GreenRoad, a driver performance management company, and GPS Insight, a fleet GPS tracking provider, have announced that GreenRoad will offer advanced fleet tracking capability, provided by GPS Insight, as part of its GreenRoad driver performance management service. GreenRoad will integrate the GPS Insight solution and offer it to customers as GreenRoad Advanced Tracking.
“GreenRoad delivers the best drivers on the road — safe, fuel-efficient and green,” said Jim Heeger, chief executive of GreenRoad. “As we’ve collected feedback about what more we can offer, we’ve consistently heard requests for integrated, advanced GPS tracking. The comprehensiveness, flexibility, and effectiveness of the GPS Insight service are truly impressive. Now, with the GPS Insight partnership, we can offer the tools to also create the most efficient fleets on the road. It is a powerful combination.”
“GPS tracking is a natural complement to the GreenRoad driver performance management offering,” said Robert Donat, CEO of GPS Insight. “With the combination of these two capabilities, fleet operators will have all they need to optimize fleet efficiencies and maximize driver productivity.”
The integrated solution, GreenRoad Advanced Tracking, will be available in the U.S. UK and Canada by the end of the year.
Hemisphere GPS has introduced Outback MAX with Outback ConnX — what it calls its “next-generation Outback Guidance system that redefines simplicity in precision farming.” Working seamlessly with Outback eDriveX with eTurns, the Outback MAX integrated display terminal provides a full array of features including section and variable rate control, Eclipse L1/L2 GPS and GLONASS guidance, and video support for up to four monitoring cameras, the company said.
Outback MAX also provides wireless connectivity via the Outback ConnX data management system to deliver real-time data access and management that is imperative for modern farmers. ConnX provides seamless data transfer between the Outback MAX terminal, office, and service providers ensuring efficient, accurate decision making and farming operations. ConnX can automatically import and export data, engage customer service with remote control capability, and simplify connection to RTK correctors. ConnX is compatible with popular data platforms including AgJunction, AgVerdict, NutriScription HD, OptiGro, and Precision.Ag.
“Hemisphere GPS has established a new level of innovation with Outback MAX that will substantially improve the accessibility and effectiveness of automated guidance and application control,” said Kip Pendleton, senior vice president and general manager of Agriculture at Hemisphere GPS. “The highly functional yet simple design of Outback MAX combined with the seamless connectivity between the field, office, and service providers greatly enhance the value that farmers can realize from precision farming techniques.”
Building on the functionality of company’s successful, the feature-rich Outback S3, the Outback MAX adds a host of new features: simplicity in design and operation, a powerful mapping engine, excellent screen clarity, seamless connectivity, and a rugged design that can operate in rough environments — features that are critical to achieving the benefits of precision farming. Outback MAX incorporates the ability to create shortcuts and favorites for the most commonly used tasks, facilitating a short learning curve with simple access to important features, getting farmers up and running quickly, Hemisphere GPS said.
It happened over 20 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.
Three young U.S. Air Force officers stood respectfully in the office of Lt Gen Thomas Moorman, then Vice Commander of Air Force Space Command. All three were summoned to the same meeting, but I expect none of us knew exactly why. It would soon become apparent that we were there for “The Talk.”
For those of you unfamiliar with “The Talk,” it is not unlike the awkward conversation most young men have with their fathers around the age of puberty. However, this talk would determine if the powers that be thought we had a future in the USAF.
I naively assumed that all military officers at some point experience “The Talk” with their superiors, but I have discovered this is not the case. For many, “The Talk” launches them confidently into the latter part of their service careers, and for others it is the dreaded signal that immediately pursuing other endeavors is in order, i.e., look for a new day job.
The three of us that day actually had little to fear. We all served, or in my case were serving, as Executive Officer for General Thomas Moorman. Serving as an Executive Officer for a senior General Officer can be daunting, but for each of us it was also a rewarding experience; indeed, none of us could have asked for a more perfect mentor and role model. Plus, we knew that General Tom Moorman cared about each one of us. He did not choose his Executive Officers lightly…many volunteered, few were chosen. Plus, I will give you a hint: long though the hours may be, it is easy to work for a man that you admire, and to this day we all admire General Tom Moorman.
The meeting that day was short and to the point. We were all cheerfully informed that we had a future in the USAF and from that simple statement we also knew that assignments would be forthcoming. I say cheerfully because, when all is said and done, General Tom Moorman is a very cheerful man. He always has a ready smile, is kindhearted and loves a good joke. He also has a prodigious memory and is a workaholic, but that often comes with the territory. He is tough when he needs to be, but his countenance inspires confidence. So we all felt honored, fortunate and even blessed to be mentored, counseled and led by this wonderful man. I know we all left his office that day with a smile on our face, although my trip was only about five feet outside his front door. We all briefly discussed what our future assignments might hold and then went our separate ways, little aware of what the future would actually hold.
Of the four officers in the AFSPC Vice Commander’s office that day, all experienced or are experiencing successful military careers: two eventually pinned on four stars, one found himself literally and successfully fighting for his life in intensive care at the United States Air Force Academy hospital only a year later, and yours truly proudly served his country for 30 years and now finds himself writing about “The Talk” and having a conversation with General William “Willie” Shelton, who now sits in that same office where “The Talk” occurred 20 years ago.
Indeed, General Willie Shelton and I have been good friends for almost 25 years, and so it feels natural for us to sit down and have a brief conversation about the past and what the future holds for him and his family, for Air Force Space Command and, of course, the Global Positioning System.
WS = General (USAF) – William Shelton, Commander, Air Force Space Command
DJ = Don Jewell (USAF, Ret) Defense Editor, GPS World magazine
DJ: First of all, General Shelton, thank you for your time today. To say that you are a busy man is a gross understatement and we do sincerely appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation.
First of all, on a personal note as an Air Force Academy graduate, with numerous assignments in the Colorado Springs area, do you find this to be a nostalgic time in your life?
WS: Don, it is great to be back in Colorado Springs. You know Linda and I really love it here. If any place is home anymore then this is it, and when retirement comes around, this is the place where we will retire. So we are delighted to be back in town and delighted to be back at Air Force Space Command.
DJ: You and I have spoken many times about how much we, and our families, love this area. However, I’m not sure that back when we were carpooling together to Falcon, now Schriever Air Force Base, either one of us would have predicted we would be having this conversation 20 years later and you would be presiding over the 30th anniversary of Air Force Space Command. Can you tell us about some of the 30th anniversary plans?
WS: Don, there are numerous activities planned around our 30th anniversary. We have new Space Pioneers that we will induct. We’ve planned a big Commanders Conference, of course. We are bringing in our Commanders Group, which is a group of civilians from across the Command that provides advice to our Commanders. We are also having a 30th Anniversary Gala sponsored by the Space Foundation at the Broadmoor. And while we are looking forward to all these activities, there is another major event that is special to me and I know will be to you and many of us in this community, and that is the naming of our new education building after General Thomas Moorman.
DJ: I know General Moorman must be pleased about that. He always pushed education as a way to get ahead in the USAF and in life. I’ve heard he’s been a bit under the weather; will he and Barbara be able to attend the dedication ceremony?
WS:Absolutely, he and Barbara and several family members will attend, along with several of his old cronies. It will hopefully be a nice celebration.
