I’ve been on a roll the past two weeks regarding intelligent transportation after my visit at the 2011 ITS World Conference in Orlando. Please allow me to touch on it once more and then morph into a highly related topic, sensor fusion.
The 2011 European Satellite Navigation Competition announced the winners this week. The Special Topic Prize, the USA Regional Award, and the overall Galileo Master were awarded to MVS, LLC, from San Francisco, California, with its True-3D technology for its augmented reality and new navigation guidance system.
Watch this 30-second Youtube video that shows how the the Virtual Cable application of the True-3D technology is implemented in a car navigation system.
MVS, LLC’s Virtual Cable technology
Courtesy of MVS, LLC. Components not drawn to scale
Following is an eight-second demonstration of how the Virtual Cable technology could be used to assist navigating in the dark.
True-3D and Virtual Cable are creative examples of new software/hardware being developed to take advantage of existing geospatial data to provide an innovative solution. There is a lot of upside to augmented reality over the next few years that will allow people to visualize geospatial data in ways you’ve never seen. I’ve used the example before of being able to visualize underground infrastructure such as utilities (gas, water, electric). Imagine being able to carry a tablet computer in the field, being able to hold the table flush to the ground and see underground infrastructure on the tablet screen.
Given the above, do you think that geospatial software tools or data are the bottleneck in geospatial apps of the future?
I think the bottleneck is data. Tools have always seemed to outpace data because, generally speaking, acquiring data has always been an ongoing labor-intensive activity moreso than software development. For example, think about GPS navigators in automobiles. There are hundreds of manufacturers of GPS navigator devices in the world and hundreds of GPS navigator software product makers in the world (the software that directs you where to turn, etc.), but there are only two major map database suppliers in the world (TomTom/TeleAtlas and Nokia/Navteq). Yes, there other very small competitors in the map database market, but these two dominate the market. Why is that? It’s just a tough task to create, manage and update the massive database of road detail and points of interest that change on an annual, if not monthly, basis.
The geospatial bottleneck is further exposed when one considers indoor navigation (malls, office buildings, universities, etc.). Even though Building Information Management (BIM) has lagged in GIS, the bottleneck hasn’t been the lack of BIM geospatial data but rather the lack of a positioning sensors that allow reasonably accurate positioning indoors. With GPS, we have fairly good positioning with our planes, trains and automobiles (and mobile phones), and that’s driven the development of extensive map databases of outdoor features. That is going to change. There is a serious effort by many companies, and they seem to be making progress.
Just this week, CSR (SiRF) introduced the SiRFusion Platform that is designed to fuse “multiple location technologies to make accurate indoor location and navigation a reality.”
“The SiRFusion platform and SiRFstarV location architecture are the latest development to promote our vision of enhancing the mainstream consumer experience with a variety of location-enabled services and applications indoors and outdoors, seamlessly,” said Kanwar Chadha, Chief Marketing Officer for CSR and founder of SiRF. “With today’s announcements, CSR is demonstrating its leadership in taking location to the next level with our SiRFusion platform and SiRFstarV architecture for mobile devices, as well as with our SiRFprimaII SoC for in-dash and on-dash automotive infotainment products.”
The CSR announcement reads “Instead of relying solely on GPS to determine position, the SiRFstarV architecture gathers real-time information from GPS, Galileo, Glonass and Compass satellites, multiple radio systems, such as Wi-Fi and cellular, and multiple MEMS sensors, like accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It then combines this real-time information with ephemeris data, mapping, cellular base station and Wi-Fi access point location data and other cloud-based aiding information using the SiRFusion platform.”
Another promising technology is one being promoted by Locata Corp from Australia. Touting its technology as “GPS 2.0” in recent advertisements, the Locata technology doesn’t require line of sight to GPS satellites. In fact, it doesn’t require GPS satellites at all. It uses a ground-based constellation of transceivers so users can set up their own constellation of “satellites” in their office building, warehouse, university, or other GPS-unfriendly environment and enjoy centimeter-level accuracy.
Locata Technology is used by Leica Geosystems in GPS unfriendly environments.
By Nicolas Couronneau, Peter J. Duffett-Smith, and Alexander Mitelman
Cell-phone users are often more concerned about the speed of positioning than the accuracy, making time-to-first-fix the most important factor in a GNSS mass-market receiver’s perceived performance. However, TTFF is generally difficult to characterize and optimize because of the need to encompass a wide range of environments, including indoors.
One method of characterizing the time-to-first-fix (TTFF) is to measure it directly, using a signal generator and a real receiver. This method avoids the approximations of analytical solutions, but it is usually time consuming and it does not provide much insight into the factors affecting the TTFF since it is gen erally not possible to change the receiver’s architecture. Another approach is to use Monte Carlo simulations and a model of the acquisition process. This approach is more flexible than direct measurement, but again it can take a long time to simulate weak-signal environments.
We have developed a third approach based on analytical methods but regulated by measurements of the signal-to-noise ratio in target environments. Using this approach, one can quickly calculate the probability distribution of the TTFF for different signal strengths and acquisition parameters.
To illustrate this method, we consider a model of an assisted-GPS receiver combined with experimental measurements of the GPS L1 C/A signal taken indoors. The results are presented in Figure 1, where the probability of the TTFF (horizontal axis) is plotted as a function of the time after the beginning of the data series at which the acquisition process started (vertical axis), calculated using a 400-second GPS data series measured indoors. The strength of our approach is that we can quickly calculate the TTFF probability for any given confidence level and it is quite general so that it can be extended to other types of receivers.
Flow-graph representation of the acquisition process for one channel. FA is the false-alarm state and D the correct detection of the signal from this satellite. H1 and H0 represent respectively states in which the signal is and is not present. PFA|H1 is the probability of false alarm in a window where the signal is present and PFA|H0 the probability of false alarm in a window where the signal is not present. P D is the probability of detection, and PMD the probability of missed detection.Figure 1. The probability of the TTFF (horizontal axis) as a function of the time after the beginning of the data series at which the acquisition process started (vertical axis), calculated using a 400-second GPS data series measured indoors. Note that the colored scale is not linear.
Modeling the Acquisition Process
A GPS receiver must first acquire signals from a sufficient number of satellites before it is able to calculate a position. This search is often the major contributor to the TTFF.
GPS Acquisition Architecture. The acquisition can be represented as the search for a specific, yet unknown, combination of three parameters in a larger search space. These are:
the Gold-code number used to generate the pseudo-random noise (PRN) sequence,
the code phase, and
the carrier frequency offset.
The last of these has contributions from the frequency offset caused by the relative motion of the satellite and receiver (the Doppler effect) and the frequency bias of the receiver’s local oscillator.
In general, signal detection is performed by correlating incoming signals with a local satellite signal replica for every combination of parameters in the search space. The correlated signal is then integrated and a “hit” is declared if the integrated value crosses a predetermined threshold. The time required to test for the presence of a satellite signal for each combination of parameters is called the dwell time. We suppose here that this is approximately equal to the integration time.
GPS receivers usually include some degree of parallelism. We consider a receiver having N channels, each channel dedicated to searching for signals with a different PRN sequence. Within a channel, the frequency and code-phase search spaces are further divided into several windows. We assume that all the parameter combinations within a window are searched in parallel, that is, within a single dwell time. This model of the acquisition process is outlined graphically in Figure 2.
Figure 2. An illustration of the acquisition process. The large colored rectangles represent the search windows and the inner smaller rectangles represent the different combinations of search parameters.
Parallelism can be implemented in hardware using massively parallel correlators or in software using fast Fourier transform-based techniques. The details of any particular implementation are not relevant here; only the number of channels, the number of windows, and the sizes of the global search spaces are needed.
Acquisition Time Probability Distribution. The flow-graph method provides a graphical representation of the acquisition process. An example is shown in the Opening Figure. Each node represents a state of the acquisition process at the end of a dwell time. The lines joining the nodes represent the transitions of one state to another with the given probabilities. Typical states during acquisition are false alarm, missed detection, correct detection, and correct non-detection.
The flow-graph method has already been applied to the GNSS acquisition problem, in particular for calculating the mean acquisition time of a signal in a GNSS receiver. Here we extend that work by considering the acquisition of all the satellites required for a position fix and, by deriving full probability distributions, we establish a model of an assisted-GNSS receiver.
The opening figure shows the various probabilities of transition that can be calculated from detector statistics.
Flow-graphs rely on the properties of the probability generating function (PGF) of a random variable. A PGF makes it straightforward to calculate the probability distribution of the total duration of a sequence of events of random durations since the PGF of the sum of random variables is simply the product of their PGFs. It is also straightforward to calculate the mean and standard deviation of a random variable directly from its probability-generating function.
Aside from these properties, PGFs are less convenient and less intuitive than probability distribution functions. A generating function does not provide a direct calculation of the probability of an event, unlike a distribution function. For instance, calculating the acquisition time at an arbitrary confidence level (for example, 90 percentile) requires a contour integral over the PGF. Furthermore, some operations are easier to perform on density functions, for example, calculating the probability of simultaneous events.
It can be shown that the probability mass function of a discrete random variable can be approximated from its generating function using a discrete Fourier transform. This property forms the basis of our method: using the fast Fourier transform (FFT), we can quickly calculate the entire acquisition probability distribution associated with the generating function of a flow-graph.
Assisted-GPS Model
We now focus on the specific architecture of an assisted-GPS receiver, such as is commonly found in cellular phones. In this type of receiver, the TTFF can be shortened by performing the acquisition in two steps.
The acquisition starts by searching for any satellite signal in a full search space in which every parameter takes its full range of values. The Doppler frequency of the first satellite acquired can be calculated using assistance data and then removed from the observed frequency offset to give the contribution to the frequency offset caused by the receiver’s clock frequency offset. This is common to all search channels and can be removed from the remaining search spaces.
The second stage of the acquisition is thus performed for the remaining satellites over a reduced search space.
Stage 1 Full Search Space. The first threshold crossing for a single satellite is characterized by the time-to-first-hit (TTFH). Using an FFT, we can calculate the distribution function P(Thitfull ⩽ t) of the time-to-first-hit Thit(k) of the kth channel.
Mathematically, the time to first hit across all N channels, Thitfull, is the minimum of {Thit(k)}, whose distribution function is calculated by:
We assume that we have no means of detecting a false alarm at this stage and so the frequency parameter of the first threshold crossing is used to calculate the receiver’s clock frequency offset. This crossing may, of course, be a false alarm, and we take this into account later.
Stage 2 Reduced Search Space. At the reduced-space stage, the goal is to calculate the probability of having acquired M satellites out of N channels. The value of M depends on the number of pseudorange observables needed to solve the position equation. High-sensitivity assisted receivers that do not have signal tracking loops can only measure fractional pseudoranges together with an uncertain number of integer code periods. Using a coarse position estimate of the receiver, this uncertainty can be resolved, and a 3D position fix obtained, by using M = 5 satellites.
