GPS World

Author: GPS World Staff

  • Letters to the Editor

    Help Exposing

    Thanks for all your help in exposing the LightSquared fiasco. GPS World played a significant role in bringing the issue to the GNSS community and by exposing the ineptness (or was it venality?) of the FCC. I know there were many people involved in the effort to scientifically document the effects of jamming of GPS by the LightSquared signal, something obvious to any RF engineer. But like all government decisions, the politics and the economics always take precedence in decision making. The battle isn’t over yet but I hope the FCC will do what is best for the billion GPS/GNSS users worldwide and keep LightSquared and anyone else from interfering with our vital national resource. Your efforts and those of others like the GPS Industry Council will continue to play a key role in protecting GPS from intentional interference.

    — Len Jacobson
    Global Systems and Marketing Inc.
    Long Beach, California
    (and on GPS World’s Advisory Board.)

    Daughter of Time

    A terrific think piece, or call-to-action (Out in Front, July issue). I hope it galvanizes many to write, and write again. I am convinced of the urgency and importance of the situation.

    Your earlier column “Tech and Techer” (Out in Front, February) also struck a chord with me and no doubt with many readers of a certain age (and others, of course). It seems many folks now have little patience with the printed word. No doubt the ability to acquire new knowledge (which has a kind of lawlessness to it) is hampered when we are unwilling to take the time to absorb information in a slow and possibly nonproductive way. So many great inventions happened by accident.

    As you suggest, the Internet is a double-edged sword and GNSS is, too, for the shortcuts of everyday life (not for the professional). Still, these are wonderful inventions and here to stay. The good news is folks are aware of the dangers.

    — Jo Joslyn
    Villanova, Pennsylvania

    Bundling Pal

    You wrote “Genachowski has a long-term and reportedly close relationship with President Obama, who appointed him to the FCC chairmanship.” Researching another topic, I came across this:

    “In March 2009, Obama appointed $500,000 bundler and law school pal Julius Genachowski to chair the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency.”

    A bundler in politics turns out to be someone who solicits and then gathers a number of smaller donations to a candidate, and turns them in as a large handful of individual checks. It’s quite legal, but I understand that it does preserve the anonymity of individual donors.

    I always enjoy your editorial pieces, and I trust the industry will eventually be able to push LightSquared off their frequencies — or at least off the high-band one. But clearly it won’t be without a major struggle — there’s too much money at stake.

    — Adrian Lucas
    former commercial pilot, Canada

  • Expert Advice: Who Won?

    Logan Scott
    Logan Scott

    By Logan Scott

    Thousands of man hours and millions of dollars later, we finally have the 975-page GPS Technical Working Group (TWG) report, confirming what five minutes of back-of-the-envelope calculation predicted. Hooray for our side, good job GPS Industry Council; we’ve won the war and the foe is vanquished, never to brighten our skies again.

    Well, maybe. LightSquared is now bypassing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and submitting technical papers directly to the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Working Party that handles mobile satellite services (MSS) and radio determination satellite service (RDSS spectrum) and orbits (ITU-R WP 4C).

    A few comments to all participants:

    To the FCC: Quoting from the National Legal and Policy Center’s February 2, 2011, rather damning letter to U.S. House members Darrel Issa and Edolphus Towns: It is “the special responsibility of federal agencies to not only avoid conflicts of interest, but to avoid even the appearance of conflicts.” Integrity counts. It shouldn’t require congressional intervention for the FCC to do the right thing. An abbreviated,  10-day comment period ending the Monday after Thanksgiving on a ruling of this magnitude and one which would have severely damaged national infrastructure if left unopposed? What were you thinking?

    After wiping the egg out of your eyes, you also might look around your organization and discover you have engineers. They’re the ones who use terms like bandwidth, compression point, and interference. They can tell you things about engineering issues. Your engineers are actually quite good and know what they are talking about. Use them. Listen to them. Maybe even put some on commissioners’ staff. A B.S. degree shouldn’t be a disqualification for helping to set national policy on technical matters.

    To Department of Homeland Security (DHS): GPS is critical infrastructure and needs to be designated as such. If anything, this exercise has demonstrated how easily we could lose the benefits of GPS. LightSquared was not even targeting GPS, but if implemented as originally planned, its system would have damaged diverse areas of critical infrastructure; both civil and military. As a nation, we are entirely capable of shooting ourselves in the foot; no terrorists needed. We have no backup to GPS; protect it.

    To LightSquared: You have a great system concept, but there are sound engineering reasons why the bands adjacent to GPS were designated for space-to-Earth mobile satellite services (MSS). Separation between GPS and high-power systems is essential, particularly with the current state of the art in GPS. Claims that you have been working with the GPS industry for the last eight years and that we gave “the green light to those plans” (June 30, 2011, Recommendation of LightSquared Subsidiary LLC, page 16) do not ring true. Even the most casual analysis of your plans shows significant harmful interference to GPS.

    Some further observations on your recommendations: Trying to game the system and redefine what constitutes harmful interference (1dB versus 6 dB) is probably not a great idea given the GPS system navigates our airplanes and provides E911 capabilities. We routinely use up all of our margins and then some. A 6-dB hit is a big hit on position robustness.

    Similarly, don’t play games with statistical propagation modeling. Your proposed Walfish-Ikegami line of sight (WI-LOS) models are wholly inappropriate for low-altitude aircraft using GPS for precision approach and landing. They are based on LOS street-canyon measurements made in the city of Stockholm and are not intended for handsets more than 10 feet off the ground. Two-ray models accounting for ground reflections show LightSquared signals at levels 6 dB above free space predictions several miles out (Figure 1). Live-sky testing at Holloman and Las Vegas showed “above free-space” levels even for some ground mobile users (June 15, 2011, National Public Safety Telecommunications Council [NPSTC] filing with the FCC, page 7, Item 3). Coverage models are not appropriate as safety-of-life models.

    Upzoning the entire 1.6-GHz MSS band is not likely any time soon, at least in the United States. Figure out what you can do with less spectrum and less power in the low end of the S-E MSS allocation or find other spectrum; maybe pay for it like other cellular operators did. Don’t forget E-S interference, there are dragons there as well. Develop a transition plan and expect to pay for it.

    Figure 1. LightSquared propagation models can underestimate interference by more than a factor of 100 (>20 dB). (Click to enlarge.)
    Figure 1. LightSquared propagation models can underestimate interference by more than a factor of 100 (>20 dB). (Click to enlarge.)