DJ: Indeed, it will probably be old home week for many of them — many of whom you and I met when we worked for General Moorman back in the day. There will be a lot of people looking forward to that dedication ceremony.
And speaking of General Moorman helps me segue into our next topic, which is stewardship. General Moorman has always been a big proponent of the importance of the stewardship of space. In this case I would like to bring us around to the stewardship of one system in particular, and that of course is the Global Positioning System or GPS.
Recently a retired General officer, who you know well and has served as a mentor and still serves as an advisor, made a telling comment concerning the stewardship of GPS, “Thank God GPS is run by the United States Air Force and not the French Air Controllers, who go on strike every August.”
WS: I had not heard that one but it does make a point. I guess what I want to say about stewardship is that for 20+ of the 30 years that AFSPC has been in existence, the USAF has been the proud steward of GPS. We built and sustained the constellation, we have operated the constellation, we have been the engine driving many of the innovations in receiver technology — indeed there have been a whole variety of technologies and innovations concerning GPS that the USAF has been behind.
Now this takes nothing away from a critical industry that continues to develop applications that I personally never dreamed of. But in terms of the basic provisioning of the GPS capability and all that GPS enables today, we — the United States Air Force and Air Force Space Command — are very proud of our accomplishments and our stewardship
DJ: Certainly no one can deny the Air Force has been an excellent steward of GPS, but what can you tell us about the future of GPS? What do you personally see as the way ahead? You have commissioned several studies to look into what the future holds. What can you share with us?
WS:First of all, Don, we want to stay the course with GPS III and then maybe look at some different constructs for future satellites…adding some capabilities and looking at a whole mix of future opportunities. But as you said, those are all studies that are under way. In this budget environment we definitely don’t have a course set in concrete, but for GPS III we are definitely on a good path for now. I think we want to stay on that path. It is really a very good and well-run program. It is on schedule and pretty much on cost. We have a little bit of cost growth in the program but it is not anything outside the management reserve fenced for the program. So we are in very good shape on GPS III. Lockheed Martin is doing a very good job putting the factory together, in Denver, to crank out those satellites. All signs are good.
DJ: That’s great to hear. Coincidentally, I have a column coming out shortly on the status of the GPS III program. Now, what can you share with us about OCX, the ground control segment?
WS:Don, the ground segment is coming along. OCX has had some issues but we really believe we have turned the corner on OCX.
Indeed, my hat’s off to Raytheon for really taking this on. The management within Raytheon has taken this program very seriously. They’ve brought in the right people and basically turned the OCX program around, and we are confident that we are going to be in a good place once we get OCX delivered. It is not going to be as soon as we had hoped. It is not going to be coincident with the arrival of GPS III, but it will be ready shortly thereafter, and we will have some capability of controlling the GPS III satellites until we can get them OCX support.
DJ: That, of course, brings us to the inevitable “gap” question, which I know you have been asked a hundred times; it sounds like you now have a plan for that eventuality.
WS:We do. We have some special software that we are going to have to work to get that accomplished, but we have a good plan to make that happen. We will be in good shape on GPS III. We will not have all the capabilities that OCX will bring us, of course, but we will at least be able to make use of the satellites while we are waiting on OCX to deliver.
DJ: There are those who openly speculated about whether OCX even had a future, so it is certainly good to hear that there is a plan, you have confidence in that plan, and in the future of OCX.
You and I had a conversation recently where you stated emphatically that you were not interested in placing GPS III satellites on orbit just as a means of storage, but that they had to be operational.
WS:That’s exactly right. We certainly need to get the first GPS III satellite up as soon as possible to make sure that we don’t have any design issues. And you’re right, I am not in favor of storing on orbit, because of life-limiting components.
DJ: Then you must be comfortable with the fact that in the future we will most assuredly be launching GPS-IIFs and GPS-IIIs simultaneously?
WS:Yes, we know how to handle that.
DJ: OK, then as long as we are discussing GPS III, why don’t we move into the arena of trying to pin down a vehicle or set of vehicles for dual launch? You and I once discussed GPS III vehicles 7-8 for that honor, and you mentioned at the time that it was a moving target. Where do we stand today?
WS:Don, I think we are now probably talking about GPS III vehicles 9-10. We are still in the study phase on this issue with Lockheed Martin and United Launch Alliance. We are still trying to figure out how we would do dual launch and what kind of capabilities we need to develop. I think this is really the wave of the future…being able to put two up simultaneously will save us a lot in launch costs.
Plus, we will look at new launch entrants. If a new entrant can come in and provide a cost-effective launch capability for several launches, then we will look seriously at them as well.
DJ: I can barely remember the last GPS launch failure — it was more than 15 years ago — but that is the last thing any space program needs, a launch failure. In that regard are you comfortable with the, as you say, new entrants into the launch market?
WS:Not yet. We will go through a very rigorous certification process to get new entrants certified, but once they are certified we will look to contract with them just like we do with ULA today. New entrants will certainly introduce new options for us.
DJ: Some would argue that the USAF really has very little choice but to look at alternative launch systems. I was briefed recently that the projected on orbit costs of an initial GPS III satellite, with NRE (non-recurring expenses) but without added launch costs, is in the neighborhood of $265M. When you add the launch costs of approximately $220M, you get to $480M or just shy of half a billion dollars in a hurry. Is this sustainable?
WS:That is exactly why we are looking at alternatives to include dual launch. We know we need to bring the launch costs down as much as we can. We are doing that in a variety of ways, both in terms of how we are acquiring boosters, and what we are paying ULA for — just an overall launch capability from an infrastructure point of view. We are, as I said, considering new entrants. So there are a variety of things we are doing, trying to get a handle on launch costs.
DJ: So, what I take away from that is that studies are under way both for dual launch and launch acquisition and stay tuned for more. But in the area of affordability in this budget environment, surely there is more to consider than just launch costs?
WS:Of course, we are looking at GPS III for example — when I first arrived here the plan called for GPS III A, B and C variants. I thought that was probably not going to be affordable in the future. So we scrapped the A, B and C mentality and went with a basic GPS III. Now as we can afford it, we will roll in additional capabilities that we might want or need for the future. I think that helps control the costs. We are also looking at what we can do in the manufacturing area to help control costs. So we are going at this from a variety of ways. We are leaving no stone left unturned in terms of trying to drive out costs.
DJ: Controlling costs is certainly admirable, but you and I have been in the space business for a long time and I cannot ever remember launch costs going down, can you? Do you really think you can make that happen?
WS: I suppose it depends on what you mean by going down. I don’t know that we will ever get cheaper than we are right now, but the cost projections left unchecked were a 40% increase in costs. So we are really talking about controlling the growth as much as we are about reducing costs.
Now, if you can introduce some of these new entrants and they deliver on their promise — for example let’s say you can do a medium class EELV [Ed. Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle] for $90M, which has been suggested by one particular company…what a bargain. Now we will see if that price really holds when we put in our mission assurance requirements and as we look at those rocket companies when they actually go into production as opposed to a one-off type of rocket.
DJ: When you talk to Dr. Bradford Parkinson about launch and the history of GPS, he will quickly remind you that back in the day, GPS could not stand on its own as a space requirement. Back in 1978, GPS had to have additional payloads to justify the mission just to get the GPS satellites into orbit. That is certainly not the case today, so are you seriously looking at a GPS-only configuration?