Calculating the detection probabilities at this stage involves some combinatorial arguments. In the following, (Ωm) represents the set of all combinations of m elements from the set Ω. For example, if Ω = {a, b, c}, then (Ω2 ) = {{a,b}, {b,c}, {a,c}}.
The probability of having “hit” at least M signals out of N channels at time t is given by
In this equation, Ω = {1, …, N} represents the set of the receiver’s channels and Thit(k) is the time to first hit of satellite k. Because each satellite is received with a different signal strength, these random variables have different distributions for every satellite.
The probability of having correctly detected at least M satellites before time t, P(TDreduced ⩽ t), is calculated by enumerating all the possible combinations of hit and detection events. The probability of having at least one false alarm before a given time t, P(TFAreduced⩽ t), is simply calculated by taking the difference between the probability of a hit and the probability of detection.
The number of possible combinations grows quickly with the number of channels. For an 8-channel receiver, there are 35 combinations, and for a 24-channel receiver there are 8,855 combinations. If the number of summations is becoming too computationally demanding, one solution is to form sets of signals with similar strength, and perform the combinations over these smaller sets with an appropriate weighting. Within a smaller set, all the signals have the same signal strength and acquisition times have the same probability distributions — a situation that is similar to calculating the order statistics of a random variable, which is not problematic in the case of identical distributions.
TTFF Probability Distribution
The last step before obtaining an expression for the TTFF distribution is to combine the two stages of the assisted acquisition. The total acquisition time is the sum of the time to first hit in the full-space stage and the time to the correct detection of M satellites in the reduced-space stage. This sum is easily calculated using generating functions, with the corresponding flow-graph represented in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Overall flow-graph of an assisted receiver. Uhit(z), UD(z), UFA(z), and UP(z) are the generating functions of the time to first hit in the full-space stage, the time to detections in the reduced-space stage, the time to a false alarm in the reduced-space stage, and the penalty time to recover from a false alarm, respectively.
Using the inverse of the FFT method presented above, we calculate the generating functions of the time to first hit in the full-space stage, Uhit(z); the time to M detections in the reduced-space stage, UD(z); the time to a false alarm in the reduced-space stage,UFA(z), and the deterministic time penalty to recover from a false alarm,UP(z).
Modeling false-alarms demands special attention. There is little information in the literature about the detection of false alarms in assisted-GPS receivers. One solution could be to detect a large residual error at the output of the positioning algorithm. Here, we take an easy path and simply introduce a penalty time, TPenalty, to represent the (deterministic) time needed to recover from a false alarm. The penalty time should be chosen to represent the behavior of a specific receiver.
For GNSS receivers capable of tracking the signals, the full pseudorange can be recovered after detection of a synchronization word in the navigation message. The duration of the tracking stage is a random variable, since the tracking can start at any position in the navigation message. Although we have not investigated this situation in more detail, we suspect that the tracking stage can be simply modeled by a uniform probability distribution. The length of this distribution depends on the navigation message structure and the amount of navigation data needed by the receiver to obtain a full set of decoded data. A new block can be added to the flow-graph in Figure 3 using the generating function of the uniform distribution, and the TTFF for a standard GNSS receiver can then be calculated.
Experimental Results
We analyzed the TTFF with the signal strengths measured in an office environment.
A picture of the office is shown in Figure 4. One side of this office has a window, but the sky view is obstructed by a large building a few tens of meters away. There is no direct line of sight to a satellite, although the window may allow some strong reflected signals to get in to the office.
Measurement of Weak Signals. Direct measurement of the strengths of indoor signals can be challenging since the signals are often too weak to be tracked reliably. We used a Nordnav R30 dual-input receiver with one input connected to an outdoor antenna mounted on the roof of the building and having an unobstructed view of the sky. The other input was connected to an antenna in the office. We used the tracking information from the stronger outside signal to track the indoor signal.
The signal carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) was recorded for 400 seconds, starting every day at the same sidereal time, for six consecutive days.
Figure 5 shows the signal strength for one particular satellite (GPS PRN9). We see that the signal strength follows a similar pattern every day. This is representative of a multipath fading environment: the signal coming from the satellite is scattered in the office, and the resulting signals interfere constructively or destructively, depending on the phase difference between the different paths. The overall signal strength is therefore related to the relative position of the satellite which, for GPS, is about the same every day at a given sidereal time.
The variations of the signal strengths of all the observable satellites show fading patterns which are uncorrelated, as we expect the satellites to be spread across the sky (see Figure 6). It is difficult, if not impossible, to predict the distribution of signal strengths at any specific instant, and so the TTFF varies depending on the instant at which the acquisition process begins.
Figure 5. Indoors signal strength (C/N0) for satellite PRN09. Each colored curve represents the signal strength measured on a different day, starting at the same orbital time.Figure 6. Measured C/N0 for all observed satellites during the first day of recording.
TTFF Indoors. We now apply the signal strength measurements (Figures 5 and 6) to the TTFF calculation method presented above. This allows us to determine the probability of the TTFF as a function of the starting time of the acquisition since the beginning of the data recording.
We chose the detection parameters as follows: the coherent integration time was 1 millisecond, the non-coherent integration time was 300 milliseconds, the threshold was set for a probability of false alarm of 10–6, the time offset of a code phase was between 0 and 1 milliseconds, the penalty time for a false alarm was set to 600 milliseconds, and five satellites were required to solve the position equation. The ephemeris, a coarse position within 150 kilometers of the true position, and a coarse time within 30 seconds of the GPS system time were provided by the assistance data.
The results (see Figure 1) provide some insight into the acquisition process.
We can discern two patterns in the TTFF distribution. During the first 150 seconds of the analysis, that is, if a real receiver had started acquisition during that time, the TTFF showed large variations. This was caused by the multipath. The fading of the signals from the various satellites, although uncorrelated, led to severe degradation of the TTFF when the acquisition was started during a combination of strong fades. In our analysis, we have made the simplifying assumption that the strength of any particular satellite signal remains constant over the acquisition period.
After the first 150 seconds, the TTFF became more nearly constant. On examining the C/N0 time series, it was clear that the reason was the appearance of a signal from the satellite with PRN 27 (black curve in Figure 6) which was consistently stronger than the remaining signals after 120 seconds. This satellite had the highest elevation (more than 60 degrees) and the reception was probably by transmission through the ceiling of the office. In this situation, the phase difference between the reception paths was small, hence there was little fading. This single satellite significantly improved the TTFF, in particular by shortening the time of the first stage of the assisted-acquisition process.
It can be shown that the distribution of the acquisition time of a satellite, at a given starting time, can be approximated by an exponential distribution. This distribution explains the non-linearity of the relationship between the TTFF and the probability of fix, as observed in Figure 1. The non-linear effect becomes important when calculating the TTFF at a given performance level. In our example, the 50-percent probability of fix was about 1.2 seconds. Moving the requirement to 90 percent made it about 2 seconds, and 95 pecent about 2.5 seconds.
Conclusions
In presenting a method of calculating the distribution of the TTFF representative of a mass-market receiver indoors, we have seen how existing techniques can be extended and combined to provide an analytical model for assisted receivers. Power measurements of real signal show how the TTFF can vary depending on the combination of signal strength at the time the acquisition process is started. This suggests that an improved strategy for acquisition in large search spaces might be to start two or more independent acquisition processes, separated by, say, 1 second, in order to benefit from the advantage of one of the signals appearing strongly after a fade.
The lead author gratefully acknowledges support for this research from Cambridge Silicon Radio, CSR plc.
Nicolas Couronneau is a Ph.D. student at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK. He graduated as an electrical engineer from Supélec, France. His research interests are in the area of probabilistic methods applied to the acquisition of GNSS signals.
Peter J. DufFett-Smith is reader in experimental radio physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. His Ph.D. was in radio astronomy. He is the founder of Cambridge Positioning Systems Ltd. and, with others, invented the Matrix positioning method and Enhanced-GPS technologies. He holds more than 20 patents, and is a consultant to the GPS Group at Cambridge Silicon Radio.
Alexander Mitelman received his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in electrical engineering. His research interests include signal-quality monitoring, algorithm and system design, and the development of testing methodologies for GNSS and hybrid systems.
Telmap announced that Telmap will use INRIX’s real-time, historical and predictive traffic information in its Mobile Location Companion service worldwide.
According to the announcement, the partnership is expected to enhance the navigation experience and increase usage by allowing Telmap users to enjoy best in class routing through better alternative routes that take into consideration real-time traffic and will result in reduced travel time and more accurate estimated time of arrival (ETA). These improvements will be driven by INRIX’s breakthrough traffic analytics that accurately measure the speed of travel and estimate travel times for routes covering both major motorways and secondary roads, which is powered by the largest crowd-sourced traffic community in the world. INRIX’s traffic data coverage combined with the coverage of recently acquired ITIS Holdings offers Telmap users unprecedented coverage in 30 countries.
“Telmap’s goal is to provide its millions of users with an excellent and the quickest possible navigation experience. We evaluated several traffic data providers and INRIX’s excellent aggregation and technological capabilities, extensive coverage, and focus on traffic as their main product, will enable us to present the best traffic available in the world today”, said Motti Kushnir, Telmap Chief Marketing Officer.
“Telmap are a strategically important customer to INRIX,” said Stuart Marks, Senior Vice President of INRIX Europe. “Our efforts to combine the immediacy of community traffic reporting with our existing data will result in the delivery of critical information to the driver in a much more timely manner than available from other services today.”
Telmap reports that INRIX traffic information will be integrated into the Telmap Mobile Location Companion by the end of the year.
The location industry is evolving. In the near future we won’t be discussing navigation and mapping as a way of finding the nearest Starbucks. Contextual location driven advertising will start delivering solid revenues, as soon as the market becomes better organized. The value of location information will be magnified as it shifts to the cloud. Vehicle manufacturers will be creating their own rich contextual location information. Near field communication, NFC, with its seat between consumers and cash registers, will provide some of the most valuable location data. These are points all made at last week’s LocNav conference by The Where Business.
Tipping Point. Half of Americans are not using smartphones. Location becomes more interesting when everyone has a smartphone and it reaches a tipping point. Social proximity and location has big benefits. “When everyone has a smartphone, you can connect via wireless mesh,” says Michael Metcalf of Yahoo. “If I’m in a line at JFK for a cab, I can let others know my destination and I can reduce the line and wait by half.” Geo-fencing has been stymied by the battery drain caused by frequent GPS pinging. Wireless mesh technology solves this issue. Another winner in location is near field communications, which works in short range proximity to enable purchases and other activities via smartphones. It creates a valuable database that includes precise location tracking data.
