location, which can increase production and reduce costs.
Saphibeat Technologies’ new Adventure Monitor PhiPAL can save lives of outdoor enthusiasts by recognizing when an accident has taken place.
PhiPAL uses a proprietary machine-learning algorithm for accident recognition. If the user is unconscious, PhiPAL automatically sends a distress message with GPS coordinates to teammates and first responders through a cellphone or satellite connection.
PhiPAL uses an activity monitor mounted on or integrated into the user’s sports helmet.
The project, Drones2GNSS, also took home the Special Prize offered by the European GNSS Agency (GSA).
Space Geomatica Ltd.’s Tripolitsiotis Achilles joined with Panagiotis Partsinevelos, SenseLab Research, Technical University of Crete, to develop Drones2GNSS.
In the tracking procedure, the engineer with the surveying pole might move around, yet the UAV tracks in real time and provides the GNSS coordinates.
Drones2GNSS includes a prototype drone equipped with a highly accurate GNSS receiver and a camera/laser measuring system that retrieves the coordinates of custom surveying poles featuring Wi-Fi, a prism and a target marker.
The team’s image processing algorithms and error correction techniques provide real-time, centimeter-level coordinate estimation and can simultaneously measure multiple moving surveying poles.
The processing is performed on-board the UAV without any ground-based hardware. In this way, Drones2GNSS provides a fast, reliable, cost-effective alternative for absolute coordinate positioning in obstructed environments where GNSS fails. It can cover multiple targets, including cars, people and vessels.
It also offers a basis for other related challenges, including UAV GNSS networks, indoor positioning and error mitigation.
“Although Galileo Initial Services are expected to enhance the accuracy of existing solutions, Drones2GNSS proposes an off-the-shelf application that uses European GNSS (Galileo, EGNOS) as the primary means of positioning,” Tripolitsiotis said. “As GNSS signals are degraded in obstructed environments by skyscrapers, vegetation and geomorphology, our project proposes using drones as intermediate carriers of high-precision GNSS signals that can then transfer the geolocation accuracy to the ground.”
Drones2GNSS relies heavily on multi-constellation GNSS signal, which is where Galileo will make the difference. “As current constellations like GPS and GLONASS have proven inefficient in confronting the aforementioned surveying problem, the sector continues to rely on traditional surveying techniques,” Tripolitsiotis said. “However, with the launch of the Galileo era and the utilization of the Drones2GNSS approach, we can now provide surveying engineers a cost effective, accurate and fast positioning solution.”
Chinese car navigation systems company Skypine has adopted Furuno’s GPS receiver with a dead-reckoning function.
Furuno Electric, headquartered in Nishinomiya, Japan, said its receiver GV-86 has been adopted for use in the car navigation platform designed and produced by Skypine — a major car electronics manufacturer in China.
GV-86 will be installed in the car navigation systems designed for major automotive companies, not only in Japan but also around the world and the specialized companies, which Skypine contracted.
Furuno’s GV-86 is used by many automotive customers requiring high quality and reliability. Additionally, thanks to the dead-reckoning function, GV-86 achieves high-accuracy performances in deep urban canyons where the accuracy of GNSS-only positions could be reduced.
Skypine’s car navigation systems (left); Furuno’s Multi-GNSS Receiver Chip eRideOPUS 6 and GPS+DR Receiver Module GV-86.
The GPS World 2016 Leadership Awards were presented during a special ceremony and dinner at ION-GNSS+ 2016 in Portland in September.
The awards recognize significant recent achievement in the fields of position, navigation and timing: satellites, signals, services and products.
The Leadership Dinner was sponsored by Harris, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell.
Remarks by Alan Cameron, editor and publisher of GPS World
Welcome to the 2016 GPS World Leadership dinner, sponsored by Harris, Rockwell Collins and Honeywell.
We’re at an historic turning point for this dinner, and I’d like to acknowledge three people who are responsible for all of us being here.
We’re honored to have Brad Parkinson and his wife Ginny join us tonight. Brad led the team that made GPS happen in the first place.