WS:God bless Brad Parkinson. He certainly fought through a very different environment than we have today. And yes, we are certainly looking at a very de-scoped capability for NDS [Ed. Nuclear Detection System], and we are considering some options that might have some GPS platforms being a navigation payload only. So, we will see what comes out of the studies. We are concerned about the size, weight and power of the NDS payload, and we think we have a handle on that for GPS III number 9 and out. But the first eight GPS III satellites will still have a fairly heavy NDS payload.
DJ: Well, these things do take time to fix. And speaking of the number of satellites, things have changed quite a bit from when you were the 2SOPS Commander (2nd Space Operations Squadron) back in 1990. GPS had only been FOC (Full Operation Capability) for about five years and you were struggling just to keep 24 active payloads on orbit. Today there are 32 active payloads and three residuals. Do you think we are going to be able to maintain those numbers?
WS:This is actually more of a debate about actual coverage of the GPS constellation. I don’t think it is going to be as much about numbers as it will be about coverage and dealing with things like terrain, terrain masking, and urban canyons. How much coverage do we in the United States want to provide? Do we want to instead count on other satellite systems to fill in gaps that we might have — such as systems like Galileo? So it is going to be an interesting future. We really have some serious debates on what kind of coverage we want to provide from GPS and what kind of coverage we might count on from others. We also have to consider how we might alter our architecture designs based on the need for coverage.
DJ: Now it sounds like we are getting close to discussing the mastodon that has been unsuccessfully trying to hide in the corner, and that is budget issues. Cost savings and cost reductions are terms thrown around by your budgeters today. I assume you are looking at all these issues to include the dreaded sequestration costs.
WS:It is all the same to me; whether it is cost avoidance or cost savings, it is all part of the space budget. But as to sequestration, that’s another matter.
Space and cyber are foundational capabilities for this nation. That said, we’ll take our reductions, and certainly we’re proactively looking for places we can reduce, but we believe foundational space and cyber capabilities will have to remain to support every other military operation.
I challenge audiences to find a military operation that doesn’t in some way depend on space and cyber. That foundational capability must be protected, despite what might happen with sequestration or any other budget reduction.
DJ: In a couple of weeks you will be attending the annual AFA (Air Force Association) national meeting in the D.C. area. Is there a space message, such as you just mentioned… all military operations depend on space and cyber in some way, that you will be trying to get across this year?
WS:Don, the message I am trying to develop is the need for a partnership across the community. From Capitol Hill to OSD [Ed. Office of the Secretary of Defense] to the operational commands, to Air Force Space Command including SMC [Ed. Space and Missile Systems Center] — we all need to have a very strong partnership and pull on the rope in the same direction so that we are not at cross purposes. As we look at some of the acquisition challenges and as we look at some of the congressional marks, it is not always apparent that we are all singing from the same hymnal. That is one thing I would like to see us work very hard — getting everybody on the same sheet of music.
DJ: While that is certainly a laudable goal, with all the budget issues and everybody wanting to have a hand in the space AOR (area of responsibility), do you really think it is realistic or even doable?
WS:I am not so naïve as to believe that there will ever be a time when there will not be challenges to our plans. We would like to get to the place where the long experience we have with GPS — along with the architectural designs we have developed that have helped give us that experience — that all this carries some weight.
DJ: I agree, but a great deal of that weight and responsibility winds up on your shoulders. I don’t think that you or I ever thought there would be three billion plus GPS users in the world. Isn’t this global utility we call GPS an incredible burden on the USAF and yourself? No other service in the world today has the responsibilities that are attendant on the USAF as stewards of the Global Positioning System.
WS:Don, I think we happily bear that burden. To tell you the truth, our job is to provide the best signal that we can provide from space. That is what we do every day, and we are happy to do that. We know it supports billions of users, and we know that we are underpinning economic institutions around the world. We know we have fundamentally changed war fighting as a result of that signal. So it is a source of pride for us – it is not a burden.
DJ: Well said! Any final thoughts? There are so many issues we haven’t had time to discuss.
WS:The one point I want to be sure and make is one of credibility. There are certainly some naysayers out there, but I firmly believe that we have proven our credibility over the past 20-plus years that we have been flying the GPS constellation. I think we have done a good job… I am talking about the U.S. Air Force writ large now… a good job of funding the GPS constellation and being responsible stewards of the capability and insuring that that the world has this capability where it is needed. GPS has enabled applications that are simply mindboggling, and the credibility piece doesn’t get stated as often as it could.
The other issue is that there are certainly threats to GPS that we need to pay attention to. The jamming threats are obvious. Not so obvious are the spectrum threats such as we have been through in the last year. We need to continue to be vigilant and protect that part of the spectrum that is essential for GPS to work as well as it does.
It is truly a physics problem. It is not just GPS encroachment on somebody else’s spectrum. The way receivers are designed to work, they have to be able to acquire the GPS signal and the harmonics of that signal in an adjacent spectrum. If you bring in rather noisy signals or you allow noisy signals to operate in the GPS neighborhood, you are going to kill the accuracy of GPS. So, I think as we continue to provide good stewardship for GPS, we need to be good stewards of the spectrum as well.
DJ: Actually, I was hoping this would come up. I want to publicly thank you for being one of the few general officers, from any service, who stood up and were counted when it came to this huge threat to billions of GPS users worldwide.
But, in the end, were you surprised that it took over a year to fight the spectrum battle?
WS:Not necessarily. I knew we were into a very structured process with the FCC [Ed. Federal Communications Commission] and they have their way of doing business. I was confident that once we could get the facts on the table, the right decisions would be made. It was just a problem of making sure that the facts were heard. In the end it came out like it should have come out, it just took longer than I think most people were comfortable with.
DJ: Without a doubt the world and GPS users everywhere owe you a great debt of gratitude for your fearless leadership during a very trying time. Thank you for your leadership, and thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.
WS:It was my pleasure, Don.
Until next time, happy navigating. All of us at GPS World hope to see you at the ION Technical Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, September 17-21 , 2012. Drop by the booth and get acquainted.
Naysayers still exist when talking about the emerging indoor positioning market. They say that the market is still too nascent — and the technology is sub par and not there yet. However, there are just too many atmospherics, and big companies getting involved in indoor positioning development, to brush it off as another technology fad. The recent announcement that 22 companies are combining to come up with standards is a good example. Mainstream media articles touting the new market also are spearheading development and consumer interest. Still, how can you start an industry group and talk standards and markets without the two largest players?
In a move that indicates that there is a strong market, 22 companies recently partnered to create the In-Location Alliance. The new group, which includes Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics and Sony Mobile, aims to improve and expand indoor positioning and related services.
Google, which has been the dominant player in location markets, was noticeably absent. Google has partnered with large retail chains and has mapped many indoor malls, airports and other facilities to help drive the market with its Google Maps for Android 6.0.
Another company apparently not part of the alliance is Apple, which recently ended its location data partnership with Google. Apple is launching its iOS 6 operating system update, called Maps for iOS, which features 100 million business listings and Yelp recommendations.
In a prepared statement, the group said it welcomes the addition of any new member “who is ready to further investigate business opportunities in indoor location-based services and sees value and benefits in industry collaboration.”
The In-Location Alliance says it will go after both the consumer and enterprise location markets, even though both have technical and market limitations for indoor positioning. The group said services it will focus on include real-time navigation inside buildings, directions to personalized products and promotions inside retail stores and malls, asset and employee location, customer identification, and security solutions.