Power to the Automotive OEMs. Unlike the rest of the industry, automotive OEMS won’t need to rely on location integrators or cellular providers to provide them with a driver’s location. With integrated GPS and communications, they are well equipped to understand the context of where drivers are located, what they may be doing, and where they may go next. “In the past, the automotive industry didn’t get a share of the advertising revenue generated in the vehicle by radio, which was usually even installed as OEM equipment. “That will change,” says Lou Brugman of Pioneer Automotive. “In-vehicle infotainment will be adding location-based social networking, which might include automatically sharing your location or estimated time of arrival with specific contacts. The excuse for being stuck in traffic might not work as easily when you’ve actually been lingering over lunch.
Contextual Advertising Road Block. Everyone is talking about contextual location-based advertising, but it is being held back by a complicated eco-system. “There is little conformity. There are open standards and closed standards,” says Chris Peralta of Nokia. “Contextual advertising offerings are operating as separate silos.” Peralta feels that MirrorLink, previously called Terminal Mode, is getting traction. The MirrorLink Consortium is dedicated to cross-industry collaboration in developing global standards and solutions for smartphone and in-vehicle connectivity.
Heard in the Hallways:
“Sensors that use location will change more people’s lives than giving turn-by-turn directions faster. In the future location conferences will have nothing to do with navigation and mapping.”
“Apple required us to add a navigation application for the iPad. We hadn’t even considered that the iPad would be used in a vehicle for navigation.”
“People will accept dirtier data that is cheaper. Mapping that is from a user-generated community will be good enough. There will be some mapping that will sell for a premium for some uses, but map data will be commoditized.”
“In the future, all mobile advertising will be opt-in. It won’t continue an upward trajectory if it doesn’t do otherwise.”
Intelligence in the Cloud. The shift of information to the cloud will have a significant impact to our industry. “The cloud moves localization to a global context,” says Kanwar Chadha of CSR. “In the cloud, it becomes intelligent context and simplifies information that can feed sensors that work on low energy.” It is important to provide the right level of location accuracy for different contexts. For privacy concerns, social networking users don’t want location that is too precise; yet for mobile promotions, the closer the better. Weather can be regional for most common uses although agriculture requires precision. Having the location intelligence in the cloud enables more sensor usage.
Smartphones and Shopping. It sounds redundant, but Google’s research indicates a heavy reliance on smartphones while shopping in brick and mortar stores. A whopping 70 percent of smartphoners use their phones as a shopping aid while inside of a store. Almost 25 percent report researching purchases on a phone, visiting a store to view merchandise, but then buying online. The benefits of mobile advertising are significant. “Hyperlocal advertising has an ROI of about 800 percent,” said Surojit Chatterjee, of Google, “Mobile ad campaigns are seeing 40 percent more calls compared to desktop.”
I will host a free GPS World webinar on Thursday, December 1, with interesting guests. Details will be provided in November’s Wireless Pulse.
LightSquared’s been in the news quite a bit since my last Survey Scene newsletter a month ago, but very little of it has actual consequence. A lot of the “news” is just noise. LightSquared pumped up its propaganda campaign nationwide to try to build a consensus in their favor and put pressure on the FCC, and is threatening a lawsuit if the FCC doesn’t do what LightSquared wants. No surprises there. However, other things have happened that I think you might be interested in hearing about.
Most interesting was the partnership announced between JAVAD GNSS and LightSquared to develop a solution for LightSquared’s GPS-jamming problem. I had the opportunity to sit down briefly with Dr. Javad Ashjaee at the INTERGEO conference in Germany after he announced his company’s partnership with LightSquared. He’s a sharp engineer and well-worth listening to. Essentially, he made three points:
1. This is a spectrum issue that isn’t going away even if LightSquared isn’t allowed to proceed, so it’s in the best interest of the GPS industry to work on a solution no matter what the FCC’s decision is.
I’ve written about this issue before and I agree that the MSS spectrum has got a bull’s-eye on it. It’s a big piece of spectrum when not a lot of wireless spectrum is left to be developed. One could argue that it has its purpose as an MSS band, but the counter to that argument is that it’s under-performing. There’s only so much one can do with MSS spectrum.
That leaves two choices: the first is to keep it allocated as low-power MSS (satellite-to-earth communications) as it has historically been used. It could also be officially established and recognized as a guard band for GPS so this problem doesn’t crop up again. GPS is an important enough national asset to make this a reasonable discussion. The LightSquared debate has done a fantastic job of raising awareness of the importance of GPS technology in our everyday lives as well as the commercial and military markets. GPS has and will continue to contribute more jobs, revenue, and growth to the U.S. and world economy than LightSquared could ever dream of. You can quickly dismiss anyone who claims otherwise.
2.Secondly, Dr. Ashjaee opines that 4G LTE is something that the GPS industry needs. I don’t disagree with that statement. More and more you see the latest high-precision GPS receivers designed with integrated communications, primarily GSM modems to enable internet connectivity in the field. Connectivity in the field has always been a weak point of GPS systems. If one wireless technology could replace UHF/VHF/Spreadspectrum/GSM/MSS, that would be a good thing.
I’m skeptical, though. I don’t believe LightSquared will be available where many GPS users need wireless communications even when it’s fully deployed — namely rural areas. They are going to chase after the money. The money is in the urban areas where the population is dense. Who in their right mind would spend money to establish and maintain infrastructure in areas with a very sparse potential customer base? I wouldn’t.
So, that still leaves us with needing UHF/VHF/Spreadspectrum/GSM/MSS communications technology. It doesn’t solve the problem. But, I’m not against trying as long as LightSquared’s system has no affect on the performance of high-precision GPS/GNSS receivers.
Incidentally, JAVAD GNSS intends to integrate a LightSquared mobile device into their product to manage potential interference from the uplink band (1626.50-1660.5MHz). However, this still doesn’t prevent interference from LightSquared mobile devices in the vicinity of JAVAD receivers. To this, Dr. Ashjaee says (I’m paraphrasing) “interference already exists today. Our mobile phones of today already create interference. If that happens, we simply move it away.”
3. Lastly, Dr. Ashjaee states that with GPS modernization in full swing and with new GPS signals being deployed, GPS users are going to need to upgrade their equipment to keep up with the latest technology in order to stay productive.
This is a point that he and I disagree on.
There is no reason your GPS L1 receiver will become obsolete in the foreseeable future, whether it’s a high-performance sub-meter receiver or a cm-level surveying receiver (L1-only). There is no plan by the U.S. Government to change or obsolete the L1 C/A signal.
For legacy L1/L2 GPS receivers that aren’t designed to utilize L2C or L5, it’s a different story. If you recall, back in 2008 the U.S. government floated the idea that it wanted to discontinue supporting the legacy semicodeless technique used by every L1/L2 GPS receiver in existence. Literally, several hundred thousand high-precision dual frequency GPS receivers would be rendered obsolete. At the end of the public comment period, the U.S. Air Force and Department of Commerce established a date of December 31, 2020 for this to happen. I wrote about this extensively at the time. My point is that there’s certain high-precision equipment that’s going to become obsolete at that time. However, that’s nearly ten years from now.
Should those users be forced to upgrade earlier to accommodate LightSquared?
Another point, and more serious, are the users who already upgraded in the past few years to equipment that was advertised as “future-proof”. In other words, they paid a premium for GNSS equipment that could track “all current and planned signals” such as L2C, L5, Galileo, GLONASS, etc. There is absolutely no reason those users would be required to upgrade their equipment for any imaginable reason. In fact, I’d be rather miffed if someone suggested I needed to spend money to do so.
How much money are we talking about?
That’s an interesting question.
Dr. Ashjaee guarantees that he will upgrade all JAVAD GNSS receivers for between US$300 and US$800. If you think about it, that’s similar to what you might pay in annual maintenance fees on many receivers. The issue is that JAVAD receivers aren’t that common in the U.S. Realistically, there’s a wide variety of high-precision GPS receivers in the U.S. market. Many of them are not the latest models, but still working perfectly fine. Manufacturers are not going to re-open those product designs and try to implement LightSquared-hardened antenna and circuitry. At that point, the user’s only choice is to purchase new equipment. I think that would be a step backwards. Many small organizations were able to purchase GPS technology with a one-time grant or specific project funds. Faced with the prospect of spending thousands of dollars on a new high-precision GPS receiver, I think many would opt not to use GPS.
To its credit, LightSquared has offered up $50 million to help retrofit or otherwise upgrade receivers owned by Federal government agencies. I think it will cost a lot more than that. I don’t believe $50 million would come close to covering the hard costs, not to mention the amount of time and effort that would be required to facilitate such a trade-in.
Let’s talk about “the fix”
JAVAD GNSS has a lot on the line, so it’s hard to imagine that the company hasn’t come up with something that works. That said, the conversation about retrofitting is meaningless until the design concept is proven, and empirical data demonstrates that it isn’t affected by LightSquared’s downlink (1526-1536MHz) or uplink (1626.5-1660.5MHz) signals, and that GPS receiver performance doesn’t pay a penalty.
Of course, LightSquared is talking like this is a done deal and predicting FCC approval by the end of the year. This is just noise, like back in August when it predicted an FCC decision within a month. Do not put any credibility in LightSquared statements. Its track record is poor, as few of their claims have materialized.
There’s no way the FCC is going to announce a decision by the end of the year. Mark my words. There’s not enough time to confirm a fix, how it might be implemented across multiple manufacturer’s receivers, and what the impact is. Believe me, there are many more hearings and information requests that are going to take place before any decisions are made by the FCC.
The “fix”, as I understand it, includes a new antenna design as well as new circuitry (filter). If you understand the high-precision GPS industry, you know this includes a substantial number of handheld units such as the Trimble Geo series, Ashtech (formerly Magellan) Mobile Mapper and ProMark series to name a few. Replacing antennas and changing circuit design is not a minor effort in a handheld unit that’s already packed tight with electronics. Which models do you support? Which models don’t you support? Which models can’t be upgraded? There are many questions to answer.
New antennas also mean new antenna calibrations by the NGS if you’re an OPUS user. Manufacturer software needs to be updated to reflect any change in antenna phase center. All of this will take time to investigate and understand. It should not be rushed just because LightSquared is in a hurry. Its “end of year” decision prediction, I’m sure, is directly correlated to an agreement with Sprint, which says the deal is off if FCC approval isn’t granted by the end of the year. Take a look at the Sprint presentation here.
Don’t let LightSquared over-simplify this “fix.” LightSquared Executive VP and lawyer Jeff Carlisle likes to play “engineer” like he did last week at a congressional hearing looking at the LightSquared GPS-jamming impact on small business. I couldn’t believe it when he pulled out a massive GPS receiver head and demonstrated how he would retrofit it with a $6 component to solve the problem, even going so far as showing where he would place it on a circuit board. The sad part is that there was not an engineer in sight to call him on it. Take a look at the 4:50 mark in this video:
Whoever put that panel together really did a disservice to this entire debate. LightSquared clearly came out on top, not because they should have, but because the witness list was not informed/prepared and the witness list wasn’t represented by the largest users of GPS in small business, surveying/engineering/construction/GIS.