    To the GPS Industry: We have long lived in a world of clean, unobstructed spectrum — and it has been wonderful. At this June’s JNC2011 conference, Air Force General Kevin McLaughlin (U.S. Strategic Command) noted that space is increasingly “congested, competitive, and contested.” The same can be said for radio spectrum. LightSquared is trying to make good use of ~68 MHz of largely fallow spectrum straddling ours to provide a valuable and sorely needed wireless data service.

    There is no successful business model in providing MSS services only. Motorola and Loral/Qualcomm proved that with their Iridium and Globalstar MSS systems. Both original ventures ended in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. LightSquared is the third or fourth incarnation of Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV), which ended in bankruptcy. The core business problem is that MSS is expensive to deploy, provides very little capacity (bits/sec/Hz/km2), and these systems offer poor building penetration. Upzoned for terrestrial services (that is, cellular or ancillary terrestrial component, ATC), LightSquared’s spectrum allocation is worth about $15 billion for the license alone at current auction prices, and that’s for only the United States. With spectrum growing increasingly scarce and valuable, we in the GPS industry should expect, and be prepared for, the day when this spectrum is repurposed. It is not my intent to be an apologist for LightSquared, merely to illuminate the fact that this is potentially very valuable spectrum and it is not going to be MSS forever, especially if someone offers to pay for it.

    LightSquared was stopped, at least temporarily, by regulatory constraints applicable only within the United States. In effect, the GPS industry lobbied for a 34-MHz guard band and won — maybe. This is not a sustainable position. LightSquared may yet prevail on the international stage and/or in a diminished capability. Also, be aware that in parts of the world interference now makes GPS unusable, for example, Balkan ports and parts of Africa.

    We in the GPS industry can and must take steps to improve our ability to operate in congested spectrum. The TWG report showed enormous variations in receiver resistance to out-of-band LightSquared interference. Using a 1-dB C/No degradation criteria, in FAA-certified aviation receivers there was 26 dB of variation in LightSquared signal rejection (Table 3.1.1, page 42). In high-precision receivers, more than 30 dB of variation was seen (Table 10, page 243). Against LightSquared F5L (the lower frequency, 5-MHz-wide LightSquared signal, 1526.3–1531.3 MHz) modulation, high-precision receivers showed more than 70 dB variation in susceptibility to LightSquared interference (TWG Appendix H.1.1.10, Figure 38). Clearly, there are good ways to build a receiver, and bad ways. We need to do better.

    Next

    Among the steps to consider:

    • Narrow front-end bandwidths. If you don’t want to be affected by out-of-band jamming, don’t let it in. This is antijamming (AJ) 101. The corollary of course is that most AJ techniques degrade position accuracy, and so it is with filtering. The C/A code is about 2-MHz wide but there are good anti-multipath motivations for using a wider bandwidth. GPS satellites have roughly a 28 to 32 MHz transmission bandwidth. Beyond that, there is nothing except interference. Filter accordingly and don’t forget: antenna selection plays an important role in determining overall receiver frequency selectivity.
    • Higher 1-dB compression point. Consider designing for a higher 1-dB compression point, particularly if you must use a wider bandwidth front end, say for phase linearity in precision survey receivers or for multipath rejection or for military signals. This also improves IP3 and mitigates intermodulation effects. IP3 is the third-order intercept point of an amplifier and is one of the more important parameters in describing the linear range of an amplifier. Low IP3 leads to higher intermodulation distortion, a process wherein two out-of-band signals can mix with each other in the GPS receiver to produce a third frequency within the GPS band. Yes, higher compression points lead to slightly higher power consumption, but out-of-band signal tolerance improves greatly when combined with downstream filtering. In the longer term, consider adaptive equalization methods.
    • Use L2C and L5 signals. Currently, nine satellites on orbit broadcast L2C and one broadcasts L5, with another IIF successfully launched July 16. One major reason precision receivers fare poorly against interference is that they require wide front ends to implement codeless and semi-codeless modes to measure L2 carrier phase for widelane ambiguity resolution. Wide bandwidths are also needed to precisely measure L1 pseudorange, again for ambiguity determination. Using L2C/L5 mitigates the need for wide-bandwidth front ends and at the same time creates signal diversity in carrier-phase tracking.
    • Report interference. One of the most stunning shortcomings in many GPS receivers, both civil and military, is their inability (or unwillingness) to report jamming and spoofing. In my work with DHS on the National Risk Estimate, one recurring theme across industry sectors is how confusing it is when GPS gets jammed. GPS is often deeply integrated with other systems to the point where it becomes invisible until it fails, and then its failure causes weird failure modes in dependant systems. For example, mobile satellite communication systems can fail if the GPS position is wrong; the antenna gets pointed the wrong way. A simple “I am jammed” alert would go a long ways towards diagnosing problems and taking corrective actions. This is as true for LightSquared signals as it is for personal privacy devices.
    • Integrity Monitoring. If you are lucky, interference causes a signals outage. Some interference types can capture receiver tracking loops and yield false positions. The effects of out-of-band interference on tracking are not well understood. Constantly checking for signal integrity and navigation integrity (for example, receiver-autonomous integrity monitoring) can detect many adverse results without imposing a significant burden on the GPS receiver. The algorithms are well documented. Use them.

    Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying: “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing — after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” At this point, I think we are still looking at some of the other possibilities and I wouldn’t count the LightSquared situation as a victory for anyone just yet. There is still ample opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but by taking a proactive stance, both politically and technically, we can improve our chances.

    Also, a nice pair of wellies might be a good investment; it’s a big barnyard.

    Logan Scott has more than 32 years of military and civil GPS systems engineering experience. At Texas Instruments, he pioneered approaches for building high-performance, jamming-resistant digital receivers. While at Omnipoint, a cellular carrier, he developed cross-system interference mitigation strategies. He holds 33 U.S. patents.

  • GPS and GNSS Cannot Count on Good Sense in Government

    You’ve got to put some in yourself, to get some out.

    Don’t expect the FCC to make a rational decision in the Lightsquared versus GPS case. As clear as the conclusions may seem to an engineering mind examining the Technical Working Group’s report on the subject, the Federal Communications Commission does not maintain engineering minds at its top level. That’s the level that makes the decisions, and it is driven by money and politics in equal measure. The only things that will get the FCC’s attention are legislators and strong opposition from citizens.