Because the technology is widely available on smartphones, the alliance will focus its products on enhanced Bluetooth 4.0 technology and Wi-Fi to develop mobile services as a starting point.
The allied companies say they will conduct pre-commerical pilot programs and business model verifications later this year in order to launch handset-based applications next year.
Other members of the In-Location Alliance include Broadcom, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor, Eptisa, Geomobile, Genasys, Indra, Insiteo, Nomadic Solutions, Nordic Semiconductor, Nordic Technology Group, NowOn, Primax Electronics, RapidBlue Solutions, Seolane Innovation, TamperSeal, Team Action Zone and Visioglobe.
Nokia also has been developing indoor positioning systems that use 3D models, rather than 2D floor plans. Broadcom released a chip that supports indoor positioning through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even NFC.
Mainstream publications such as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today have written articles about indoor positioning as a potential burgeoning market. The articles say such big brands as Target, Walgreens and Home Depot are implementing indoor positioning and marketing strategies. Walgreens is partnering with Aisle411, which offers an application with 9,000 store maps.
Mapping Services Now on New Kindle Fire
The next model of Kindle Fire, Amazon’s tablet, will have mapping services installed as part of a deal with Nokia. What is noticeable is that it does not have location technology from Google, which is strange as it is the Android mobile operating system that powers the Kindle Fire. Published sources say Amazon will announce the agreement this month.
As our sister publication Wireless Pulse reported, Competitor Barnes & Noble recently adopted OpenStreetMap, through Berlin-based Skobbler’s ForeverMap 2 app, to allow developers to create Nook applications with location functionality later this year, according to published sources.
While the Nook line of products are Wi-Fi enabled, they lack pure play GPS capability. Although Nook devices don’t have 3G or 4G access of smartphones, it is a step toward developing location capability.
A basic version is free on the Nook, and a premium version costs $4.99. The Nook units with the location capability include the Nook Color and Nook Tablets.
Both the Kindle and Nook have one common thread — their parent companies opted not to go with Google Maps. Is the location giant taking notice?
20 Years of Covering Location Technology
September 2012 marks my 20th year of writing about the business of location technology. In 1992, the big GPS companies (Trimble, Garmin, Ashtech, Sony, Magellan, Rockwell) were trying to develop consumer applications that were evolving from their military technology developed for the recently concluded Gulf War.
Most of the news back then was in the form of government contracts, and some survey agreements, or evolving policy about GPS. It turns out that the consumer side was being developed not by the GPS industry, but intelligent transportation industry providers through the digital mapping companies Etak (now TomTom) and Navigation Technologies (now Nokia).
While the terms “telematics” and location-based services were not being used in 1992, some companies saw the potential for big dollars incorporating positioning technology into mobile phones. I wrote an article in October 1992 headlined “Rockwell Says GPS in Cellular Phones Means Big Business.” I quoted a few industry consultants at that time who said that they had doubts that it would be a big market because of the cost and size of the GPS chipset, antenna issues, and consumer acceptance. The big deal about putting GPS into cell phones was to meet an FCC enhanced 911 requirement, but that happened a few years later.
Such companies as Motorola brought the name “telematics” to North America and attempted to jump-start the market here. At least one industry executive never liked the word telematics, saying it was a “Stalinist” word.
While companies have come and gone, and the technology has evolved to a point that commoditization is pervasive, the promise of location technology and markets will still be strong. Companies and individuals have made fortunes and lost them in the location industry, but one thing for sure — it has never been boring covering and writing about the business and people.
Styling for consumer usage has progressively miniaturized of the antenna package to tiny dimensions compared to a free-space wavelength, even as devices with these miniscule antennas are designed to work close to the absorbent tissues of the user’s body and in the electromagnetic maelstrom of city street levels. GNSS antennas have responded with significant advances.
The selection of the GNSS antenna, especially for small portable wireless devices, demands careful consideration of how it will interact with its expected environment. A physical appreciation can explain how many impairment factors can actually have a common cause: often the effect of human body-loading. This explanation starts with a counter-intuitive foundation: though the GNSS receiver does not transmit signals, for the sake of clarity we invoke the law of reciprocity and proceed with the conceptual thinking that the antenna is radiating outwards. This gives us a basis for understanding the causal physics of how the antenna shares energy with the immediate environment.
We can visualize the basic radiating action of the antenna by recognizing that it is a resonant component. We must consider what exactly is in resonance, because the antenna designer has two different design options. In the self-resonant configuration, the antenna can be considered to be resonating autonomously, forming the entire dipole of the antenna within the antenna body. Here, dimensions and topological structure act in conjunction with reflecting and absorbing features surrounding it to define where and how the antenna radiates.
In the second or probe antenna case, a larger radiating space can be configured by resonating the antenna with the housing together. The antenna typically forms a monopole counterpoised by currents and voltages in the housing. Here, the topology of the radiating system (antenna and housing) acts in conjunction with the near environment to define the radiation pattern.
The value of distinguishing these two configurations is clearly reflected in the contrast between their behaviors with regard to radiation efficiencies in different uses. We conducted an experiment with three example antennas. Each antenna was installed in as common a package format as was practically feasible to model the top portion of a slim-line demonstration platform, with dimensions typical of consumer devices and containing a conductive chassis 55 millimeters wide. Obviously, a probe antenna must be installed in a chassis in order to function, and this directed the experimental approach to be structured around a similar-housing methodology.
The probe antenna was a small metal and ceramic chip, and we compared its performance with a small microstrip patch antenna mounted horizontally in a broader but otherwise similar housing, and a hexafilar antenna mounted in an identically dimensioned housing. Strictly, the microstrip antenna is a single terminal element, but it can be considered as self-resonant as the resonance fields are very tightly constrained. Figure 1 plots the radiation efficiencies for benign free-space conditions (without body-loading) together, as frequency responses.
Figure 1. Frequency response of radiated efficiency in unloaded (free-space conditions) and mounted in similar housings (ground-plane width 55mm).
In benign open-field conditions the probe antenna has excellent efficiency performance and superior bandwidth compared to the two self-resonant configurations. Conversely, the self-resonant antennas (patch and hexafilar) have similarly narrow frequency-response bandwidths and lower efficiencies. We will show how it is important to repeat the test for realistic use scenarios that determine how close the antenna will be juxtaposed to the user’s biological tissues before concluding that the probe antenna is the best solution.
Antenna studies have shown that the bandwidth reduces very rapidly as the resonant volume of the antenna reduces. This accounts for the reduction in bandwidth shown in Figure 1 for the self-resonant antennas (microstrip patch and hexafilar) with respect to the probe antenna (chip). In the case of the probe, the resonant structure is the entire metal chassis of the device (in this case the circuit-board ground-plane) so that the resonant volume of the resonating system is much larger than those of the self-resonant structures.
To analyze the behavior of antennas in different use scenarios, it helps to consider the nature of resonance in antennas: open fields, with equal time average amounts of electric and magnetic field energy oscillating in space. These fields, induced by the time-varying voltage potentials and currents in the antenna, can launch a radiating wave into space because time-varying electromagnetic fields can carry or displace energy. We need to appreciate that this volume is where the so-called reactance fields exist, where field oscillations function as a sort of pump that propagates the electromagnetic wave. The antenna induces those fields in a configuration that manages the propagation of waves in useful directions and with desired polarization.