The epitome of this trainwreck was when Rep. Steve King asked the guy representing the agricultural community about delineation of spectrum.
The grilling starts at the 1:49 minute mark and ends at the 4:20 minute mark.
Somehow, the witness doesn’t know or doesn’t know how to communicate that LightSquared/Skyterra sells satellite communications services to the high-precision GPS user community (via OmniSTAR) and therefore has encouraged GPS receiver manufacturers to design receivers to look into the MSS spectrum. LightSquared/Skyterra has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue from agriculture and other high-precision GPS users, and now it is whining about the very people who are paying for its satellite communications data services? Are you kidding me?
Look, if LightSquared doesn’t want to sell satellite data communication services to the high-precision GPS industry anymore, that’s its decision, but don’t make this ridiculous claim that somehow GPS receiver designers are abusing LightSquared-licensed spectrum when LightSquared has been cashing in on it.
By the way, if you watch the grilling video, the “first-come, first-served” argument is really weak. Someone needs to brief the witness better than that. Even I don’t believe in squatter’s rights, and that argument will never fly with the FCC.
ACSM Radio Show Last Monday on LightSquared
I spent an hour talking with ACSM Executive Director Curt Sumner about the latest on LightSquared. We also touched a bit on the exciting Galileo satellite launch scheduled for this week, Oct. 20, that ended up being postponed for a day. You can listen to the radio broadcast here or download and listen to it on your MP3 player.
Many press reports recently said that the Federal Communications Commission plans to require GPS in all mobiles by 2018, including LBS Insider (October 12, 2011). However, the FCC said that isn’t quite so, saying that “not before 2019, on a date still to be determined, carriers will have to meet the more stringent location accuracy standards that now apply to those carriers using a handset solution for [enhanced 911], and they may choose which solution to use.”
FCC spokeswoman Lauren Kravetz said that these technology solutions may be GPS chipsets, network-based, or a hybrid. The FCC said, after the conclusion of an eight-year period that ends in early 2019, it will sunset the existing network-based rule and require all wireless carriers to meet “the more stringent location accuracy standards in the handset-based rule. The FCC will then set a specific sunset date for a network-based standard — after further notice and comments.”
An announcement completely overshadowed by the Apple iPhone 4S rollout may have a major impact on the location-based services industry. The FCC has said that all wireless carriers, including voice-over-IP service and landline providers, are required to integrate GPS into phones by 2018. In other news, Intel bought Telmap, which has made inroads into the LBS market with its partnerships with carriers.
In a move designed to allow first responders to locate 911 emergency calls, the Federal Communications Commission will require all wireless operators, including voice-over-IP service and landline providers, to integrate GPS in phones by 2018.
The FCC says the majority of mobile phone users will have GPS-installed devices by the 2018 deadline. The FCC did not set a deadline for phones that do not use GPS-based technology. In addition, VoIP is going toward more mobile applications, rather than its original substitute for landline service.
Most industry experts agree that the rise of location-based services occurred when the FCC mandated that carriers have location capability during its enhanced 911 rulemaking. Wireless carriers chafed at the deadlines and accuracy requirements. However, the rulemaking did bring market awareness to the carriers to the benefits, and potential new markets, coming from this mandated location requirement.
While it is too early to tell how much this will help drive LBS markets, the FCC said the decision, which was overshadowed as it was announced the same week as the rollout of the Apple iPhone 4S, was spurred by the desire to modernize 911. This means locating emergency callers quickly, particularly from smartphones and other mobile devices.
But have the wireless carriers lost their grip on LBS? In 2009, the surge in the number of GPS-enabled smartphones, proliferation of handset and mobile OS application stores, and increased availability and consumer demand for free or low-priced LBS applications has had a huge impact on the traditionally carrier-controlled LBS market, said Dan Gilmartin, Where vice president of marketing.
“The decreased costs and barriers to entry into the market place and ability to reach consumers through low- or no-cost viral social marketing channels is enabling small application developers to compete with the established LBS developers. The result is a highly competitive landscape that beforehand was dominated by only a few major players,” he said.
Gilmartin said that Google’s decision to offer free turn-by-turn navigation and acquisition of ADMob for $750 million reinforced the expectation that the viable business models for LBS in 2010 and beyond will include offering free or “freemium” services to consumers through ad-supported and other non-traditional funding models. “That said, the carriers’ subscription model still appears viable, at least for the short term, and consumers are proving to be willing to pay for what they perceive to be high-quality applications both on- and off-deck, navigation being the most prominent category,” he said.
Go Ask Apple?
The rollout of the Apple iPhone 4S may not be the biggest thing for the LBS market, but it does open it further to another tier-one carrier in Sprint. Like other iPhone models, the 4S has GPS embedded, but offers Siri voice-recognition that integrates with its navigation capability.
When LBS Insider contacted Sprint for comments on the new iPhone 4S and the FCC decision that GPS be installed in all smartphones, we got the public relations brush off to “Go ask Apple.” Ask Apple about GPS and LBS? This is an interesting response, as Sprint was one of the first major LBS market players, particularly their Nextel folks who were very innovative with location technology in the early days.
Intel Buys Telmap
At least one company in the LBS market is doing something right when a big company like Intel buys it. As GPS World reported, Intel bought Telmap, the Israel-based LBS company. The deal was announced at the recent Intel AppUp Elements developer conference in Seattle.
Motti Kushnir, Telmap chief marketing officer, said that since Telmap is a private company, financial details cannot be disclosed. He said the deal will take effect by the end of the year. “Telmap will be a wholly owned subsidiary and will maintain its independence as well as its brand,” Kushnir said in a prepared statement.
Kushnir said no layoffs are expected, nor will facilities close or be moved by Intel. “On the contrary, we are expected to grow in order to support the growth of our business both in existing and new territories,” he said.
One of the reasons Intel bought the company is that it is sees mobility as one of its growth engines — and location is a key component, Kushnir said.
Telmap says it has 6 million users for its IP portfolio that includes mapping, local search, and navigation. This includes a new restaurant LBS initiative in Israel. The company is working with Rest, a large Israel restaurant guide to provide location-based coupons to customers.
In other LBS industry news:
Fierce Wireless made an admittedly subjective list of the worst cell phones of all time. Garmin’s ill-fated Nuvifone G60 made the list. The phone, a partnership between Garmin and Asustek Computer, featured LBS — and had a $5.95 monthly charge for premium service. Fierce Wireless says that it was a failure in part because of Google’s free location services.
Nokia will be closing down its operations in Bonn, Germany, and Malvern, Pennsylvania, with an expected loss of more than 1,300 jobs in the Location and Commerce divisions. According to published reports, operations will consolidate in the Berlin, Boston, and Chicago offices. Another 2,200 layoffs will come from its European manufacturing operations.
This column has admittedly neglected traffic markets lately, but will be running more stories and interviews soon. With that, some big news has come out of that market, namely Google’s recent deal with INRIX to power its navigation and mapping applications. INRIX traffic information will be integrated in Google’s online products and services and on mobile phones.
Meanwhile, INRIX competitor TomTom is launching a Traffic Foundation that brings together stakeholders from academia, industry, and policy-making to help reduce traffic congestions. The company also rolled out its Custom Probe Counts at the ITS World Congress, that allows government and business markets to assess traffic density. The company also expanded its coverage from 14 to 18 countries.
Like many who had the pleasure of interacting with the genius that was Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs, I have been reflecting recently concerning his incredible impact on our lives. Indeed his impact on every aspect of our lives including GPS is almost beyond description.
For example, our warfighters are increasingly using iPads and iPhones in theater for multiple functions, including some dedicated and warfighter-developed GPS applications that far outshine any GPS application provided by the government. When will we learn that we must provide our warfighters what they need or they will go elsewhere to find it because lives are at stake? Today many of our warriors are developing their own applications on their individual iPads and iPhones, exactly as Steve Jobs intended.
NeXT, PIXAR, and USG
My first interaction with Steve was after he had been summarily fired from Apple (the company he cofounded) in 1985 and began a new computer company called NeXT. All I can really say in this venue about that initial interaction is that the U.S. military bought a great many NeXTstation integrated/networked computers, and many of them are in still use today. Indeed, in many circles Steve Jobs credited the U.S. government (USG) with helping NeXT computer get its start. The hardware was definitely better than anything else on the market at the time, but the selling point was the incredibly powerful and user-friendly interface and software, known as NeXTSTEP, which proved to be an early version of the next step in the sequence leading to the modern-day Mac operating system that hundreds of millions of us use today.
To put the power of the NeXT computer and Steve Jobs’ genius in the right context, think PIXAR Animation Studios. PIXAR was another of Steve’s successful collaborations (Steve was co-founder and CEO) when computer-intensive animation required powerful computers that artists as well as business people could understand and use — user-friendly, in other words — and few computers or software applications in the mid-1980s were up to the task. The U.S. government was not into animation but was into high-fidelity simulations and knew an excellent product when they saw it, hence the early supporting partnership. Those little black cubes were among the most powerful and user-friendly computers of their era, and many are still churning away today in settings befitting their hue.
This comes to mind because recently I visited a secure government facility where NeXT computers and NeXTSTEP software are still being utilized, and the users think they have no equal. I have no idea what version of the operating system they are using, but regardless, this is quite a testament to the genius and foresight of Steve Jobs and the company that helped save Apple when Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996. The rest, as they say, is history.
No Competition
Every time I use a new application on my iPhone, iTouch, iPad, or iMac, I think about the clueless CEO of one of the world’s major phone companies who was interviewed about his views concerning the iPhone just before it was released. He foolishly said and probably really believed, “We are not worried about Apple and the iPhone, because they are not a recognized phone company.” Obviously underestimating the brilliance of Steve Jobs caught a great many companies and CEOs by surprise. As I wrote concerning a PC World magazine article listing the world’s best products a few years ago, “If Apple had a product in the category, it was always number one, without fail.” I know of no other company that can make that claim.
“How has Apple managed to stay so successful over 35 years? …no one can dispute that the company is the dominant American corporate brand, period. The hard numbers prove this, with Apple’s market capitalization recently surpassing Exxon-Mobile, making it the most valuable company in the world. Of course, the news always breathlessly captures Apple’s characteristics: Legendary CEO. Masterful marketing. Amazing stagecraft. Sexy products. Industry renegades. Tradition breakers. Cult-like devotion.”
Even as I totally agree with this description of the Steve Jobs-led-Apple, I feel there is a glaring omission. Apple gives the consumer what they want and need, and they do it in such an intuitive way that consumers have come to expect only the best as well as the next great product from Apple. The fact that companies worldwide then attempt to emulate the latest Apple product or service is ample evidence that this is a working and successful strategy for Apple. Remember: “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.”