Phil Ward is here. He developed the first GPS receiver for the commercial market in 1982.
That’s the Space Segment, the User Segment, and with Lt. Col. Andrew Zinn of the GPS Directorate, we have the Control Segment as well.
Alan Cameron, GPS World
Further, we have guests tonight from the U.S. State Department, representing GPS and GNSS interests at the highest levels of the U.S. government. We have officials from the European Space Agency, the European Commission, from BeiDou, and — had it not been for airline scheduling — we would have had GLONASS as well.
The global industry is well represented here, by our sponsors:
Harris, with over 750 years of cumulative on-orbit GPS operations, and building tomorrow’s GPS III satellite constellation today;
Rockwell Collins, making generations of devices providing pinpoint accuracy for every airborne and surface mission worldwide;
Honeywell, embedding GPS and inertial navigation for challenging military requirements, along with civil interoperability capabilities.
Also, we are joined and by other veteran GNSS such as Lockheed Martin, NavCom, NovAtel, Septentrio, Racelogic and IFEN, by experienced developers like u-blox and Spectracom and many others, and by newer companies entering the market in recent years like ComNav, CHC, Geneq, Skydel, IP-Solutions and Unicore.
We go beyond GNSS as well this year, and this also reflects market expansion. Last year at about this time GPS World, led by North Coast Media president Kevin Stoltman, was completing a conscious repositioning from a GNSS focus to thoroughly covering all aspects and technologies of positioning, navigation and timing — PNT. You’ve seen cover stories on inertial, Wi-Fi and other positioning technologies. That wider mission is reflected by the presence here tonight of companies like Systron Donner, Sensonor and Locata.
We go beyond PNT, too. Or rather, new companies are coming into PNT. In the room tonight are Intel, Apple and Google — maybe right at your table. This industry is changing, and it’s getting exciting.
It’s always been exciting. Each year it gets more so in new, different ways.
The person responsible for getting all these companies into the pages of the magazine, and into attendance here tonight — ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to acknowledge my close colleague, Michelle Mitchell, international account manager for the magazine, website, newsletters, webinars and more.
Our gathering this evening comprises two parts:
The Leadership Awards ceremony recognizing significant recent accomplishment in the fields of Satellites, Signals, Services and Products.
After the awards, over dessert and coffee we will experience Murder, Mystery and Mayhem at the GNSS Mansion, a group exercise in high-tech deduction. Murder suspects are now seated among you. Enjoy!
Services, Special Award
Presented to: The Institute of Navigation
For bringing us all together, presenting the latest research and fostering open dialogue toward our common goal: ever-improving standards in position, navigation and timing — for 30 years!
Remarks by John Raquet, Executive Vice President, Institute of Navigation
John Raquet, Institute of Navigation
The Institute of Navigation is honored to be receiving the Special Services award.
As I thought about the relationship between the navigation community sitting here tonight and the Institute of Navigation, I found myself wondering whether it was the ION that created this community, or the community that created the ION?
The reality is that both are true. The ION has certainly played a big role in developing a forum for this community to interact, but without this community, the ION would cease to exist!
As most of you know, this year’s ION/GNSS conference is celebrating its 30th anniversary. It is my desire that, 30 years from now, we (actually, the people who have followed up after us after we’ve retired!) will continue to be meeting together and enjoying a similarly wonderful dinner to the one that we’ve experienced tonight!
Satellites Award
Presented to: Didier Faivre, Former Director of Navigation, Euroean Space Agency
He led the Galileo Program under not-always-easy conditions, as the constellation grew and the first results of importance to the user community became visible, such as the first Galileo-based PVT.
Sponsored by
A GNSS Dream Realized
Remarks by Marco Falcone, Galileo System Manager ESA, on behalf of Didier Faivre
Distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends of the GNSS community,
On behalf of Didier Faivre, I would like to thank GPS World and the GNSS Community.