Any invasion of the reactance field region will disrupt this process and cause impairment. Whilst obstruction of the radiating fields far away from the antenna will just cause a masking effect, a similar obstruction in the reactance-field region can disrupt the basic process of generating radiation. The density of fields in the reactance field region is much higher than would be implied by the straightforward application of the inverse square law.
Use Near the Body
We evaluated the antenna types, installed in packages as thin as test antenna dimensions allow, to draw conclusions as to how they might operate in slim-line consumer devices held close to the user’s body. Figure 2 shows CAD diagrams of the three antennas installed in their respective test packages.
Figure 2. Antenna test housings for the chip antenna (left), patch antenna (middle) and hexafilar antenna (right). The housings were constructed to have a height of 26mm, a width of 60mm and a depth of 11 mm for the chip antenna and the hexafilar antenna and of 20.5mm for the patch antenna. In all cases the horizontal width extent of the printed circuit board (with continuous copper ground-plane on at least one side) was set at 55mm.
Consumer devices have drawn antenna technologies from traditional GNSS applications as well as from terrestrial mobile telephone origins. The overall evolution combines adaptation of the circularly polarized technologies (multi-filar and microstrip patch) into smaller body-loaded platforms with insufficient space for effective ground-planes, together with adaptation of the art of low-cost cellular-telephone embedded antenna technologies that were never developed for circular polarization. Taking our three solutions in their embedded test platforms, we can appraise their body-loaded efficiencies by testing them juxtaposed to a phantom head, providing a means of assessing impairment due to body-loading.
The phantom head in the loading experiment was filled with a tissue simulating liquid conforming to requirements for specific energy absorption measurements according to CENELEC and IEEE procedures. Comparing the antenna efficiencies for open-field conditions (Figure 1) and body-loaded conditions (Figure 3), reveals impairment to antenna efficiency in all three cases, with the most severe loss of approximately 80 percent by the chip antenna.
Figure 3. Combination of FFT-based acquisition with FDAF.
The self-resonant antennas suffered less impairment: approximately 30 percent reduction for the patch and 65 percent for the hexafilar antenna. The probe’s significant loss of efficiency is typical of this class of antennas, as the resonant fields are heavily loaded by the phantom head. The peak efficiency for this chip antenna has tuned downwards in frequency as the dielectric loading effect of the head-phantom introduced a regime of net higher relative dielectric constant (εr) into the resonance field region of the antenna system.
By contrast, the self-resonant antennas did not tune down in frequency as they were brought into proximity with the phantom head. This indicates that the resonance fields were not offered to the dielectric materials of the head phantom to an extent that materially changed the relative dielectric constant (εr).
Nevertheless, there is a significant difference between the impairment that develops between the patch and hexafilar cases as body-loading is applied, with the hexafilar solution losing more radiation efficiency than the patch antenna. There are two explanations for this difference.
The first is that the patch housing is simply larger, with a greater depth required to accommodate the patch antenna horizontally at the top of the device housing. On average this larger housing size spaces the resonant fields further from the phantom and from the lossy simulated head tissues.
The second explanation offers an insight into the symbiotic relationship between the hexafilar antenna and the demonstration platform’s vertically orientated housing. The horizontal ground-plane required for the patch antenna is inconvenient from the style and total integration cost point of view, but also ineffective as a ground-plane as it lacks sufficient width in a device styled to minimize depth. In this scenario the patch antenna is not getting much reflection uplift from the ground-plane; therefore there is little impairment when the device is body-loaded.
The hexafilar solution is designed to benefit from reflective uplift from the vertically disposed ground-plane of the device. This property is convenient for device packaging because it allows the hexafilar antenna to be integrated at a device corner. The installation of a large and effective vertically oriented ground-plane for the hexafilar case is, by contrast, highly convenient and potentially more cost-effective. When the device is not body-loaded, reflections from the vertically disposed ground-plane uplift the gain and efficiency of the hexafilar antenna. The important advantage over the chip antenna (which is also convenient for space-constrained designs) is that for the self-resonant hexafilar antenna, the frequency of resonance does not change for open-field and body-loaded cases.
Polarization, Pattern, Positioning
Sufficient data has now been presented to make an antenna selection on the basis of efficiency and styling. The probe antenna in the guise of a chip antenna provided the highest radiation efficiency in free-space, comparable radiation efficiency to the hexafilar antenna in a body-loaded use scenario, and the small physical size supports compact product designs. However, for GNSS applications we must consider wave polarization, especially if there is multipath scattering. GNSS systems employ right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) and ideally should use antennas with hemisphereically omni-directional antennas. The zenith gain of a circularly polarized antenna is expected to be 3dB higher than that of a linearly polarized antenna of the same efficiency.
If a GNSS terminal is equipped with an omni-directional but linearly polarized antenna, it can receive circularly polarized signals from all directions (albeit with a spatial average 3dB polarization loss). However, the positioning performance of such a terminal will be compromised because a linearly polarized antenna cannot discriminate between RHCP or LHCP, and reflections change the direction of spin of the circularly polarized wave.
More color to the subjects of polarization, pattern, and consequential GNSS accuracy can be gained by focussing on the operation of the dielectric-loaded hexafilar antenna, as an example of a small antenna. Figure 4 shows the measured RHCP and LHCP elevation patterns of an exemplary small hexafilar antenna. These are excellent examples of the signature cardiod pattern shapes of good circular polarization antennas, but they point in opposite boresight directions. A dipole rotating anti-clockwise (viewed from above) in a plane would simultaneously excite a RHCP cardiod elevation pattern in the upwards direction and an oppositely directed, but otherwise similar, LHCP cardiod pattern downwards. If the antenna has no ground-plane and the dipole rotation is planar, the power of the upward RHCP and downward LHCP responses are equal. However, the dielectrically-loaded hexafilar antenna is a synthesis of a small travelling-wave upwardly spiralling dipole, emulating the axial-mode of a helical antenna. As the electrical size of such an antenna is increased, the area of the upwardly directed RHCP pattern progressively increases, and the area of the downwardly directed LHCP pattern progressively reduces. The antenna’s dielectric core enables this right-to-left discrimination within dimensions that are very much smaller than a free-space wavelength of the GNSS signal.
Figure 4. RHCP and LHCP elevation for small dielectrically loaded hexafilar antenna (with no ground-plane).
We can describe the polarization sorting behavior of the small dielectrically loaded antenna in figure 4 as follows. GNSS signals direct from the space vehicles will arrive in the directions of the upper hemisphere of the patterns where the highest sensitivity of the antenna to RHCP is deployed. GNSS signals bounced from a reflective object may also arrive in these upper hemisphere directions, but with reversed polarization: LHCP. In these directions the antenna has a very much lower sensitivity to LHCP, and the GNSS receiving process will accord a low value on these signals that as a result of the low antenna gain will be assessed as relatively noisy.
Signals that arrive at the antenna from directions in the lower hemisphere will certainly have reflected from the ground surface (assuming that the antenna is held upright). These reflected left-hand polarized signals may have been attenuated by absorption losses of materials present on ground surfaces and also reduced in GNSS receiver process weighting by the antenna’s discrimination in favor of RHCP.