GPS on a Train
I was thinking about this recently during the 30-plus-minute train ride from the greater Portland Airport to the Oregon Convention Center where I had the pleasure of attending ION GNSS 2011 September 17-23 (Institute of Navigation, Global Navigation Satellite Systems). During that train ride I was monitoring my GPS application on my iPhone and iPad, comparing the two and trying to determine the closet stop to my hotel. I originally thought my fellow passengers might consider my activities strange or excessive, being as I was on a train, until I noticed that actually most of the people in my train car were monitoring their travel with iPhones, iPads, or smartphones. A young couple across from me wanted to know what GPS application I was using. So even on a train I experienced the extra and sometimes comforting situational awareness that GPS can provide. I knew that on a long straight stretch we once hit a top speed of 68 miles per hour, the entire trip was going to take ~35 minutes, and I was sure I exited at the nearest stop to my hotel and then found my way there on foot without any wrong turns. So, you see, a GPS application on an iPhone or an iPad while traveling on a train does make sense, because when tunnels and buildings obstruct the sky view you still have Wi-Fi, telephone (3G), and SkyHook wireless applications to keep you oriented, and in a strange location it will give you peace of mind. That is indeed priceless, and I think Steve Jobs knew that. He thought about what was needed and what could be. He made our lives better.
So when I think of Steve Jobs I will always remember the outside-the-box thinker that was never afraid to take on any challenge and who usually won simply because he gave us what we needed, sometimes even before we knew it.
ION and CGSIC
This was the second year for ION GNSS in Portland, Oregon and as with most ION events it was better this year than last. More than 1400 attended this year, which is a ten percent increase over last year and in this economic environment that is quite a feat and speaks well of the value that ION events bring to companies bottom lines. There were also more exhibitors this year; so many it was difficult to get by and visit them all because the paper presentations were so interesting.
The whole international GNSS event actually began on September 19 with the 51st Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC) meeting held in conjunction with ION GNSS. This is always a great venue for an exchange of ideas and an opportunity for the various federal and state agencies that deal with GNSS on a daily basis to present their latest projects and innovations. It is always an uplifting session for me because it demonstrates that even federal and state bureaucracies’ can be innovative when the people involved are passionate about what they do. If you ever have an opportunity to attend the CGSIC sessions I highly recommend them.
You can become a member of the CGSIC, it is totally free of charge, by visiting the NAVCEN website registration page. In fact many people will erroneously but understandably tell you the CG stands for US Coast Guard because as a Service they are so heavily involved in the CGSIC. The NAVCEN CO (Commanding Officer) manages the committee, maintains membership roles, coordinates committee meetings, represents the committee chair at GPS related meetings, and coordinates responses to submitted issues, however the CG still stands for Civil GPS. However, just a reminder if you do have a question about the civil GPS signal or experience interference or outages then the place to call is the NAVCEN or U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center at (703) 313-5900, or visit the very informative NAVCEN website.
ION GNSS
As much as I would like to highlight individual papers at ION GNSS, it is impossible. There are hundreds of papers and presenters, and whether or not you find them interesting depends on your area of interest, but I can say there is something for everyone. Name a GNSS topic and there is most likely a paper being presented at ION GNSS that addresses your specific interest in a cutting-edge manner.
The exhibitors and their products were as always very informative, and I will be highlighting a few of those in the months to come. As a former marketing executive, I can tell you that if you have a cutting-edge GNSS product, hardware or software, and you aren’t exhibiting at ION GNSS, then you are missing the boat.
As usual this event is extremely well organized, and it runs like clockwork. My hat is off to ION President Dr. Todd Walter and Executive Director, Lisa Beaty along with her fine staff, for another outstanding and informative GNSS event.
LightSquared
For the past year almost every meeting of GPS professionals has been dominated by the LightSquared (LSQ) fiasco; ION GNSS and CGSIC were no exceptions. The best-attended meetings at both events concerned the current status of the LSQ fiasco. There were LSQ updates from the Pentagon, the 50SW, SMC, and finally there was a forum with an invited LSQ executive moderated by Tom Stansell titled: “Can LightSquared and GPS Coexist? Current Status and Ongoing Activities.” An excellent question that, in my opinion, was answered firmly and clearly in the negative. In my opinion, shared by many, the first three presentations, including the presentation by the LSQ exec, were of dubious value and only the Trimble, Garmin, and John Deere presentations addressed the actual issues. My hat is off to Tom Stansell and ION for making the effort, and to the extent that a great many people are now more informed about the LSQ fiasco the session was a success, and it was the best attended individual session, standing room only, of the entire ION event.
My Favorite and Most Unique Presentation
My favorite and most entertaining presentation was by none other than Alan Cameron, the editor-in-chief of GPS World magazine. Alan’s presentation, “Out in Front: C’mon, People Now” was, now don’t be shocked, on the LightSquared fiasco, and was presented to the music and words of Sonny and Cher. The highlight, however, was when Alan actually sang the chorus and the audience joined in. Leave it to Alan to do the unexpected. Most importantly, he more than made his point. This whole fiasco long along ceased to be about the laws of physics, no matter how hard LightSquared tries to change them. It is now unfortunately a sad tale full of sound and fury but not much else. It is all about politics, an embarrassed administration that attempts to tamper with congressional testimony, and a clueless FCC chairman trying to save face, his job, or both.
GPS World Dinner
To wrap up the conference’s after hours activities on Thursday night, GPS World magazine held its annual GPS gala and exclusive dinner. The GPS literati, dare I say cognoscenti, were present in all their finery, yours truly included, and a good time was had by all. Of course the LightSquared fiasco was again the main topic of discussion, and where I actually heard LightSquared used as a verb. As in, “You’ve been LightSquared!” A vision of a common fastening device comes to mind. It’s amazing but not even a couple glasses of vino rosso make that bitter LSQ pill any easier to swallow. Fortunately, the camaraderie and food were excellent as always. And once again there was record attendance.
Personally, I can’t wait until we do this all again next year in Nashville, Tennessee. I hope to see you there September 17-21, 2012, at the Nashville Convention Center.
There’s been a tremendous push in the past three decades to map what is outdoors. While there is still a long way to go, the path to a complete, accuracy outdoor GIS seems clear. On the other hand, mapping the unseen and indoors is in its infancy, and the path to a complete and accurate GIS of unseen infrastructure (eg. underground) and indoors (eg. building infrastructure) is not clear.
Cost-effective and efficient methods of data collection are the primary reasons for the proliferation of outdoor GIS. Remote sensing (satellite/aerial imagery, lidar, etc.), GPS, and other sensors have become common technologies for populating an outdoor GIS. If one studies the data sources in a typical GIS, they can be sourced to one of the technologies mentioned above.
The challenge of populating a GIS with spatial details of hidden infrastructure and indoor features is purely a function of efficient and cost-effective sensors. Satellite/aerial imagery doesn’t help and GPS doesn’t help in either case. Therefore, new sensor technologies must be adopted that make data collection efficient and affordable. The good news is that there are many
By Roland Bauernfeind, Thomas Kraus, Dominik Dötterböck, Bernd Eissfeller, Erwin Loehnert, and Elmar Wittmann
Open-field tests of jamming signals from widely available in-car jammers, measured with an experimental software receiver that records the intermediate frequency (IF) samples, enable a detailed analysis of interference effects from these looming threats.
In-car GNSS jammers, openly advertised online as personal protection devices, constitute the most serious threat of all the GNSS interference sources. Such jammers are relatively easy to purchase from abroad over the Internet and to operate by plugging into the cigarette lighter of a vehicle.
Their usage may be motivated by criminal intention such as disabling a vehicle theft-protection system, a fraud attempt against a distance-based road-user charging system or distance-based vehicle insurance, or by privacy concerns, to escape monitoring by a fleet-management or other tracking system. Since most current GNSS receivers carry a communication link, it is difficult to keep full control of the data flow. Further concerns arise from reports of companies storing user location data, as was the case with Apple. Concerns about privacy issues will grow with the widespread introduction of intelligent transport systems (ITSs), vehicles and transport infrastructure that apply information and communications technology to improve transportation efficiency, sustainability, and safety. The primary information source is GNSS for location enabled applications like eCall, a pan-European location based emergency call, which shall be in place and installed in every new car from 2015 on.
Cooperative ITSs, which are currently undergoing standardization, are transport systems that communicate their positions such that each vehicle has a virtual picture of the real world in its vicinity. The cooperative ITS network connects the vehicles with the transportation infrastructure. Vehicles establish a wireless vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET), based on their geographical position. In a VANET the position is communicated to be used at the application layer but is also required at the physical layer to enable geographical routing and addressing. This emerging vehicular communication is an enabling technology many novel and innovative driver assistance systems and location-based services. The result of using an in-car jammer is the complete destruction of GNSS signals not only in the vehicle it is operated in, but also within vehicles in the vicinity. This creates a serious threat to ITS’ future.
To counter the interference threat by in-car jammers, the University of Federal Armed Forces (FAF) Munich purchased some jammers offered online, for analysis in a laboratory environment and in open-field tests in the GAlileo TEst range (GATE). Measurements were taken with an experimental software receiver developed at the Institute of Space Technology and Space Applications. This receiver enables recording of intermediate frequency (IF) samples and detailed analysis of the interference effects on the receiver.
Jammer Interference Signals
First, we analyzed the purchased jammers shown in the Opening Photo. It is always better to understand the signal structure of undesired signals well, before starting development of applicable countermeasures and mitigation technologies. Therefore, the jammers were analyzed in the frequency domain with a spectrum analyzer, and the analyses were extended by a time-domain analysis by recording the signal with a software radio-defined card.
The first results showed that the majority of low-cost in-car jammers transmit a chirp signal with a bandwidth between 9.4 to 44.9 MHz in the E1/L1 band (other frequency bands haven’t been considered yet). The others are sine-wave oscillators with a 3-dB bandwidth of around 0.92 kHz and have a temperature-dependent center frequency around the Galileo/GPS center frequency, but they are not considered further in this article. Both jammer types belong to the category of narrowband interference, however the chirp jammers are much more effective in jamming the signal within the GNSS receivers.
The construction of an in-car jammer chirp signal is usually done by a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with an input voltage of a saw-tooth function. In general, it is a sine function with a frequency change over time, which can be described by
(1)
For a unidirectional linear chirp signal the instantaneous frequency f(t) varies linearly over time as
(2)
where f0 is the starting frequency and k is the chirp rate. The amplitude a(t) is usually constant. The corresponding time domain function for a sinusoidal unidirectional linear chirp is
. (3)
All in-car chirp jammers are linear with a positive uni- or bidirectional sweep. The negative slope is so high that we can neglect them for modeling and can describe jammer 1 with the equation (3)
. (4)
Tsw = sweep time.