    Comments in the FCC docket so far come largely from the surveying and agriculture communities. The rest of the GNSS industry has not shown up. Individuals count, too, not just companies. Here’s how to make your voice heard, and why. Time’s a-wastin’.

    HERE’S HOW.

    The FCC will accept public comments on the LightSquared interference with GPS issue until July 30, and replies to those comments until August 15, 2011. After the public comment period is closed, the FCC can render a decision at any time.

    Comments may be filed electronically using the Internet by accessing the ECFS.

    Follow the instructions provided on the website for submitting comments. First, click “Submit a Filing.” Once the following screen comes us, in the first box labeled "Proceeding Number" enter 11-109. You’ll then be required to enter identifying information into the form and add your comments. In completing the transmittal screen, ECFS filers should include their full name, U.S. Postal Service mailing address, and IB Docket No. 11-109.

    Supply information on how you use GPS and what would happen if GPS became unavailable or unreliable. GPS World suggests including comments that state LightSquared’s operations and GPS are fundamentally incompatible and that the FCC should not permit LightSquared to use its mobile satellite services frequency for terrestrial broadcast. You may wish to add that the FCC’s own Technical Working Group tasked with investigating this issue, and the Departments of Defense and Transportation, all agree on this.

    It may further be worth adding that GPS is an important, if not vital, resource for a wide range of users — not just yourself or your industry sector. These include many life- and safety-critical applications.

    AND HOW.

    Whether or not you file a comment by the July 30 deadline (that’s THIS Saturday), I urge you to immediately write on the same subject to both your U.S. senators and to your congressperson in the U.S. House of Representatives.

    To find your U.S. senator, go to this website and enter your state in the pull-down menu.  You’ll get name, e-mail, phone, and mailing address.

    To find your representative in the House, go to this website and proceed similarly.

    GNSS community members in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere may write to the U.S. State Department representative tasked in this matter: clorere @ state.gov.

    I submit that GPS needs your help, now. If the mothership goes down, the case for other GNSS only becomes more difficult, not less so. And similar attacks may soon be mounted against GNSS internationally, if encouraged by success on this front.

    NOW, WHY.

    Some troubling trends that I hope will stir you to action:

    

Troubling Trend Number One. The test results, conclusions, and recommendations of several comprehensive studies, conducted by a combination of industry, government, and independent organizations (NPEF, TWG, RTCA) over a period of months, are currently being questioned, downplayed, dismissed, and/or ignored by FCC and NTIA, while at the same time ad hoc, wild-eyed claims by LightSquared with no substantiation in either fact or test data appear to have attained the same status as gospel truth with these august bodies.

    Troubling Trend Number Two. The so-called solution proposed by LightSquared claims to eliminate interference to "99.5 percent" of GPS receivers — although nowhere is this solution supported with any factual basis or evidence whatsoever.  
    When unsubstantiated claims are made in the public arena, one can surmise either or both of two things:

    1. Those making the claims are confident that no one is awake enough or cares enough to examine the claims carefully.
    2. Those making the claims are confident that they have some sort of fix in with the decisive powers — so it doesn’t matter what kind of case they make, as long as there is the semblance of one, transparent or not.

    Upsetting Trend Number Three. As to the applications and importance of the "0.5 percent" remaining receivers, we may well ask: How many users and beneficiaries of these "0.5 percent" are there?  You know and I know that this number, a wild guess at that, represents the high-precision receivers for which no LightSquared so-called solution will work. The beneficiaries of GPS use in survey, construction, and agriculture certainly number in the hundreds of billions, if not higher.  

    Ask your better half: Does only 0.5 percent of the U.S. population eat? 

    Alarming Trend Number Four. LightSquared blandly maintains that it has been around for 10 years or more, and people believe this statement. 

    Fact: LightSquared bought the assets of a company called SkyTerra, which had great difficulty making its business case work and was thus extremely ripe for acquisition at an attractive price. SkyTerra descended in similar fashion from another company, MSV (Mobile Satellite Ventures), which also had great difficulty making its business case work and was also extremely ripe for acquisition at an attractive price.

    Thus, LightSquared’s ancestral history is turbulent. This page gives a fairly good summary of a key episode.   

    LightSquared says that in 2002 and 2003 it was "operating under a different name."  No, those were different companies.  Where were the LightSquared executives back then?  Working for other companies, that’s where. Hard to be the same company with a different name, different address, and completely different personnel.

    If they can’t tell you honestly who they are, how can you trust anything they say?
     
    Nowhere on the LightSquared web site does the company mention its heritage or link to MSV and/or SkyTerra.  Instead, it continually speaks about its new vision and how new and novel it is in the world of broadband.



    Bald-faced Lying Trend Number Five. LightSquared says that its business plan has been consistent throughout the period from 2002 (the MSV and SkyTerra era) to the present, and people in power at the FCC nod their heads.

    No. Not the case. False statement. Lie.

    SkyTerra and MSV had business plans that used the "ancillary terrestrial component" (ATC) as the regulators intended, as a gap-filler, with its primary service being provided by satellite.  ATC signals could not interfere with satellite signals without undercutting the company’s primary service.  This worked for GPS as well.  

    SkyTerra and MSV went out of business trying to make their business plans work while complying with the ATC requirements.  

    Enter LightSquared in 2010, with the new broadband vision and the new business plan to — hold fo
    r it now — flout ATC requirements, ignore them, demolish them, waive them out of existence, all with the FCC’s willing cooperation.

    The LightSquared waiver request of November 2010 upset the heretofore fundamental foundation for even considering ATC in L-band. LightSquared does not provide a primary satellite service, but instead is a terrestrial service — completely different from the business plans of the predecessor companies, and completely at odds with the original intended use of L-band for ATC. 



    Smelling a Rat in the Smokehouse Trend Number Six. The FCC continues to back LightSquared, to the point of ignoring positions put forward very strongly by top-ranking officials in the U.S Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Transportation, other U.S. government agencies, Congress, industry and public groups.

    Part of this is “because they can."  The FCC is a so-called independent agency.  However, it is part of the administrative arm of U.S. government, under the direction, appointments, and pleasure of the White House. There are Congressional investigations of FCC contact with the White House (Representative Issa) and on contact with LightSquared (Senator Grassley).  

    There are numerous reports in various quarters of other close ties between Administration officials and LightSquared.