RHCP and LHCP Gain
Whilst appraisal of antenna patterns is certainly the most important method for assessing the performance of antennas in different use scenarios, it is nevertheless difficult to report accurately because the three-dimensional data-set is inevitably complex. To provide a meaningful physical basis for discriminating performance between the test antennas for open-field and body-loaded, we propose a single parameter: cross-pole rejection at zenith as one which is directly relevant to GNSS accuracy in a multi-path environment. Figure 5 plots the right hand and left hand comparative frequency responses for open-field and body-loaded use scenarios. Table 1 summarizes these responses.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 5. RHCP and LHCP frequency responses at the zenith direction for conditions of free-space and body-loading. From top to bottom: a) open-field conditions and RHCP, b) open-field conditions and LHCP, c) body-loaded conditions and RHCP, and d) body-loaded conditions and LHCP.Table 1. RHCP to LHCP gain ratio at the zenith direction (θ=0, φ=0) at GPS L1 center frequency (1.575.42 GHz).
In open field, the chip antenna does not have a gain advantage for right-hand versus left-hand polarization and also suffers the highest impairment in gain when body-loading is applied. In this test there is an advantage in favor of RHCP gain for the body-loaded test scenario, but we presume this depends on the mounting position of this particular probe antenna on the test device. Perhaps a mounting position towards the left of the assembly might have incurred a disadvantage of similar magnitude?
The patch antenna has an excellent RHCP over LHCP advantage in open-field conditions, but this advantage diminishes when this solution is body-loaded. This is the least gain-impacted solution as presumably the horizontal ground-plane and much greater device width produce a relatively low body-loading impact.
The most interesting result concerns the hexafilar antenna, for which the RHCP to LHCP advantage actually improved in the body-loaded test scenario. As this device had the same depth, one might have expected it to sustain a body-loading impairment similar to that of the chip antenna, but due to the self-resonant character of the hexafilar element the loss in gain (in this zenith direction) was actually only slightly greater than that of the patch antenna.
The hexafilar element’s CP performance is distorted by the lack of circular symmetry of the vertical ground-plane; therefore in open field this direction has a relatively modest RHCP to LHCP gain advantage of about 5dB. However, when the device containing the hexafilar antenna solution is body-loaded, the re-radiation from reflections from the circuit-board are heavily damped by the phantom head. The radiating source is then predominantly the hexafilar self-resonant element that by design is not itself so significantly impacted by the body-loading scenario. This source is restored to a more autonomous circularly polarized form with an advantage of RHC versus LHCP gain in zenith direction, nearly 13.5dB.
Walk Tests
Free-space and body-loaded test data, together with arguments concerning polarization discrimination and multipath led to an hypothesis that the antennas with the best circular polarization performance should provide the highest GNSS positioning accuracy. We tested the three devices, worn against the lower torso where the body provides a relatively homogeneous dielectric medium, so that position data could be compared with a reference antenna mounted over a large overhead ground plane.
Many walk tests were conducted around different routes in London, which collectively demonstrate the value of circular-polarization discrimination as a key enabler for accurate street-level position determination. One segment (Figure 6) in the vicinity of an iconic tall London building commonly known as the Gherkin showed that, though the circularly polarized antennas closely followed the path of the reference antenna, the linearly polarized chip antenna produced an error of as much as 200 meters. It is possible that the dominant reflector in this case is the Gherkin itself.
Figure 6. Data, central London walk test.
Conclusions
The chip and hexafilar antennas could be integrated tightly into consumer device housings; both experienced gain uplift from the vertically disposed circuit-board ground-plane. The gain uplift from the chip antenna arose as the resonant volume of the device is enlarged as the device size is increased. The gain uplift from the hexafilar antenna arose as a result of constructive reflections from the circuit-board functioning as a vertical ground-plane.
The patch antenna was not the most convenient from the styling point of view because the depth was dictated by the size of the horizontally orientated patch. Consequently the housing was significantly thicker than for the chip and hexafilar solutions, and the patch antenna was not receiving significant uplift from reflections from the housing because the depth limitation constrained the ground-plane to ineffective dimensions.
In body-loaded tests, the chip and hexafilar antennas demonstrated roughly equal radiation efficiency, but the hexafilar provided a significant RHCP advantage. Higher right-hand circular gain was measured for the patch antenna; this was expected due to the greater depth of the housing to accommodate the patch antenna. Urban walk tests showed that the RHCP antennas provided the highest position accuracy.
Whilst the hexafilar antenna did experience some uplift due to reflections from the device circuit board, these were negated when the device was body-loaded. However, the distorting effects of the device ground-plane were also lost, so that the antenna’s advantage of RHCP over LHCP was improved in the body-loading condition.
The GNSS industry has advanced the miniaturization of polarization-controlled antennas for small body-loaded uses. This is gaining currency as enabling polarization diversity in 4G data-communication terminals.
Manufacturers
Sarantel SL1350 antenna was the hexafilar element under test.
Position data for all four devices was measured with Telit SE868 evaluation kits using CSR (now Samsung) SiRFstarIV chipset.
Oliver Leisten is chief technical officer and founder of Sarantel Limited, where Viktor Knobe worked as a student intern from Imperial College London.
Leica Geosystems Inc. has announced it has significantly upgraded and expanded the coverage of its Leica SmartNet RTK Network in California, making real-time GNSS correction available to 82 percent of the state’s population. A GPS/GLONASS reference station network, Leica SmartNet gives GNSS users access to differential correction for any measurement application without the use of a base station.
“Leica Geosystems has upgraded the SmartNet California network to improve both the quality and geographic coverage of GNSS correction throughout the state,” said Wendy Watson, Director, Reference Station Operations. “All SmartNet California stations are now GPS and GLONASS capable with additional enhancements being made to accommodate future positioning satellite constellations.”
A Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) network is a series of permanent GPS and/or GNSS receiver stations whose combined data is used to generate corrections for rover GNSS receivers operating in the coverage area. The rover GNSS unit uses this correction data to improve the native accuracy of its measurement and location calculations. Strategic installation of SmartNet stations throughout California provides wireless RTK data access to nearly every GNSS user in the major population centers of the state.
In the past six months, Leica Geosystems has installed six new stations and upgraded eight more to strengthen the geometry of the California network. Most new installations have included the Leica GR10 next-generation GNSS reference station receiver and Leica AR10 antenna with integrated radome. New stations have been installed in North Hollywood, Santa Monica, Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and Yuba City. Total population coverage in the state with SmartNet now exceeds 30 million.
“Wireless access to RTK data without a base station is an enormous time savings for surveyors, GIS professionals or other GNSS users who need to improve the native accuracy of their location measurements,” said Wendy Watson, Director, Reference Station Operations. “For any measurement application in California, SmartNet makes this data accessible instantly and affordably.”
Available through several subscription plan options, SmartNet California is relied upon by GNSS users in surveying, mapping, construction, engineering, agriculture and GIS.
Editor’s note: Although GIS adoption is certainly on the rise, it hasn’t reached critical mass for widespread adoption so I think 2012 is too early to be seen as the Year of GIS. When it does, it will be fueled by widespread location apps in smartphones and adoption of mainstream office apps like Maps for Office.
When technology historians look back on 2012, they might look at this as the GIS year says Dr. Stephen McElroy, GIS program chair at American Sentinel University.