The frequency spectrum of jammer 1 and jammer 3 is given in Figure 1 and Figure 4, respectively, where we can extract the bandwidth and the peak power from the graph. For measuring the peak power of the jammer it is important to take the max-function mode of the spectrum analyzer, because the internal sweep of the jammer and the spectrum analyzer is never synchronized. Table 1 shows the important parameters of the jammers.
Table 1. Chirp jammer parameters.Figure 1. Power spectrum of jammer No. 1.
To get the timing information of the signal, the analysis must be done in the time-domain. Therefore, we converted the jammer signal into an intermediate frequency and recorded the signal with a SDR card. The further processing has been done with Matlab, where we could extract the frequency change over time for jammers 1, 2, and 3, given in Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 5, respectively. Finally, these functions are exactly the same, which were generated for the VCO within the jammers.
Figure 2. Frequency over time at jammer No. 1.Figure 3. Frequency over time at jammer No. 2.Figure 4. Power spectrum of jammer No. 3.Figure 5. Frequency over time at jammer No. 3.
If we compare the jammers, we can see how the complexity increases from one to the other. For jammer 1, a standard saw-tooth generator with a rising slope has been used only for the input of the VCO. Jammer 2 uses two generators. Compared to jammer 1, a second saw-tooth generator with a falling slope and a four-times longer sweep time is added. In the most complex case, jammer 3, we find four generators in total. Jammer 3 causes a frequency burst every 1.12, 1.35, or 2.28 milliseconds. These frequency bursts can be seen also in the power spectrum in Figure 6.
Interference Tests in GATE
Various static and dynamic interference tests were performed in the Galileo Test Range (GATE) in Berchtes-gaden, Germany, where the impact of the jammer signals on both GPS and Galileo RF signals could be evaluated in a realistic manner. GATE is a unique outdoor test and development environment for Galileo and GPS satellite navigation. Consisting of eight virtual Galileo satellites located atop several mountains around the test area in Berchtesgaden, GATE provides a topology to support different testing scenarios. The Galileo signals are transmitted simultaneously on all three frequencies. E1, E5ab, and E6, compliant to the Galileo OS ICD specification. GATE’s virtual-satellite mode simulates a realistic moving Galileo satellite constellation and supports commercial Galileo receivers without any modification. Two monitoring stations within the test area receive and process these signals. A central processing facility steers and controls the signals transmitted.
Figure 6 gives an overview of the test range with its transmit and monitoring stations as well as the GATE central point. The interference tests with the GNSS jammers were performed in the area close to this central point.
With respect to the testing of RF jamming scenarios including GPS as well as real over-the-air Galileo signals in the GATE test area, some requirements have to be taken into account.
Transmission of any interference signals on the GPS and Galileo frequency bands requires an official license from the responsible authority in Germany (Bundesnetzagentur). An appropriate permission for trial radio transmission was available in the framework of the jamming tests. The disturbance of other GPS receivers in the vicinity has to be minimized in any case. Therefore the transmission power of the jammers must be limited so that a distinct impact on the GPS L1 signal reception is restricted to a radius of a few hundred meters at the most. Furthermore, the interference signal source must be placed at an adequate distance from the GATE monitoring station antennas in order not to affect the processing and steering process for the GATE signals.
Finally, in the case of performing GATE tests with a dynamic test user receiver, a severe degradation of the user reference position must be avoided. As the steering of GATE signals in the virtual-satellite mode is based on accurate and reliable user position information transferred in near-real-time to the GATE processing facility. a combined GPS-RTK and inertial measurement unit (IMU) solution is applied. Thanks to the use of the IMU, a GPS signal outage can be well compensated for a certain time period. In order to meet the GATE accuracy requirements, the jammer transmission was restricted to time intervals of about 30 seconds.
Ipex Software Receiver
The Institute of Space Technology and Applications PC-based Experimental Software Receiver (ipexSR) is a multi-frequency GNSS receiver realized completely in software (Visual C++/assembler), capable of tracking GPS and other GNSS signals in real time or post-processing.
For signal analysis, IF samples were recorded and analyzed in post-processing, using two front ends that can be operated in different modes depending on required frequency bands. For the interference analysis, only L1 was recorded with the front end parameters summarized in Table 2.
Table 2. Front-end parameters.
The front-end gain is set once for the measurement in the receiver’s configuration menu. The front end uses no automatic gain control. All the tracking loops settings can be set in the receiver’s configuration menu. For the phase lock loop (PLL), we used a non-coherent (Costas) dot-product discriminator and for the delay lock loop (DLL) an early-minus-late discriminator with the settings in Table 3.
Table 3. Tracking loop settings.
Jammer Effect on Receiver
To analyze the interference effect on the receiver, we took measurements with static receivers and different jammers approaching the receivers, starting from a distance of 1,200 meters. Both commercial receivers, capable of recording the carrier-to-noise density ratio, and the Ipex software receiver, capable of recording IF samples, were set up. Receiver antennas were mounted on the car roof. For jammer reference trajectory, we used an odometer with a GPS receiver providing initial position and reference time.
A measurement for the degradation in the receiver is the carrier-to-noise density ratio. The theoretical effective carrier-to-noise density ratio is defined as
where Q is the spectral separation gain adjustment factor. While moving the jammer towards the receivers, the received interference power Preceived(r) increases relative the distance according to the free-space loss as
where Pjammer is the jammer transmission power. Figures 7 to 10 give the C/N0 degradation for the four different receivers interfered with by the three different jammers in respect to the distance. The measurements have been taken at different times so the undisturbed C/N0 is varying.
Figure 7. Carrier-to-noise ratio for IpexSR.Figure 8. Carrier-to-noise density ratio for BeeLine receiver.Figure 9.Carrier-to-noise density ratio for NAVILoc receiver.Figure 10. Carrier-to-noise density ratio for Garmin receiver.
Comparing the professional receivers with professional antenna to the mass-market receivers with patch antenna, it is evident that the professional receivers are interfered with at a later point but lose lock on the signal earlier.
The degradation of the C/N0 for ipexSR compared with the theoretical curve as introduced before is given in Figure 11. The measured curves follow the theoretical one as long as the front end is not saturated. As soon as the front-end analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is saturated, it causes severe degradation of the signal which exceeds the pure degradation caused by the increased interference power until loss of lock on the signal.
Figure 11. Carrier-to-noise ratio for IpexSR (Jammer 1).
Saturation is caused because the amplitude of the received interference power exceeds the range of the ADC. The comparison between the theoretical and actual received signal strength in respect of distance for the measurements of jammer 1 is shown in Figure 12. With an effective jammer transmission power of –40 dBW, the curves show good alignment for the interval where the received interference power is noticeable above the noise floor, until the front
end goes into saturation and the received signal strength converges to an upper limit.
Figure 12. Received signal strength (Jammer 1).Figure 13. Sample distribution over 8-bit ADC (Jammer 1).
The rising received interference power drives the IF samples to the outer limit of the ADC and changes the distribution of the IF samples over the bins of the ADC as shown in Figure 13. For these measurements, the gain of the front end was set to have the samples without interference distributed over all the ADC bins. This setting with low remaining dynamic range is optimal when no interference is present, whereas with interference the ADC goes immediately into saturation. The red line shows the distribution of the samples where 0.2 percent of the samples are at the outer boundary.
Figure 14. Punctual correlator output (Jammer 1).
Until saturation of the front end, the interference degrades the correlation process by raising the noise floor. When the dynamic range of the front end can no longer occupy the received interference power, the degradation by saturation dominates. For the undisturbed signal, all the signal power is in the I-channel as seen at the punctual correlator output in Figure 14. The correlation is degraded until loss of lock on the PLL occurs.
Degradation of the correlator output has a direct effect on the performance of the tracking loops and their discriminator outputs, as shown in Figure 15. The discriminator error rises until it is out of the discriminator function’s pull-in range. When the PLL error is outside the pull-in range, the tracking loop loses lock on the signal.
Figure 15. DLL and PLL discriminator outputs (Jammer 1).
The degradation of DLL performance causes a position error as shown in Figure 16.
The measurements show that currently available in-car jammers degrade the receiver performance in an radius of about 1 kilometer around the interference source and disable position determination within a radius of about 200 meters.
Interference Detection
Jammers constitute a serious threat to the future of intelligent transport systems. Their use is forbidden by law, and their illegal use must be prosecuted. To have awareness of the actual number of jammers in use requires deploying jammer detectors at dedicated points and recording interference events. Promising points for initial measurements would be highway interchanges or highly frequented border crossings. Reliable numbers on the actual use of GNSS jammers would be required to support government decision-making regarding further actions, and to support the final goal of an comprehensive GNSS interference monitoring network.
For the interference detection test, we recorded were recorded with five static receivers deployed in the GATE core area as shown in Figure 17, with jammer trajectory in red.
Detection of the interference source is based on monitoring the jammer-signal-to-noise ratio (JNR). To prosecute malicious intentional jamming, it is necessary to assign the detected interference signal to the jamming device. Therefore, the signal was analyzed in the time-frequency domain for the characteristic chirp signal of a jammer. The gain of the front end was set to the minimum so that the front end could cover high interference power levels
First, signals were recorded with the chirp jammer located at the central point. The jammer is located outside the car, with line-of-sight to position 1. The measurements at position 1 at about 200 meters from the jammer are shown in Figure 18. Short-time Fourier transformations of the signals in Figure 19 and Figure 20 clearly show the presence of the chirp signal.
Figure 18. JNR at Position 1.Figure 19. STFT of Jammer 1 at Position 1.Figure 20. STFT of Jammer 3 at Position 1.
For the second measurement, the jammer was used inside a car. The car started at position 1, where it switched on the jammer and drove along the main street, passing position 3. The car then turned and drove back the same way. The measured JNR at the five positions is illustrated in Figure 21.
Figure 21. JNR with jammer 1 moving.The resulting degradation in C/N0 is presented for GPS PRN 9 in Figure 22 and for GATE PRN 46 in Figure 23. The measurements show that the jammer can be detected and identified within the distributed receiver network.Figure 22. C/N0 of GPS PRN9 with jammer 1 moving.Figure 23. C/N0 of GATE PRN46 with jammer 1 moving.
The next step in developing a comprehensive interference-monitoring network would be to have automotive GNSS receivers enabled to detect and report interference events. For this scenario, a jammer was operated in a moving car and measurements with the ipexSR driving in another car on the same road were made.
Both cars started at the same position. The pattern in Figure 24 corresponds to the following events. The jammer started first, followed by the receiver with a random car in between. After 170 seconds, the jammer parked at the roadside, and the receiver passed by, indicated by the single spike. At about 240 seconds, the receiver turned and passed by the parked jammer again, as indicated by the second spike at 310 seconds. After the receiver passed by the jammer, the jammer started again, approached the receiver from behind and overtook the receiver at 450 seconds.