    In that regard, I commend to you these two articles:


    Big payday for U.S. ambassador with stake in go-go wireless Internet firm
    
By John Aloysius Farrell and Fred Schulte. July 22, 2011
    

Donald Gips, the top Obama aide who became ambassador to South Africa, cashed in his stock options for LightSquared, a new wireless Internet firm, for as much as $500,000 ten days after the company won a favorable decision from the Federal Communications Commission, newly released documents show.

 Gips, a friend and major campaign fundraiser of President Obama, was the White House personnel chief until being appointed ambassador to South Africa in 2009.



    That’s half a million dollars, people. 

    Full story.

    Politically-connected LightSquared pushes wireless Internet plan despite GPS concerns
    LightSquared’s ties to Obama’s supporters and the administration’s policy interests run deep. Several major Democratic campaign contributors and longtime Obama supporters have held investments in the company and its affiliates during its tangled decade of existence.

    

Obama installed one of his biggest fundraisers, Julius Genachowski, a campaign “bundler” and broadband cheerleader, as chairman of the FCC, which granted LightSquared a special waiver to operate.



    “The more that’s revealed, the more questions there are,” said U.S. Sentor Charles Grassley."Without transparency, the public can’t know whose interests the FCC is pursuing and so can’t trust the agency’s work. The FCC should comply with my request for information to uphold the public’s trust.”

    Full story.
     

  • Mini Guidance: Sensor Helps LEGO Fans Navigate Robotic Creations

    A Google Street Car in miniature uses Dexter Industries’ dGPS sensor (Photo courtesy of Mark Crosbie.)
    A Google Street Car in miniature uses Dexter Industries’ dGPS sensor (Photo courtesy of Mark Crosbie.)

    Aspiring engineers, take note. A company dedicated to building robotic sensors for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system has released a GPS sensor, and a workbook on how to use it.

    John Cole, founder of Dexter Industries, explains that his products are intended for the education market, and are “for engineers, scientists, and those aspiring to be.”

    “A few months ago, we developed a GPS sensor for the educational market, called the dGPS,” Cole said. The sensor is sold separately, as a third-party product for the LEGO Mindstorms kit.

    The dGPS sensor provides GPS coordinate information to a robot and calculates navigation information. It provides latitude, longitude, time, speed, and heading. It also has powerful navigational calculators that can be used to navigate to target coordinates.

    The dGPS sensor uses a Skytraq module. The LEGO NXT has limited computing capability and can’t interface directly with a GPS module, so Dexter Industries developed a micro-controller and software that translates and checks the signal from the GPS, and also performs additional calculations and functions for navigational purposes.

    carback-W
    Photo courtesy of Mark Crosbie

    “For example, in addition to the standard GPRMC string that comes from a GPS chip, our dGPS sensor can receive destination coordinates from the user and calculate distance to destination and angle to destination so they can be matched against a compass,” Cole said. “Also, because robots of this scale are usually traveling below 15 mph, we developed a more accurate compass function that works on the smaller, slower scale.”

    The dGPS hooks directly into any of the four sensor ports on the NXT and can be programmed in NXT-G, RobotC, and LeJOS programming languages.

    Cole became interested in the Mindstorms system in 2005 while in graduate school. “It’s an incredible robotics kit that really fits with educational curriculums on the high school and junior high levels. The kit lowers the entrance requirements to get started [in engineering], and because it’s based on LEGO, students are usually comfortable getting started with it. It’s deceptively simple, though; the Mindstorms robot can be used to do some pretty powerful stuff.”

    Cole’s company had developed a few other sensors for education, including a solar kit and a pressure and temperature sensor, but focused on developing a GPS sensor, Cole said, because it “would be really fun for kids to start using. In particular, things like autonomous vehicles and mapping vehicles have been really exciting to develop and build with this sensor.”

    Not Just for Kids. Mark Crosbie, an adult fan of LEGO (the hobbyists refer to themselves as AFOLs), has built a miniature version of the Google street car that roams the streets to photograph them for Google Maps. The car provides panoramic views from various positions along the streets it travels; data is then made accessible through the Street View feature of Google Maps.

    Crosbie created his Street View car using Dexter Industries’ dGPS sensor to record coordinates as it drives along. “John has been very supportive of the project, providing great technical assistance to me as I used his sensor,” Crosbie said.

    The idea for a miniature Google street car came to Crosbie when he was playing with the dGPS sensor. “I realized that if I combined this sensor with a robust chassis and a camera then I’d have a LEGO version of the famous Google Street View car. And what if I could then upload the pictures into Google Earth,” writes Crosbie on his website. “It all seemed so easy… How wrong I was!”

    As Crosbie explains, his miniature Street View car is controlled manually using a PSPNx sensor to receive commands from any standard PSP game controller — the user presses the triangle button on the controller to capture an image and log the GPS coordinates. The cameras provided the biggest challenge. “The keyfob cameras are very temperamental and difficult to mount into standard LEGO dimensions,” he said.

    “Every time an image is captured, the current latitude and longitude are recorded from the dGPS,” Crosbie explains. “The NXT creates a KML format file in the flash file system, which is then uploaded from the NXT to a PC. Opening the KML file in Google Earth shows the path that the car drove, and also has placemarks for every picture you took along the way. Click on the placemark to see the picture.”

    Despite technical challenges outlined in his blog, Crosbie is undeterred, and working on another prototype. “I’m already hard at work on version 2.0 of the Street View car for a big event later this year.”

    How-to Book. Besides hardware, Dexter Industries offers educational support material. “Just last week, we released a book that introduces middle school and high school students to GPS, and how to develop robots that use the GPS,” Cole said.

    The book, Beginning GPS for NXT Robots, provides students with an introduction to the basics of GPS, and includes hands-on activities and tutorials on how to use the features of the dGPS sensor with the robots.

    “This workbook was written to bring the GPS system to life and help students understand it, explore it, and find new ways to use it,” Cole said.

    4-H program’s GPS/GIS program has started to use the company’s sensors in its curriculum, Cole said, because the sensors hook directly into the NXT robots.

    The ION Mini-Urban Challenge, in which high school students compete to navigate a LEGO robotic car through a miniature city, don’t use GPS sensors. Students are provided with a kit that contains six other sensors that detect things such as light, color, and sound.

    “We would love to be part of the ION challenge and we’ve tried contacting the organizers just recently,” Cole said. “It would be a great fit to get some students using the GPS in a way that really gets kids engaged in GPS/GIS development.”

    map-W
    A Google Street Car in miniature uses Dexter Industries’ dGPS sensor (Photo courtesy of Mark Crosbie.)
    EKEN0012-W
    A street-view photo captured from the on-board cameras of the mini car. (Photos courtesy of Mark Crosbie.)