“2012 is the year of GIS,” says Dr. Stephen McElroy, GIS program chair at American Sentinel University. “The desire to know where everything is located fuels the current trend in location-based services. As GIS is more accessible and consumable on the Web through a variety of mobile devices, the average person is becoming increasingly impacted by the power of GIS. Soon it will become a pervasive technology that is consumed by a wider audience than ever before.”
The proof is in a new report from Pike Research. Findings indicate that spending on GIS services, software and tools will increase steadily over the next five years, reaching $3.7 billion in 2017.
This industry momentum toward GIS is what led to K-12 schools in North Carolina to sign a statewide license for unlimited classroom use of Esri’s ArcGIS software.
According to Dr. McElroy, K-12 educators are increasingly aware that geospatial competencies must now be included among the core proficiencies of reading, writing and arithmetic. He points out that some schools are undertaking initiatives to incorporate geospatial competencies across the curriculum by adding geospatial exercises and experiences into the standard curriculum. The concept of GIS across the curriculum is a trend that is just now beginning to blossom and illustrates the long-term presence of geospatial thinking at the national, state and local levels.
To demonstrate just how important GIS is to the U.S. government, Esri, the world’s leading provider of GIS software recently released a new book, ‘Mapping the Nation: Government and Technology Making a Difference.’ It includes more than 100 full-color maps produced by 40 government agencies, showing how GIS technology can be used to evaluate and respond to social, economic and environmental concerns at local, regional, national and global levels.
“Geography is a common denominator in everything the federal government supports,” says Christopher Thomas, director, government markets – federal, state, local at Esri. “The maps in this book attest to the limitless power of geography and GIS technology. They show how government agencies rely on GIS analysis to facilitate initiatives, improve transparency and deliver strong business models.”
Add this momentum to the fact that new products are released nearly every week, including CHC’s new LT30 series GPS/GIS handheld collector. The LT30 GPS/GIS is a multi-functional solution that includes built-in GPRS phone and data transmission, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and a versatile RS232 interface to connect to legacy devices.
Smart Grids Lead the Charge
Leading the charge for this GIS enthusiasm is the smart grid.
According to the Pike report, spatial data underlies everything an electric utility does. An intelligent power grid requires deep situational awareness of power generation, transmission, distribution and customer assets in order to optimize performance and to meet reliability commitments.
Land-based and street-level data, ownership/real estate, vegetation, network topology, GPS location data, census data, and many other forms of geospatial information are critical to the successful performance of the smart grid.
GIS is a foundational technology linking every activity of an electric utility – including design and construction, asset management, workforce management, outage management, and increasingly, real-time grid operations.
“The smart grid has energized electric utilities to think creatively about how to improve the delivery of electrical power and the business and workflow processes that enable it,” says Pike Research vice president Bob Gohn. “As the deployment of intelligent field equipment, particularly advanced metering infrastructure, has surged, the applications leveraging this infrastructure are increasingly dependent on GIS-based data for critical real-time performance.”
Public and private utility providers will need a comprehensive GIS that they can utilize to make key decisions about system-critical issues such as customer database management, streamlined meter reading and blending of renewable (solar, wind, hydro and geothermal) and non-renewable energy resources from coal and nuclear facilities.
“These industries are looking for people who understand GIS technology, making it an excellent time to make yourself more marketable and consider an online bachelor’s or master’s degree in GIS technology,” says Dr. McElroy.
The market for GIS professionals at all skill levels has never been better.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the job outlook (2010-2020) for geographers is growing by 35 percent (much faster than average). For Cartographers and photogrammetrists, the outlook is 22 percent growth (faster than average). For surveying and mapping technicians, the outlook is 16 percent and all of these occupations are expected to grow by 14 percent.
Driven by increased demand from developed regions for high-end models, along with an unexpectedly strong push from emerging economies for lower-cost products, smartphones are expected to rise to account for the majority of global cellphone shipments in 2013—two years earlier than previously predicted, according to research firm IHS iSuppli.
Smartphone shipments in 2013 are forecast to account for 54 percent of the total cellphone market, up from 46 percent in 2012 and 35 percent in 2011, according to an IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS. The year 2013 will mark the first time that smartphones will make up more than half of all cellphone shipments.
“This represents a major upgrade for the outlook compared to a year ago, when smartphones weren’t expected to take the lead until 2015,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. “Over the past 12 months, smartphones have fallen in price, and a wider variety of models have become available, spurring sales of both low-end smartphones in regions like Asia-Pacific, as well as midrange to high-end phones in the United States and Europe. The solid expansion in both shipments and market share this year of smartphones will make them the leading type of mobile phone for the first time, and shipment growth in the double digits will continue for the next few years.”
By 2016, smartphones will represent 67.4 percent of the total cellphone market. Feature Phone Finale
While still accounting for less than 50 percent of the market this year, smartphones will become the single largest cellphone segment by the end of 2012, surpassing feature phones, reported IHI.The rise of smartphones to a plurality share this year means a fall from grace for feature phones, which are a grade above the most basic, low-cost entry-level phones but lack the sophisticated engineering and abundant functionality of smartphones. Feature phones commanded the wireless market as late as last year with 46 percent market share, but their portion will decrease to 41 percent this year, setting a trend of irreversible decline and progressive weakening in their numbers.
By 2016, feature phones will be confined to a market share of 28 percent—less than half the share of smartphones by that time.
A third type of phone, the entry-level and ultra-low-cost handset, will occupy the bottom tier of the market with approximately 14 percent share this year and end up with just 4.2 percent share by 2016.
Wireless Handsets Get Smart
As smartphones become ever more popular and affordable, they will become the focal point of the handset industry, IHS believes. Smartphones will deliver multifunctional capabilities that enhance experiences, while at the same time providing a hardware venue toward increasing average revenue per user, made possible through the extensive data use of smartphone owners.
Growth of the mobile applications development industry, which turns out innumerable applications on a variety of smartphone platforms, will also help maintain the continuing importance of the smartphone segment.
Market Segments into Low-end vs. Midrange/High-end Smartphones
The smartphone market is, in fact, made up of two segments—the midrange to high-end smartphone on the one hand, and low-end smartphones on the other. Already, manufacturers are introducing affordable low-end smartphones equipped with lower memory densities and a more limited feature set into developing countries and emerging markets, encouraging in these regions the use of data plans, which drive greater revenue. Low-end smartphone users will likely be first-time smartphone consumers, and will represent 43 percent of the total smartphone market by 2016.
In comparison, the midrange to high-end smartphone segment consists of users in the developed countries or in the more industrialized urban areas of some developing nations. This group of smartphone users will continue to outnumber their low-end smartphone counterparts, with more than 700 million midrange to high-end smartphone users forecast by 2016.
Apple and Google, now the two leading smartphone platforms, are the leaders in the space.
The intense competition in smartphone platforms has by now resulted in a few casualties, including Symbian from Nokia and WebOS from Palm. No longer will hardware capabilities be the sole determinant of success for smartphones moving forward, IHS believes, as victory in the marketplace will now also rely on many other important factors. These include software capability, a sleek and intuitive user interface, the variety of available applications, strong support from the developer community, and the strength and seamlessness of vertical integration.