During this measurement, neither of the two cars could track or re-acquire a signal. Reporting of the loss of lock on all satellites could therfore be used for a coarse localization of jammers.
Figure 24. JNR in a traffic environment with jammer 1.
Conclusion
The analysis has shown that the interference range of a jammer is very dependent on the receiver architecture. In every scenario, the jammers had severe effects. After detecting interference events, the next step is to mitigate their effect within the receiver. Mitigation techniques based on time-frequency transformations like short-time Fourier transform or wavelet packets are envisaged. With the ipexSR IF Sample API, Figure 25, it is possible to implement and test these algorithms in real time.
Figure 25. IF sample API.
Also the possibility of localizing the interference source based on the JNR and C/N0 measurements will be e
valuated.
Steps against the use of in-car jammers must be taken. To prosecute the use of jammers, detector units must be deployed. This would also help to gather reliable numbers on the use of jammers and would support and justify future actions. Clearly, degrading the integrity of GNSS positioning is a threat for all safety-relevant ITS applications. Therefore, avoidance and mitigation of interference signals should be subject of safety-related vehicular communication, and its standards should be able to handle this in the same way as other safety-related issues. We propose discussion of the GNSS jammer threat within the working groups for cooperative ITS standardization: GNSS interference should be handled in the same way as any other road hazard.
Acknowledgments
These results were developed during the InCarITS Project (Analysis, Detection and Mitigation of In-car GNSS Jammer Interference in Intelligent Transport Systems), founded by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie and administered by the Project Management Agency for Aeronautics Research of the DLR in Bonn (FKZ 50 NA 1001).
Manufacturers
Jammers were analyzed with a Will’tek 9102B spectrum analyzer and signals recorded with a GE ICS-572B software-defined radio card. The two front ends were developed by Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (FhG). Receivers used for jamming testing were ipexSR with NovAtel GPS-704-X antenna and FhGIII front end, a NovAtel BEELINE with the same antenna, a NAVILock NL-302U Sirf3, and a Garmin GPSMap 76, the latter two both with patch antennae. Only the IpexSR was used for tests to locate jammers, using an FHGIII front end and NovAtel GPS 511 antenna (Position 1, 5), the same antenna with an FHGII front end (Position 2, 3), and an FHGIII front end with SensorSystems S67-1575-96 antenna (Position 4). The two-car driving test used the IpexSR with Novatel GPS-704-X antenna and FHGII front end. IFEN GmbH developed and installed the test range and is GATE operator at least until end of 2013.
Roland Bauernfeind works at the Institute of Space Technology and Space Applications at the University FAF Munich. He received a diploma in aerospace engineering from University of Stuttgart.
Thomas Kraus is a research associate of the Institute of Space Technology and Space Applications at University FAF Munich.
Dominik Dötterböck is a research associate of the Institute. He received his diploma in electrical engineering and information technology from Technical University Munich.
Bernd Eisfeller is director of the Institute of Space Technology and Space Applications at the University FAF Munich. He is responsible for teaching and research in the field of navigation and signal processing.
Erwin Loehnert received a diploma in aerospace engineering in from the Munich University of Technology. He is head of the Mobile Solutions department at IFEN GmbH, and GATE manager.
Elmar Wittman received a Dipl.-Ing. degree in geodesy from the Munich University of Technology. He works as a systems engineer in the field of GPS/Galileo satellite navigation for IFEN GmbH.
INTERGEO, held in Germany every year, is the best all-around geospatial conference that allows vendors to showcase their technologies. With ~17,500 attendees, it’s certainly the largest geospatial conference in the world. From my experience, it’s also the best.
Simply, INTERGEO attracts vendors who offer a collection of technologies from GPS/GNSS to remote sensing, 3D scanners, and mapping software that would satisfy the curiosity and needs of any geospatial professional. As I wrote last year, don’t expect to be tied up in sessions, this is a trade show where people come to visit the vendor booths, and the foot traffic is non-stop.The display booths are fantastic. Check out Topcon’s booth below. The seating looks like the airliner I flew in to Germany on.
Topcon introducing Magnet, their Cloud-Based Precise Positioning Solution
Lidar data processing and management software, such as Terrasolid’s solution, was common at INTERGEO. As the cost of high-precision data becomes much cheaper to collect, the bottle-neck becomes data processing and management.
Lidar data management
3D mobile mapping was a hot topic. This 3D Laser Mapping vehicle was used to help assess damage in Japan after the March 11, 2011 earthquake.
3D scanning autos were abound on the trade show floor
The world’s leading GNSS receiver manufacturers attend in full force. You’ll see every major vendor.
Javad GNSS displaying their receivers as well as their new iPad app
As expected and reported over the past few years, the market for machine control products is developing and expanding. There were a number of interesting displays, including this one from Moba AG.
Demonstration of Moba’s excavator machine control system
UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) also continue to be a hot topic. The benefits of UAV for remote sensing geospatial activities are clear. What’s not clear is the commercial adoption of UAVs for mapping. Europe and other countries have been much more progressive than the U.S., which still severely limits the use of UAVs for non-government and non-university activities.
Of course, BIM (Building Information Modeling) is another significant trend and there were no lack of vendors at INTERGEO on that topic. The GIS world has just started to get a handle on mapping outdoors while indoor mapping is vastly untouched. OrthoGraph displays their indoor mapping app for the iPad.
OrthoGraph Architect for iPad
I heard some good things about OpenStreetMap. I’ve written about OSM before. Take a look at their website when you have a chance. Also exhibiting was OpenSeaMap.
Open Street Map stand
At the Nuremberg Messe, there was plenty of space to accommodate the ~17,500 attendees as well as an outdoor demonstration area.
INTERGEO 2011 outdoor demonstration area
On the second day of the INTERGEO conference, the Forum for Satellite Navigation (SatNav-Forum) held its one-day meeting. This was the first time it was co-located with INTERGEO. You can view the agenda here, though it’s in German so you’ll need to use an online translator. Note that yours truly gave a short presentation in the afternoon. Some Galileo literature I read tried to make the point that Galileo is superior to GPS and GLONASS. I tried to make the point that GPS and Galileo (Europe’s GPS) are complimentary systems, not competitive systems. By using both GPS and Galileo, high-precision horizontal and vertical data will be very easy and inexpensive to collect in the future. I hope I made my point.
SatNav-Forum display at INTERGEO
Back to the INTERGEO conference. If your company manufacturers something related to geospatial hardware or software, you’re making a big mistake if you are not attending INTERGEO. This is, by far, the single best conference in the world to attend in order to understand the latest trends and developments in GIS, surveying, engineering, and all other geospatial-related disciplines.
The 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show is underway. The Ford Evos concept car is having its debut and overtakes the company’s Sync offering, with a high level of social networking and connectivity features. A departure from the Sync approach of vehicles as smartphones on wheels, this plug-in hybrid is designed to always be connected to the cloud. Some of the distractibility found in the Sync has been diminished. The driver’s “personal cloud” makes automatic adjustments to music, temperature, traffic checks, and navigation that reflect learned personal choices of the driver and her schedule. Hooking a car up to the cloud comes with significant risks. Moving from stand-alone isolated in-vehicle systems to the connected network world carries the threat of being hacked and exposed to viruses. iSec researchers demonstrated unlocking and starting a car by sending text messages to its alarm system. The problem, however, is much broader than having a car stolen.
White Flag. The industry has surrendered mobile check-in to Foursquare. It isn’t often one gets to report on a Facebook failure, but after one year of disappointing traction, the company has abandoned Places. A location-based social network offering, Facebook Places allowed users to share location at venues, and see who among their contacts were checked in nearby. When Places launched a year ago, it wasn’t clear if start-ups like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrrl could compete with Facebook. Yet the day following the Facebook Places launch, Foursquare sign-ups swelled with a record number of new users. Dennis Crowley of Foursquare asserts that they have captured 10 million users by “being about what people are currently doing,” while Facebook records what people have done in the past. Facebook users won’t be able to check in, but can add location to a tag.
No More Gowalla Badges. Unable to compete with Foursquare on check-ins alone, Gowalla is shedding some of its check-in bells and whistles and adding social travel guides for travelers. These location-based communities emphasize image sharing and storytelling and are now available in 60 cities worldwide. Gowalla is also featuring content from National Geographic and other travel-oriented sites.
Looking for Metrics. Local, location-based search is a key driver for mobile advertising. Google has 200 million active mobile map users in more than 100 countries. Navigation is search’s bosom buddy. “In general, I think you can look at navigation as a type of conversion, for example, after searching for directions,” says Suroijit Chatterjee of Goggle, as reported by The Where Business. “Better attribution models are needed, however, in order for revenue generation to develop further.”
Fourth Amendment and Location: Law and Order Edition. In November, the Supreme Court will hear the most important fourth amendment case in years, and it is all about location. The question is whether the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s vehicle and track movements. The court case arose from an investigation of a Washington man who was suspected of being part of a cocaine selling operation. The police had obtained a search warrant, but installed the tracking device one day late.
Literary Location Judges. Recent rulings from judges across the country that have included tracking of cell phone locations have sided with protection of privacy. It is common for judges to invoke George Orwell’s 1984 and its depiction of a futuristic police state that keeps citizens under constant surveillance. In November, the Supreme Court Judges will address the specific question of whether the placement of a tracking device on a vehicle qualifies as a search, and if the surveillance by location technology is different from conventional methods such as tailing suspects and stake-outs, which do not require a warrant.
Navv Revamps. Navv has recreated itself in the navigation industry by adding social networking into its personal navigation offering. Users can share their locations, itineraries, or current routes to their Facebook wall, directly from the app. Check-ins via Foursquare are automated. In March, the Navv navigation app was removed from the Apple App Store in a now-resolved argument with Apple over rights to the navigation app’s name.
Mark your Calendar. Don’t miss LocNav 2011, October 18-19 in San Jose. The Where Business has co-located its annual Location Business Summit and Navigation conferences to create an even bigger show. I’ll be moderating the panel, “Connecting People Places and Things: Advertising and Social Networking in the Location Ecosystem.” My guests include executives form Expedia, Nokia, Yahoo, and A&G. See you there.
The October issue of Wireless Pulse will be published one week later than usual to allow reporting on the LocNav show.
Like a bad week on the stock exchange, LightSquared hit speed bump after speed bump this week. After Monday when the company boldly claimed there would “be a resolution within a month” to the GPS interference problem, the FCC spanked them Tuesday by ordering more testing. The rest of the week turned even more sour.
The issue really isn’t about blame, which is how LightSquared is trying to frame it with the “the GPS industry knew about it” argument. The fact is that hundreds of thousands (LightSquared estimates 750,000 to 1 million) of high-precision GPS receivers would be affected. These are high-end receivers valued at thousands and tens of thousands of dollars each.