     

     

  • Europe Finds LightSquared Harm to Galileo Signal

    The head of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, the agency that oversees all operations of the Galileo program, has filed an official comment on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) docket regarding the Lightsquared proposal to broadcast a powerful terrestrial signal. Heinz Zourek addresses Julius Genachowski, FCC chair, as follows:

    “I am writing to express our deep concerns about the LightSquared system that is proposed for operation in frequencies immediately below the radionavigation-satellite service (RNSS) allocation at 1559-161OMHz. This band is the core band used by global satellite navigation systems including GPS and you are no doubt aware that Europe is at the advanced planning stage for its own system, Galileo, which will be operational by 2014/15, and that will also use this RNSS allocation.

    The band immediately below 1559MHz, allocated by the Radio Regulations to the mobile-satellite service (MSS), has been used for satellite based transmissions for many years and has proved to be broadly compatible with RNSS systems above 1559MHz. The LightSquared proposal for a terrestrial network deployment in MSS spectrum would completely change the nature of radio transmissions in the band. What are now neighbour MSS transmissions at similar receive power levels to RNSS would in future be many orders of magnitude higher and with the potential to severely disrupt reception of RNSS signals.

    Analysis carried out in Europe, including by our own technical partner the European Space Agency, has shown that transmissions from LightSquared base-stations do indeed have considerable potential to cause harmful interference to Galileo receivers operating in the United States. Interference effects have been determined to occur in the range 100m to almost 1000km, depending on the type of receiver being used. This obviously presents a grave threat to the viability of providing a Galileo service covering US territory – a service which many studies have shown will not only benefit Galileo users, but those of GPS too as the two systems will be interoperable through a common signal design providing significantly improved coverage and accuracy in urban environments. The European Commission is also concerned about potential impacts to safety critical aviation applications. Europe is covered by the EGNOS system, which is equivalent and interoperable with the US WAAS, and so it is vital that EGNOS/WAAS receivers fitted to aircraft entering US airspace do not suffer degradation to the availability and reception of their navigation signals.

    The Galileo system will also contribute to the global COSPAS-SARSAT system through the MEOSAR programme and includes a dedicated space-to-Earth linle in the band 15441545MHz acting as a return channel to distress beacons, in accordance with Article 31 of the Radio Regulations. Intended for the maritime and aviation sector the possibility of disruption to this safety related application within US territory should not be ignored. Whilst recognising that the rules governing worldwide radio usage, enshrined in the ITU Constitution and the Radio Regulations, allow the USA freedom to decide on spectrum matters within its own territory, Article 4 of the Radio Regulations makes it clear that ITU Members States are expected not to cause harmful interference to systems of another country that operate in accordance with the Radio Regulations.

    We are confident that the process put in place by the FCC to deal with internal US concerns about the threat to GPS reception will reach appropriate conclusions and that these will take into account our own concerns about reception of Galileo signals. However, the receivers may not have identical characteristics and therefore we would be grateful that Galileo and EGNOS receivers will also be taken into account within the FCC’s decision making process, thus giving us sufficient assurance that users will be able to receive Galileo and WAAS signals in US territory without risk of harmful interference.

    Yours sincerely,

    Heinz Zourek

  • To Solve LightSquared Issue, Javad Ashjaee Calls for End to P-Code Encryption

    To solve the LightSquared versus GPS controversy, Javad Ashjaee, president and CEO of JAVAD GNSS, has appealed directly to President Obama to discontinue the encryption of P-code, the restricted military GPS signal. His comments came in the context of the LightSquared/GPS interference imbroglio, as part of his solution to the conflict over spectrum. “This policy is not helping national security. It is hurting both precision users and the broadband project. We need more broadband, for global, fast, and inexpensive real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS.”

    Ashjaee, a longtime leader in high-precision GNSS equipment, made the remarks during a panel discussion at the Esri Survey Summit, and expands upon them in a video posted on his company’s website: “A Solution for LightSquared.” In the video, he calls the LightSquared saga “a good thing, because it brings the issue of in-band interference to many GPS users, especially surveyors and high-precision users.”

    He goes on to address three issues: collateral damage, why high-precision receivers are more affected by the LightSquared attack, and finally a proposed solution to the problem.

    In the first section, he disputes the assertion that LightSquared interference to 5 percent (surveyors) and 1 percent (military) of GPS users should be tolerated as collateral damage. “When you add substance to the numbers, you see how quickly this argument fails. The military is the backbone of our national security, and high-precision users are the backbone of our financial security and growth.”

    On the second topic, he gives two reasons why high-precision receivers are more affected by the LightSquared signal, briefly summarized here as:

    • the crucial importance of the arrival time of the signal edges; the edges are first to be distorted by interference. Narrow filters, proposed as a solution by LightSquared, also blur the signal-edge shape.
    • the encryption of P-code on L1 and L2 bands, degrading their effectiveness by a factor of 1,000, according to Ashjaee. “Encryption does not do any good to anybody.”

    As his solution to the problem, Ashjaee says Lightsquared should stay further away from the GPS signal, and use a cascade of filters; secondly, he calls on President Obama to discontinue P-code encryption, at least until the new L2 signal is operable in 8 or 10 years. “This would make GPS less vulnerable to the LightSquared project and others like it.”

    In a subsequent conversation with GPS World, Ashjaee likened the P-code situation to that of selective availability (SA), another U.S. government effort to restrict use of high precision. Ashjaee recalled campaigning vigorously against SA in 1991, with full-page ads in GPS World depicting the Mona Lisa painting with many missing parts. “Selective availability is a step backward in providing the best of this excellent work [GPS] of science and art. As the leader in GPS technology, we consider selective availability as being neither good science nor good politics,” the ad copy reads.

    Ashjaee adds with a twinkle, “[A former director of the GPS Wing] told me that a high general in the Air Force had that ad pinned to the wall behind his desk. Why? Who knows. Perhaps he agreed with it.”

    SA was discontinued in May 2000.

    (As an interesting historical side-note, in an adjacent ad in the same January 1991 issue, the company advertised “Ashtech’s True P-Code Advantage.” At that time, P-code was not encrypted. The copy reads:

    “GPS was designed as a dual-frequency system and the Ashtech P-12 GPS receiver enables users to take full advantage of GPS capabilities. Dual-frequency reception eliminates ionospheric refraction effects, so medium-to-longer baselines can be measured more accurately.