Didier Faivre, European Space Agency
Didier asked me to present his apologies for not being able to attend this prestigious event, he recently joined the French space agency to become the director of the Guyanese Space Centre and is today in Kourou the European Spaceport where a launch is planned today in the coming hours.
The European Space Agency and more generally the European GNSS Community are very proud and honored to receive this award, which is a mark of recognition of the quality of our European programs.
This award goes first of all to Europe as a whole for having had the dream to become one of the providers of a GNSS service open to the world. It was not so evident to have this dream. So many wise advisors told us that this was not necessary because others do it; this is not reasonable because it is so expensive; this is not feasible with the complex European public system; and it is too late. And it was not so easy to make it a reality. This dream is now a reality thanks to the perseverance of the political leaders and institutions in Europe, the efforts and support of the European citizens and the technical skills of European industry, institutes and agencies after almost 15 years of work. The award today marks this achievement.
After the opening of the full service of EGNOS and the soon to be open Galileo services, Europe is now a full member of the prestigious club of GNSS providers and is determined to maintain its role and improve permanently the quality and the performance of its EGNOS and Galileo systems and services.
Initial steps are already taken to ensure the replenishment of the constellation after 2020 and to deploy a multi-frequency, multi-constellation new generation of EGNOS.
With Europe and other new entrants providing high quality GNSS services, new perspectives of multilateral cooperation at the global level are emerging, in particular in the field of civil aviation where the cooperation of various SBAS system may offer a worldwide service. I am certain that Europe is ready and eager to contribute to this effort.
Again, I would like to thank you for recognizing the efforts of our teams at ESA and in industry. This award gives us even more energy and focus to continuously support the European GNSS programme and prepare for the future of EGNOS and Galileo.
Marco Falcone (center) accepting the Satellites Award for Didier Faivre, with ESA colleagues (from left) Gustavo Lopez Risueno, Jose Angel Avila Rodriguez and Miguel Manteiga Bautista. (Photo: GPS World staff)
Leadership Through Challenges
Remarks by Al Simon, Business Development, Navigation Products, Rockwell Collins
Rockwell Collins is honored to present the 2016 Satellite award this evening.
Over 10 years ago Europe launched its first navigation satellite. A decade later, Galileo is close to being operational.
Al Simon, Rockwell Collins
As it stands today (September 2016), four more Galileo satellites are in French Guiana awaiting a shared launch in November.
The 14 Galileo satellites already in orbit have been launched two at a time. Having 18 satellites in orbit could enable initial
Galileo operational services to begin.
One can only imagine the challenges the program successfully overcame during this time. You name it: technical, programmatic, funding, political, on and on.
And through these challenges someone had to lead.
With that, Rockwell Collins is pleased to present the Satellites Leadership Award to Didier Faivre, former director of Navigation, European Space Agency.
This year Didier was appointed as a director reporting to the CNES (France’s National Centre for Space Studies) President. Specifically, Didier will assume responsibility for the Guiana Space Center in October — the very place he began his career in 1983.
In Didier’s absence, Marco Falcone of ESA will accept the Award on his behalf. Ironically, Marco was the winner of the 2015 Leadership Award for Satellites, although he in turn was unable to attend that dinner and accept in person.
Signals Award
Presented to: Clark Cohen, Founder and CEO, PNT Holdings
For developing an advanced waveform concept for potential use aboard low-Earth orbit communication satellites: a method for adding high-accuracy ranging capability by modifying the transmitted signal structure of an already flying constellation.
Sponsored by
Testing a Modified Signal from On-Irbit Satellites
Remarks by Clark Cohen
Clark Cohen, PNT Holdings, and Ellen Mitchell, Harris Corporation
Thank you, GPS World, industry sponsors, and colleagues who engaged in the selection process. I appreciate the honor.
The Advanced Waveform was the second and most ambitious broadcast that we developed for the DoD-sponsored iGPS program. It is a wide-bandwidth (10 MHz maximum spectrum allocation), near-white, high-power broadcast with independently resolvable code and carrier capable of illuminating regions of the world at any time. Yet Iridium was never designed for navigation.