This week (September 12-16), things turned sour for LightSquared. Most alarming is that it really demonstrated how flakey LightSquared’s thought process is, thus substantially reducing the company’s credibility.
Monday
On Monday, it was reported that LightSquared said it was confident the FCC would make a decision in the next month. LightSquared Executive VP Martin Harriman said Monday at the Mobile Future Conference “We are at the end of the process and we expect the FCC to make a decision. We have made some big concessions… Sprint wouldn’t sign this big deal if it didn’t expect it to be resolved. I expect there to be a resolution in the next month.”
Does he really think people are that stupid? Obviously, Sprint would love to have $9 billion of LightSquared’s money, but I guarantee the contract is contingent upon LightSquared gaining approval from the FCC. If I was Sprint, I’d sign it, too. There’s no downside for Sprint to sign the deal!
After LightSquared’s statement on Monday, the week started going downhill in a hurry for the company.
Tuesday
On Tuesday, a day after LightSquared applied pressure and said it “expects the FCC to make a decision,” the FCC threw LightSquared a right jab by issuing a Public Notice stating that further testing is needed to understand the impact of LightSquared’s latest proposal. Following is from the FCC’s Public Notice:
“This Public Notice is issued pursuant to the provision of LightSquared Subsidiary LLC’s (LightSquared) conditional Ancillary Terrestrial Component (ATC) authorization that LightSquared may not commence ATC operations until the Commission, in consultation with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), finds that Global Positioning System (GPS) interference concerns have been satisfactorily resolved. Following extensive comments received as a result of the technical working group process required by the International Bureau’s Order and Authorization dated January 26, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with NTIA, has determined that additional targeted testing is needed to ensure that any potential commercial terrestrial services offered by LightSquared will not cause harmful interference to GPS operations.”
Furthermore, the FCC Public Notice stated:
“LightSquared submitted proposed mitigation techniques to remedy the interference to GPS simultaneously with the technical working group final report. Notably, LightSquared proposed to revise its planned deployment to operate terrestrial transmitters only in the lower 10 MHz of its spectrum. The results thus far from the testing using the lower 10 MHz showed significant improvement compared to tests of the upper 10 MHz, although there continue to be interference concerns, e.g., with certain types of high precision GPS receivers, including devices used in national security and aviation applications.Additional tests are therefore necessary.”
It was a no-brainer that the FCC would take this route. It really makes one wonder what these LightSquared guys are thinking. Maybe they think if they behave arrogantly enough, they can “will it” to happen?
Wednesday
This story got even better on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, LightSquared representatives announced that they miraculously “found the solution” to the GPS interference problem with Jeff Carlisle stating, “We have a proof of concept that uses current technology and equipment that is available today and is affordable.” Riiiiight. Obviously, this guy never ran a product development project. He has nothing but a conceptual idea of how the problem might be solved. He further stated that LightSquared’s solution can be placed into production within several months.
Implementing in the field is a lot different than proving a concept in a lab. Several months? Are you kidding me? Dude, you can’t even get your testing done on all the different GPS makes/models in “several months.” You can’t responsibly test your design concept in “several months,” and you’re already talking about going into mass production in “several months”? Honestly, I’ve lost a lot of respect for LightSquared this week.
The Technical Working Group (TWG) didn’t test all makes/models of receivers that would be affected, only a sample set. In fact, just like LightSquared’s lack of due diligence in researching the GPS markets to begin with, the company’s doing enough now just to slide by, taking the shortest cut possible. I guarantee you it will be a disaster for the high-precision GPS markets if the LightSquared guys are granted permission to move forward, given their attitude and behavior. Responsible design engineers don’t behave this way. In fact, I’m guessing the design engineer(s) behind the scenes at LightSquared cringe whenever LightSquared executives (e.g., lawyers) make these kinds of flakey statements.
OK, let’s think about LightSquared’s “fix” for a minute. For sure, it’s going to be a hardware accessory and/or a new antenna, or both. Think about all the high-performance GPS handhelds on the market (Trimble GeoXT/XH, Ashtech ProMark, Mobile Mapper, etc.). Are they really going to suggest a LightSquared “clip-on” accessory for those handheld units? Seriously? How about replacing antennas on CORS? New antennas would need to be characterized by NGS. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. All of this in “several months”?
I’ve been pretty open-minded about LightSquared proposing a solution, but this really insults our intelligence. But as we’ve seen previously with LightSquared, it’s not about finding a practical solution for the GPS user community; it’s all about selling an idea to the FCC. The problem is that the FCC doesn’t have to live with LightSquared’s half-baked “solution,” we do.
Ok, that’s about enough news on LightSquared for the week, right?
Not a chance.
Thursday
On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that General William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Space Command, said in a classified briefing that the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to LightSquared.
The Daily Beast reported that Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to LightSquared. Reports the website, “The White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points
: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, the officials said.”
The White House confirmed Wednesday that its Office of Management and Budget suggested changes to the general’s testimony but insisted such reviews are routine and not influenced by politics. And it said Shelton will be permitted to give the testimony he wants, without any pressure.
Kudos to General Shelton for speaking out. His career will likely take a hit for this, especially if this turns into a major political scandal.
“In my capacity as a member of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, I will be asking Chairman Issa [Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.] and Ranking Member Towns [Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y.] to promptly investigate this matter.”
Also on Thursday, Congressman Tom Petri (R-WI) spanked LightSquared for its advertisement in the Wall Street Journal. In response to LightSquared’s claim that the GPS industry is to blame, Petri wrote:
“This ignores the fact that GPS was located on this part of the spectrum long before LightSquared devised its plan to employ a terrestrial network within the Satellite band of radio spectrum.
“In fact, your spectrum was purchased at bargain prices because it was not intended for terrestrial operations,” Petri continued. “If it were always intended for such use, it would have been of much higher value. It became high-value spectrum when it became clear that LightSquared’s business plan was to abuse the ancillary terrestrial authorization and use the spectrum for terrestrial based operations — a radical change to the intended use of spectrum.
“I would suggest that it is LightSquared using a part of the spectrum for inappropriate purposes that has led to this dilemma,” Petri wrote. “Don’t blame GPS, a service that is vital to our national security, aviation safety and efficiency, serves billions of users and the overall public good.”
Friday
Rounding out the week, on Friday one of Fox News’ lead stories was titled “General Reported He Was Pressured on Testimony About White House-backed Project, Sources Say.” This is a good thing. There’s no way LightSquared is going to fly under the radar at this point.
Rally Organized to Protest Potential GPS Band Interference by LightSquared
Gavin Schrock, administrator of the Washington State RTK Network (WSRN) consisting of nearly 100 GNSS reference stations, is helping organize a rally to be held on September 22 at 8:30 a.m. in front of the Jackson Federal Building in Seattle. The rally is intended to support GPS and express concerns over a controversial application by LightSquared being considered by the FCC that would cause substantial interference for GPS users.
He says similar rallies for the same day are being organized in other cities. “These rallies are in support of GPS as a critical public resource, and to voice end user concerns over the proposal being considered by the FCC that could cause damaging interference for high-precision GPS for end users like surveyors, aviation, construction, science, industry, and public safety (a.k.a. the “LightSquared” issue),” Schrock said.
“The rallies are being spearheaded by surveyors and surveying associations, but other end-user segments are pitching in, like precision agriculture, academia, aviation, and public safety. This is purely grassroots about this specific issue with no other agenda,” he said.
When I mentioned to him the rally is taking place during the week of the Institute of Navigation (ION) GNSS technical conference in Portland, OR, he said it was planned that way. Good idea. In fact, on Wednesday evening during the ION conference, there’s a LightSquared Discussion Panel taking place (see below).
LightSquared Discussion Panel Next Week at the Institute of Navigation (ION) GNSS Conference
The discussion panel will be held during the ION-GNSS conference at the Oregon Convention Center, 5:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Titled “Can LightSquared and GPS Coexist?”, the session will be moderated by GPS industry veteran Tom Stansell with the panel including:
Michael Swiek – U.S. GPS Industry Council
Bruce Peetz – Vice President Advanced Technology and Systems, Trimble Navigation Ltd
Scott Burgett – Software Engineering Manger – Garmin Ltd
Patrick Fenton – Chief Technology Officer – NovAtel Inc
Dr. Paul Galyean – Director of Precise Positioning Systems – Deere & Co./NavCom
Doug Smith – Chief Network Officer – LightSquared
Greg Turetzky – Marketing Director for New Technology and IP – CSR/SiRF
According to Tom, “this ION meeting will be fairly technical in nature, with panelists talking about the test results and their implications”.
I will be present at the event and possibly assisting Tom in facilitating the discussions (e.g., microphone runner). Follow my Twitter account if you want to follow the event closely.
It’s a good mix of very knowledgeable people who can intimately discuss many applications of GPS/GNSS technology, from agriculture and surveying/mapping to consumer applications.
Each panel member will be allotted ten minutes or less, followed by a Q&A session.
Getting the latest GPS/GNSS (not just LightSquared) news
If you haven’t signed up for Twitter, please consider it. It’s become a very popular method of getting relevant news quickly. I’ve been using it a lot to blog about conferences and events I’ve been attending. I’m able to attached photos to my Twitter messages to bring you closer to what I’m experiencing. Earlier this week, I was at the Field Technology Conference which I helped organize and sent quite a few Twitter messages with photos about the technical presentations. If your travel budget has been hit hard and you can’t attend conferences you’d like, this is a great way to stay connected to leading edge subjects being discussed at conferences.
U.S House Committee Committee on Science, Space, Technology “Full Committee Hearing – Impacts of the LightSquared Network” – September 8, 2011
If you have a chance, listen to all or parts of this hearing:
Testimony is given by:
Mr. Anthony Russo, Director, The National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing
Ms. Mary Glackin, Deputy Under Secretary, National Oceanic and Atmosph
eric Administration
Dr. Victor Sparrow, Director, Spectrum Policy, Space Communications and Navigation, Space Operations Mission Directorate, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mr. Peter Appel, Administrator, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Department of Transportation
Dr. David Applegate, Associate Director, Natural Hazards, U.S. Geological Survey
Jeffrey J. Carlisle, Executive Vice President, Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy, LightSquared
Dr. Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
U.S. House Armed Services Committee Hearing on “Sustaining GPS for National Security – September 15, 2011
If you have a chance, listen to all or parts of this hearing:
Testimony is given by:
General William L. Shelton, Commander, U.S. Air Force Space Command
Ms. Teresa M. Takai, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of Defense
Mr. Karl Nebbia, Associate Administrator, Office of Spectrum Management, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce
Mr. Anthony J. Russo, National Coordination Office, Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Training, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Mr. Julius Knapp, Chief of the Office of Engineering Technology, Federal Communications Commission