    “High-quality P-code measurements on both bands also enable shroter station occupation time, further increasing productivity for survey crews.”

    “P-code correlation produces carrier-phase measurements of higher accuracy because of significantly higher SNR over conventional codeless techniques. This, combined with the P-12 receiver’s ability to measure full-wavelength L2 carier-phase, allows nearly instantaneous integer cycle-phase ambiguity resolution for kinematic survey, precision navigation, and other applications.

    “Unlinke conventional codeless techniques, ‘true P-code’ tracking provides inherent immunity from jamming for uninterrupted tracking in areas of high interference.”)

    “The U.S. policy of national security and P-code is 30 years old,” Ashjaee resumes. “This policy was devised at the time we were head-to-head in the Cold War with Soviet Union. They had missiles targeted at us, we had missiles targeted at them. That’s why we encrypted the P-code. But this situation is gone. There is now an agreement between Obama and [Russian president] Medvedev that citizens of the two countries can have 3-year visas to visit each other. Our missiles are not targeted at each other.”

    “Since the inception of GPS, there is no shred of evidence that GPS has ever been used to attack any U.S. national security, let alone its P-code signals.”

    Further, Ashjaee pointed out, “At that time, GLONASS did not exist, and we did not want them to use our system. Now GLONASS exists, and its signal is arguably more robust than GPS.”

    Ashjaee called on President Obama to turn off P-code encryption. “This policy is not helping national security. It is hurting both precision users and the LightSquared project, which we all desperately need. We need more broadband. They know the system is not good, and they want to put another clear code [on L2]. It will take 8 or 10 years. Turn off encryption temporarily until we have it. Encryption can be turned on in a fraction of a second whenever needed.”

    “Turning off P-code encryption not only makes the GPS signalmore robust to LightSquared, but also protects it against all kind of other interferences, including harmonics of innocent signals like harmonics or radio stations.”

    He embraced the use of wideband communication between base and rovers for RTK GPS. “We have base and rovers, with VRS networks. The corrections must be transmitted from base to rovers. Now we have a mess of communications: UHF (different in every country, difficult to certify in every country), spread-spectrum, VHF, Ethernet, WiFi. These are kludgey communications. If we have broadband, similar to Lightsquared, we have RTK globally, fast, and inexpensive.”

    In a separate conversation with GPS World, another expert in high-precision use confirmed that “we have worked very hard in the past, when bandwidth was much more expensive, to minimize the bandwidth required to send differential GPS corrections with minimal latency. Sensor fusion has mitigated the latency issue as well. As robotics applications increase, not only base-rover communications but tons of data relevant to precise positioning, sensor fusion, including vision, RF ranging, path planning, mission planning, obstacle detection, and so on, will be needed. Industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band spread-spectrum and ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging systems have a lot of problems that 4G systems could alleviate.”

    “We need a coalition to save GPS and Lightsquared,” concluded Ashjaee. “It’s a nice complement.”

    “Broadband would be a good help to our industry, and to our technology. We want global, universal wideband communication, either through towers or satellites, or through any means to transmit base station or VRS network corrections to rovers.”

    Ashjaee offered to debate the P-code encryption issue with representatives from the GPS Wing, State Department, Department of Defense, PNT ExCom, and others, at the annual GPS World Leadership Dinner, held during the ION-GNSS conference each September. “It will be a very lively debate,” he said. “Add Tom Stansell, too. And representative of LightSquared.”

     

  • U.S. Defense, Transportation Say Keep Wireless Comm Away from L-Band

    The U.S. Departments of Defense and Transportation declared their strong opposition to the proposal of LightSquared Subsidiary LLC to operate a nationwide broadband service within the spectrum immediately adjacent to GPS signals, in a letter sent on June 14 to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The agencies acted on behalf of the on behalf of the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, which they are responsible for co-chairing.

    The Departments asked the NTIA administrator to advise the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to continue to withhold authorization for LightSquared to commence commercial service per its proposed deployment of a terrestrial service within the 1525-1559 MHz bands. LightSquared’s proposal is to deploy a network of 40,000 base stations along with some satellite coverage over 139 major markets in the United States.

    According to their official statement, “The Departments continue to support the National Broadband Plan, but cannot do so at the expense of a global, ubiquitous utility such as the Global Positioning System. The Departments encourage further assessment of any alternative spectrum and/or signal configuration plans.”

    The DoD/DoT letter was sent just prior to the original deadline for the final report of the Technical Working Group commissioned by the FCC to research and recommend on this matter. Certainly, the respective signers were cognizant of the contents of that report, at least on the test results regarding interference with GPS. As it turned out, on June 15 LightSquared asked for more time, and was granted a two-week extension. The final report was filed with the FCC on June 30.

    The Departments’ position followed an interagency review of the findings of the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Systems Engineering Forum (NPEF),  tasked to assess the GPS impacts of LightSquared’s deployment plan as originally filed. The NPEF determined that, if permitted to operate as originally planned, LightSquared’s signals would significantly interfere with GPS users and, as a result, impact national security, economic security, and public safety nationwide. The NPEF report served as working material for the TWG report.

    The NTIA Administrator forwarded the letter and report to the FCC Chairman on July 6. These materials can be found at www.PNT.gov.

  • Exit COO and President at Harbinger, LightSquared Owner

    Harbinger Capital Partners, the hedge-fund firm that owns wireless-network company LightSquared, which recently launched a frontal assault on the GPS signal, announced on July 6 that its chief operating officer (COO) had resigned by “mutual agreement.” Peter Jenson had been responsible for all operational activities of the funds. His exact role in the application for a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) conditional waiver to broadcast a powerful L1 signal from 40,000 U.S.-based terrestrial cell towers is unknown at this time; however, it is certain to have been key.

    Harbinger and LightSquared received a recent rebuff of sorts when the FCC-appointed Technical Working Group filed its final report on June 30, calling for a move of the company’s signal out of the L-Band. Close on the heels of that report came an announcement that the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Defense asked the Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to advise the FCC to continue to withhold authorization for LightSquared to commence commercial service per its proposed deployment of a terrestrial service within the 1525-1559 MHz bands.

    On that same June 30 date, Harbinger Group  Inc., a publicly traded company majority-owned by Harbinger Capital, appointed Omar Asali as acting president, replacing Harbinger founder Phil Falcone, who will continue to serve as chairman and chief executive.