I am grateful to the Naval Research Lab, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Boeing, and Iridium for their support. Also, many capable people comprised our team. Completeness is impossible, but I’ll highlight the efforts of Dick Cervisi, Kamran Ghassemi, Ann Stevens, Robert Scholl, Tom Guffey, Bernie McCormick, and Mark Psiaki.
The commercial Iridium constellation is built on billions of dollars of private capital. Meanwhile, the iGPS overlay required Congressional appropriation. But if the technical part weren’t challenging enough, the politics were, in my view, a bit too hard.
My topic is the future of public-private partnerships. Such partnerships include the GPS space and ground segments and most other government projects. Our broken, inflexible Congress is not helping. My answer here for the family dinner table is not political — it’s structural, non-partisan, systems engineering.
We can do better than handicapped innovation, winner-take-all procurements, Nunn-McCurdy triggers, continuing resolutions, debt-limit brinksmanship, and government shut-downs. This is not to judge people. Good people are operating under imperfect rules.
House elections now resemble a stuck, one-bit, analog-to-digital converter. Hundreds of individual races, cumulate the equivalent of input noise and bias, rendering the House largely unresponsive to voters. Consent of the governed demands a healthy, moderating feedback loop from people to representatives to laws and back. Cutting this loop spells trouble.
A major root cause of dysfunction is winner-take-all, single-member districts. Geographical voting made sense in the 18th century. But in an increasingly complex, connected world, where you live is no longer a stand-in for what you think.
We need to start dissolving district boundaries themselves. An elegant approach is aggregating adjacent single-member districts into larger multi-winner “super districts” with three to five members each. A refinement called ranked choice voting eliminates spoiler hazard and incentivizes positive campaigns. No change to the Constitution is needed — only passing a law.
We should reset our expectations. Congress should be able to pass the nation’s budget on time every time. We don’t need drama around GPS modernization, backup terrestrial navigation, and spectrum protection. And America should boldly pioneer aspirational, cathedral-and-moonshot-scale, public-private initiatives.
Working hard and playing by the rules implies a value-added, positive-sum relationship with society. But to the extent that the rules are imperfect, don’t vestiges of zero-sum exchange imply collateral damage somewhere in society? Voters are rebelling by the millions. We should pay attention. America’s defining Revolutionary War was fought over taxation without representation.
Whether applied to sword or plowshare, precision feedback from GPS provides guidance to help minimize collateral damage.
Updated voting rules will do the same for the nation. Everyone benefits from more efficient and effective execution. Yet perhaps our greatest harvest — should we choose to claim it for ourselves and our children — will follow from sowing new seeds of discovery and innovation through public-private partnerships on a vast and visionary scale.
Editor’s Note: The iGPS Advanced Waveform concept attempted to leverage carrier-phase signals from an already flying low-Earth orbit (LEO) communications satellite network, in order to aid GPS positioning. In 2013, the iGPS Advanced Waveform reached a test and evaluation phase but encountered technical issues which were not resolved, and the technology has not matured further.
Meanwhile, a separate initiative using a different, code-phase approach to signals from the same LEO constellation successfully completed rigorous testing and has been deployed worldwide. Its commercial launch was announced in mid-December 2016, and its technical and market details will be explored in GPS World magazine in 2017.
Every Signal Payload Since GPS Began — And Now Onboard GPS III
Remarks by Ellen Mitchell, Harris Corporation
It’s an honor to present the Signals award on behalf of the Harris Corporation. It is particularly fitting that Harris has the honor of presenting this award. As the GPS navigation payload provider, we create and deliver the GPS signal. Our technology has been on every GPS satellite launched since the program began — and we’re providing the payload for the next-generation GPS III satellite. Furthermore, our products help our customers better utilize the GPS signal and detect and prevent jamming.
So, perhaps you understand why it’s my special pleasure tonight to present the Leadership Award for significant recent achievement in the area of Signals to Clark Cohen.