Samsung of South Korea became the overall worldwide leader in handsets during the first quarter, displacing Nokia of Finland, which had occupied the top spot for well over a decade and is now at No. 2. U.S.-based Apple, China’s ZTE and LG Electronics, also of South Korea, rounded out the Top 5, accounting for 75.5 percent of all handset shipments—not just smartphones—during the first quarter, up marginally from 74.7 percent in the fourth quarter last year.
Researchers from Rice University unveiled a new multi-antenna technology that could help wireless providers keep pace with the voracious demands of data-hungry smartphones and tablets. The technology aims to dramatically increase network capacity by allowing cell towers to simultaneously beam signals to more than a dozen customers on the same frequency.
Details about the new technology, dubbed Argos, were presented at the Association for Computing Machinery's MobiCom 2012 wireless research conference in Istanbul. Argos is under development by researchers from Rice, Bell Labs and Yale University. A prototype built at Rice this year uses 64 antennas to allow a single wireless base station to communicate directly to 15 users simultaneously with narrowly focused directional beams.
Thanks to the growing popularity of smartphones and other data-hungry devices, the demand for mobile data is expected to grow 18-fold within the next five years. To meet demand, wireless carriers are scrambling to boost network capacity by installing more wireless base stations and shelling out billions of dollars for the rights to broadcast on additional frequencies.
In tests at Rice, Argos allowed a single base station to track and send highly directional beams to more than a dozen users on the same frequency at the same time. The upshot is that Argos could allow carriers to increase network capacity without acquiring more spectrum.
"The technical term for this is multi-user beamforming," said Argos project co-leader Lin Zhong, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of computer science at Rice. "The key is to have many antennas, because the more antennas you have, the more users you can serve."
Zhong said the theory for multi-user beamforming has been around for quite some time, but implementing technology has proven extremely difficult. Prior to Argos, labs struggled to roll out prototype test beds with a handful of antennas.
"There are all kinds of technical challenges related to synchronization, computational requirements, scaling up and wireless standards," he said. "People have really questioned whether this is practical, so it's significant that we've been able to create a prototype that actually demonstrates that this works."
Argos presents new techniques that allow the number of antennas on base stations to grow to unprecedented scales. The Argos prototype, which was built by Rice graduate student Clayton Shepard, uses an array of 64 antennas and off-the-shelf hardware — including several dozen open-access test devices called WARP boards that were invented at Rice's Center for Multimedia Communications. In tests, Argos was able to simultaneously beam signals to as many as 15 users on the same frequency. For wireless carriers, that performance would translate to more than a six-fold increase in network capacity. Zhong said the base-station design can be scaled up to work with hundreds of antennas and several dozen concurrent users, which would result in much higher capacity gains.
"There's also a big payoff in energy savings," Shepard said. "The amount of power you need for transmission goes down in proportion to the number of antennas you have. So in Argos' case, we need only about one-sixty-fourth as much energy to serve those 15 users as you would need with a traditional antenna."
Zhong and Shepard said Argos is at least five years away from being available on the commercial market. It would require new network hardware and a new generation of smartphones and tablets. It might also require changes in wireless standards. Those are big hurdles, but Zhong said the potential benefits of multi-user beamforming technology make it a very likely next big step for the wireless industry.
"The bandwidth crunch is here, and carriers need options," Zhong said. "They're going to pay close attention to any new technologies that may allow them to serve more customers with fewer resources."
Research co-authors include Hang Yu and Narendra Anand, both of Rice; Li Erran Li and Tom Marzetta, both of Bell Labs; and Yang Richard Yang of Yale University. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Bell Labs, Alcatel Lucent and the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced that in light of swiftly changing technical landscapes and increasing uses of social networking, the USGS is exploring a new approach to the volunteer program, and is launching a project to test options for volunteer participation in providing data to The National Map.
The project involves mapping man-made structures and facilities, such as schools and fire stations, in the state of Colorado. Using an internet mapping application, volunteers can help the USGS update The National Map by correcting or adding information about structures.
“Even members of the public who can’t tell a sandstone from a rhyolite but have internet access can now help the USGS keep its popular maps up to date through our new experiment in crowd sourcing,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Correctly locating and identifying fire stations, police stations, schools, and hospitals not only makes USGS maps more useful, but can literally save a life.”
Over the past two decades, the USGS National Geospatial Program sponsored various forms of volunteer map data collection projects. Volunteers helped the USGS improve its maps during this period, by annotating paper maps, collecting data using GPS units, and submitting data using a web-based tool. However, in 2008, the volunteer mapping program was suspended as new methods for using volunteer data were being studied.
In recent years, new web- and mobile-based technologies have made it easier to create, combine, and share maps. Recent events have shown how well these technologies support the rapid and relevant production of geographic information.
If the Colorado pilot project is successful in attracting volunteers and capturing data for use in The National Map, the program may be expanded to other areas in the future.
This project offers volunteers an opportunity to participate in providing data to The National Map and US Topo map products. For more information, interested Colorado volunteers can visit the National Map Corps website.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced it has appointed both Lew Leinenweber and Bart de Lathouwer to the position of Director, Interoperability Programs. These are key technical positions in the OGC Interoperability Program.
"OGC members will benefit greatly from the leadership that Lew and Bart will bring to OGC Interoperability Program (IP) initiatives," said George Percivall, Chief Architect and Executive Director, OGC Interoperability Program. "Lew brings a wealth of experience from leading prior OGC initiatives, including the fourth OGC Web Services Testbed (OWS-4) and the Geo-Decision Support Services (GeoDSS) activity. As the first member of the OGC IP Staff in Europe, Bart begins what we anticipate will be an exciting and broad-ranging program of OGC projects focused in Europe."
OGC announced that Lew will begin by leading the OGC Climatology-Hydrology Information Sharing Pilot, Phase 1 (CHISP-1) that will advance hydrology services using open standards in an operational, cross-border setting, creating a model for use around the world. Lew brings exceptional experience with the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) and NIEM (National Information Exchange Model). His experience will be a critical asset as the OGC works to advance open geospatial standards in the area of information sharing for intelligence and homeland security applications.
Further, OGC announced that Bart will lead the OGC element of the COBWEB ("Citizen OBservatory WEB") project recently awarded by the European Commission. COBWEB focuses on crowdsourcing of geospatial environmental information, addressing privacy and security elements. Bart will also represent OGC in the EO2HEAVEN (Earth Observation and Environmental Modelling for the Mitigation of Health Risks) project and the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Architecture Implementation Pilot. He leads project development in Europe on many fronts, with particular emphasis on Building Information based on his successful service at Autodesk. This work will support adoption of the OGC CityGML standard for storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models.
SuperGeo announced that SuperGIS Server 3.1 Value Edition, a GIS server developed by SuperGeo for enterprises, supports the integration with OpenStreetMap.
According to the announcement, SuperGIS Server 3.1 is designed for enabling the organizations to create, manage, integrate and publish a variety of spatial services. Therefore, the spatial data in all types as well as GIS functions can be applied to desktop, mobile and web applications over the Internet.
The company reports that to provide developers with a flexible server structure, the newest SuperGIS Server 3.1 Value Edition aims to optimize the ability to integrate with other sources. In addition to Google Map services and the services published by ArcGIS Server, the services, published by SuperGIS Server 3.1, can be overlaid with OpenStreetMap services. Administrators are able to publish map services and overlay these services with OpenStreetMap after building SuperGIS Server website. Therefore, the contents of the map website would be richer and more flexible.