    Harbinger faces investor requests to withdraw about $1 billion invested in its funds, The Wall Street Journal reported in June. According to the newspaper, Harbinger told investors withdrawing money that they would be paid in part with stakes in LightSquared; the paper also reported that Harbinger has shrunk to about $6 billion in assets from a peak of $26 billion in 2008.

    Asali is a managing director for Harbinger Capital and had previously served as the company’s head of global strategy, so his involvement in the GPS episode is also very probable. The personnel changes cannot be said to reflect a shift away from the contra-GPS initiative. LightSquared rhetoric has actually increased in vehemence on that topic. The moves can be conjectured to be strategic in nature, to satisfy or defuse investor discontent.

  • Septentrio and Altus Announce Expansion of Strategic Relationship

    Septentrio Satellite Navigation NV and Altus Positioning Systems today announced that the two companies are expanding their strategic relationship to pursue growth opportunities in the high-precision satellite-based surveying sector.

    Septentrio is a manufacturer of high-end Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers for professional navigation, positioning, and timing applications. Altus is an international supplier of GNSS equipment for survey applications. Both are privately held companies.

    Under the agreement, Septentrio is making a substantial investment in Altus through its U.S. subsidiary, Septentrio Inc., which is jointly owned by Septentrio Satellite Navigation NV, and by the Belgische Maatschappij voor Internationale Investering – Société Belge d’Investissement International (BMI-SBI) / Participatiemaatschappij Vlaanderen (PMV), a Belgium-based investment consortium.

    “The investment in Altus is an exciting new step in the life of Septentrio,” said Peter Grognard, founder and CEO of Septentrio. “Surveying has traditionally been the largest segment of the professional GNSS industry. Both in traditional and emerging markets, the survey segment has continued to enjoy double-digit growth rates in recent years, and our investment in Altus will further accelerate our growth and expand our global presence in this key industry sector.

    “Since the surveying community demands the highest-possible performance in precise measurements, it is a very important driver for GNSS technology,” Grognard said. “Our expanded relationship with Altus will help us refine and improve our products to meet these exacting standards, which will benefit other markets as well, and will create a closer bond between the technology and the marketplace.”

  • Final Report of FCC Working Group: Lose LightSquared from L-Band

    “Based on the analysis performed, LightSquared should not be permitted to use the L-Band spectrum for a densely-deployed, non-integrated terrestrial-only network. Such a network would cause unacceptable interference to GPS operations, wiping out an installed base of over 500 million units used in a wide array of public safety, aviation, industrial and consumer applications. While mitigation techniques utilizing filters were discussed in theory, they could not be tested as part of the WG effort because filters do not exist, even in prototypes. No information considered by the WG demonstrated that any mitigation techniques — other than relocation of the proposed terrestrial network to an alternative band — would be successful.” (From the U.S. GPS Industry Council’s overview of the WG report)

    The final report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on three months of research by the technical working group (TWG) tasked to investigate and analyze effects of powerful terrestrial L-band transmitters on the GPS signal and services finally appeared on June 30, nearly two weeks after its assigned date. LightSquared had requested an extension, and apparently the lawyers on its staff used the extra time to write many pages of self-justification and further argumentation of the company’s case. But the facts are clear: the LightSquared signal would devastate services for users of all GPS receivers tested.

    The final report is not easy to find on the FCC’s labyrinthine website. Read the full “final report of the Working Group (WG) that was formed to study the GPS overload/desensitization issue as described by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in DA 11-133” here.

    See also four appendices:
    one, “Appendix A.1: MOPS Based Procedure for Minimum Recommended Testing of LightSquared RFI to GPS Aviation Receivers”
    two, “Appendix G.2: from Alcatel-Lucent Labs, LightSquared L-Band GPS Receiver Equipment Impact Evaluation Testing”
    three, “Appendix H.1.1: JPL/NASA Report on Laboratory Testing of Receivers for the Space-Based Sub-Team and the High Precision Sub-Team”
    and four, “Appendix H.1.10: High Precision Receivers – NAVAIR Anechoic Chamber Test Results.”

    Full data for all device tests conducted by the Working Group is available for download at: ftp://twg:[email protected]

    GPS World readers may also be interested in the thoughtful and intelligible analyses provided by the U.S. GPS Industry Council (“Overview of the Final Report of the Working Group”) and the Coalition to Save Our GPS (“FCC-Mandated Working Group Report Documents Pervasive Harmful Interference with GPS“).

    The TWG conclusions of widespread disruption and harm to GPS services are consistent with those reached by third parties that have reported independent analyses: RTCA, Inc., a Federal Advisory Committee that evaluates aviation, and the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC).

    “The TWG faced an extraordinary challenge of trying to determine if the laws of physics would allow the high-power LightSquared signals to co-exist in adjacent radio spectrum with the low-power satellite signals of GPS over and above the complex regulatory challenges of managing spectrum sharing,” said Charles Trimble, chairman of the U.S. GPS Industry Council. “In the end, the laws of physics won out.”

    Trimble, who co-chaired the TWG, added, “There is no single, simple solution that can eliminate interference for all classes of GPS receivers in the near term. GPS touches every aspect of our lives.  It goes beyond the most widely known navigation applications such as car navigation and cell phones to hugely important applications such as agriculture, electric power grids, communications networks, infrastructure monitoring and construction.”

    Regarding possible effective solutions, he offered the view that “greater separation of the LightSquared signals and those of GPS are necessary if the value of GPS is to be protected and broadband communications can grow to its potential over the long term.”

    In the area of high-precision receivers used for precision agriculture, survey, construction, machine control, mining, geographic information systems (GIS), structural deformation monitoring, and science, the group found that damaging interference existed at times at very long distances for the LightSquared transmitters. NovAtel president and CEO Michael Ritter said, “Allowing LightSquared to interfere with the utilization of these high precision receivers would eliminate the productivity improvements provided to these industries and applications during the past 20 years and will result in significantly higher prices for goods and services from these industries to the consumer.”

    Key Results and Findings from the WG Report:

    1. The LightSquared Terrestrial Broadband Service Will Cause Harmful Interference to Nearly All GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications

    2. Limited Testing of LightSquared Terrestrial Broadband Operations in the “Lower” 4G LTE Channel Does Not Eliminate Harmful Interference to GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications.