Thank you for this opportunity and congratulations to all the award recipients.
Products Award
Presented to: Daniel Ammann, Executive Director and Co-Founder, u-blox
For achieving a leading company position with GNSS chips and modules for automotive, M2M and IoT applications as well as a recently announced mass-market L1 RTK in a single-package solution.
Sponsored by
Daniel Ammann, u-blox
L1 RTK Presages More Change
Remarks by Daniel Ammann
I wish to express my gratitude to GPS World magazine and the whole GNSS community for this recognition. I take this not as a recognition of my own work, but as a recognition of the fantastic team behind me, back home in Finland, England and Switzerland. Those are the ones who made this possible over the last years, and I happily accept this award on their behalf.
Alan asked me to not only say thank you, but give an outlook on things we believe are relevant as the industry goes forward.
The availability of highly integrated L1 RTK modules, such as the NEO-M8P we announced earlier this year, is only the beginning of something we believe is bringing a much bigger change to this industry.
We can foresee that multi-band L1/L2 receiver will become reality to serve the mass markets. And at attractive price points, an order of magnitude away from where today’s products are sold. We are not far away from high-volume availability of such GNSS receivers. The main market driver here though is not existing high-precision markets like agriculture or survey, but newly evolving markets in the autonomous vehicle space — both land vehicles and airborne, such as autonomous cars or UAVs. Here what is needed is high accuracy combined with unprecedented integrity even in challenging environments. And this at cost points allowing volume deployments.
A much bigger challenge though is the availability of a correction service suitable for mass-market high-precision applications. As a industry, we have a problem to solve here. Currently available systems are closed and proprietary. Market growth is limited due to per-receiver/per-year type business models, and this simply won’t scale easily for large installations, as there is no path to collect money from the end user. Further, standardization for broadcast-type SSR corrections is pretty slow. And you could ask the question, why it is a maritime standardization committee that is shaping standards for things that either drive on land, or fly in the air?
Therefore, at u-blox, we believe that an independent entity, possibly in the form of a industry consortium, is needed. A entity which offers broadcast-capable SSR services on a global basis, and with scalable business models, for example with a flat fee.
At the same time, this entity should not be tied to a receiver manufacturer like us, but serve the whole industry at the same time. This entity should be using open standards — which also must be developed, and in time. This is something which we at u-blox together with you from the industry would like to solve in the form of such a consortium, and I’d like to invite you to talk to us if you share that same vision.
Again, many thanks for this award. We feel very honored.
Services Award
Presented to: Steve Malkos, Technical Program Manager, Google
For driving Android’s location APIs to enable a new range of applications, bringing raw GNSS measurement capability, including carrier phase to Android location APIs and Android Emergency Location Service, providing Google’s enhanced location for emergency phone calls.
Steve Malkos, Google
Android: Raw GNSS Data Available
Remarks by Steve Malkos
I’m honored to have received this award and would like to thank GPS World and the GNSS community for this recognition!
At work, I’m surrounded by the best engineers (some of them sitting here right with me), and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be up here today.
So, thank you! Taking Android Emergency Service from my 20-percent project in Google to production has been one of my proudest achievements. This life-saving service provides Google’s location data to emergency responders during an emergency phone call.
For example, if you are indoors with no GPS coverage, our Fused Location Provider can produce accurate indoor locations from other signals and send that to emergency responders, giving us greater accuracies over cell ID positioning. This is where we are headed with Indoor E911 for the US, but it’s already a reality in the UK and Estonia, where this service first rolled out.
I’m also excited to announce raw GNSS measurements available in Android. This was a multi-year effort with many complexities on getting this far. Android’s foundation is open-source software and the open-source community. So, it was a natural development step for us to provide these raw measurements to the community. We have a new paradigm of businesses, and most of them rely on location and context as one of their key elements.
Imagine what more we can do with enhancing location in new ways with the use of raw GNSS measurements. This gets me really excited, and I’m looking forward to the future. Thanks again for this recognition and the efforts from our team!