    3. Increasing Filtering on GPS Receivers Is Not an Available Mitigation Technique.

    •  No Suitable Filters Exist;
    •  Even if Filters Were Available, They Have Undesirable Performance Impacts on GPS Receivers That Have Not Been Evaluated.
    •  Increased Filtering Does Not Mitigate Interference to Hundreds of Millions of GPS Users in the Installed Base.

    4. The Only Feasible Solution to the Harmful Interference Effects LightSquared’s Proposed 4G LTE Terrestrial Broadband Service Will Cause to GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications Is to Relocate the LightSquared Service to Spectrum that is Not Adjacent to GPS/RNSS, outside of the L-Band.

     

  • The Economics of Disruption: $96 Billion Annually at Risk

    The Economics of Disruption: $96 Billion Annually at Risk

    “The Economic Benefits of Commercial GPS Use in the United States and the Costs of Potential Disruption” was presented by Nam D. Pham, Ph.D., of NDP Consulting, during a June 21 webinar sponsored by the Coalition to Save Our GPS.

    The author stated that his study concentrated on GPS use in precision agriculture, construction, and surveying. It explicitly does not encompass GPS use in aviation, nor in the consumer sector, nor in timing or financial infrastructure.

    The report states: “The direct economic benefits of GPS technology on commercial GPS users are estimated to be over $67.6 billion per year in the United States. In addition, GPS technology creates direct and indirect positive spillover effects, such as emission reductions from fuel savings, health and safety gains in the work place, time savings, job creation, higher tax revenues, and improved public safety and national defense. Today, there are more than 3.3 million jobs that rely on GPS technology, including approximately 130,000 jobs in GPS manufacturing industries and 3.2 million in the downstream commercial GPS-intensive industries. The commercial GPS adoption rate is growing and expected to continue growing across industries as high financial returns have been demonstrated. Consequently, GPS technology will create $122.4 billion benefits per year and will directly affect more than 5.8 million jobs in the downstream commercial GPS-intensive industries when penetration of GPS technology reaches 100 percent.

    Further, “the GPS industry directly creates jobs and economic activities, which spur economic growth. Evidence shows that innovative industries, such as the GPS industry, create both high- and low-skilled jobs during economic expansions and downturns, pay their employees higher-than-national-average wages, raise output and sales per employee, increase U.S. competitiveness, which is reflected in increased exports and reduced U.S. trade deficits, and spend large sums on R&D and capital investment. In addition to creating these direct economic benefits, innovative industries create productivity benefits to the downstream industries, including increased sales, profits, and investment returns. Empirical studies have shown sustained productivity benefits support further growth and job creation in downstream industries and the U.S. economy as a whole.”

    Finally, “The direct economic costs of full GPS disruption to commercial GPS users and GPS manufacturers are estimated to be $96 billion per year in the United States, the equivalent of 0.7 percent of the U.S. economy. This annual total cost is the sum of $87.2 billion and $8.8 billion imposed on commercial GPS users and commercial GPS manufacturers, respectively. GPS user costs consist of $67.6 billion per year in foregone GPS benefits — increased productivity and input cost savings — and another $19.6 billion book value of investment losses in GPS equipment. GPS manufacturer costs consist of $8.3 billion per year in foregone commercial GPS equipment sales and an additional $0.55 billion per year in R&D spending and associated costs to attempt to mitigate the so-called LightSquared Problem.Systemn

    “If the operation of LightSquared will disrupt 50 percent of commercial GPS equipment, the direct economic impacts are expected to be $48.3 billion per year. Except the R&D spending and the opportunity cost of R&D spending performed by GPS manufacturers to find attempt to mitigate interference, direct economic costs to commercial GPS users and foregone GPS equipment sales are assumed to be half of total direct costs under the scenario of 100 percent degradation. In addition to direct economic impacts, there are other forgone direct and indirect economic and social benefits that are threatened by the LightSquared Problem. On the macroeconomic level, GPS disruption would reduce productivity and, consequently, hinder the competitiveness of GPS downstream users.”

    figure1
    Figure 1. Revenue shares of GPS equipment in North America, 2005–2010, according to Bone, Dominique and Stuart Carlaw, 2009, “Global Navigation Satellite Positioning Solutions,” ABI Research; and authors’ estimates.

     

    figure2
    Figure 2. Commercial GPS equipment revenues in North America, 2005–2010, according to Bone, Dominique and Stuart Carlaw, 2009, “Global Navigation Satellite Positioning Solutions,” ABI Research; and authors’ estimates.

     

     

  • Out in Front: The Daughter of Time

    “Truth,” wrote Sir Francis Bacon, “is the daughter of time.”

    He meant that any account, repeated often enough by different people in different places, at different junctures, eventually becomes accepted as historical fact, or truth, by those with no direct knowledge of the matter.

    That’s why it is so important to repudiate and expose lies at every encounter. Never, ever let one pass. Even when it’s the same one that you dispelled yesterday — or thought you had taken care of. One thing about liars, they keep coming back. They don’t give up.

    Would you give up, if you had $20 billion at stake?

    I wrote an online column on this topic recently: “LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record.” These distortions were so blandly crafted that they were picked up and passed on by a number of other parties who should have known better, including at least one colleague of the press who writes for a wireless industry publication.

    Come to think of it, you do have $20 billion at stake — and much more. We all do. To the tune of more than $67.6 billion in direct economic benefits in the United States alone, provided by GPS. Or $96 billion per year in direct economic costs should GPS be disrupted. See the System news in this issue, “The Economics of Disruption,” for what you stand to lose.

    If you think the recent amendment to the 2012 Budget, cutting off FCC funds in this matter, should settle LightSquared hash, think again. The company is back with a new solution. Same as the old solution. Just with the pieces moved around. And it has taken its game up a notch, signaling intent to apply to the International Telecommunication Union for authority to broadcast powerful terrestrial signals all over the world.

    All over the world. Calculate the costs of that. For our international readers, this may mean trouble for GLONASS and Galileo too.

    Written to your congresspeople about this? Bravo if you have. Write again. They are not tired of hearing from you. There’s a lot they don’t know, that you do, particularly if you read the news accounts here and online. Forward links freely; they are information-laden and they are there for you to use.

    Not written to anyone yet? The headline of this column also served as the title of a novel by Josephine Tey, concerning Richard III, King of England. You know the evil hunchback murderer of Shakespeare’s play? We recall him as such because someone (his rival Henry VII) was particularly adept at lying and getting others, including Shakespeare, to repeat the lie — with none to dispute.

    GPS could become a forgotten hunchback of history. Act now.