GPS World

Category: Opinions

  • Expert Advice: Test-Based Civil Receiver Certification

    Logan Scott
    Headshot: Logan Scott

    By Logan Scott

    Disaster-preparedness plans recognize the individual’s role in his or her own survival. When storms approach, have water, food, and basic survival gear on hand. It takes time for help to arrive.

    The civil GPS industry faces an oncoming storm of interference, and the receiver is the first line of defense. As we integrate GPS into all facets of our lives and infrastructure, we become more subject to disruptions, both unintentional and intentional. Newark International Airport now sees several jamming events per day. In Taiwan, one airport experiences an average of 117 events per day!

    How can civil PNT infrastructure be made more resilient?

    Faced with jamming, spoofing, and cyber attacks, receivers must take basic precautionary measures. They must recognize jamming and spoofing attacks to avoid generating hazardously misleading outputs. Situational awareness is key. Accurate and specific alarms must be generated so users can take action and authorities can be notified. Regular threat-signature updates can improve situational awareness, much like antivirus updates on a computer. Fire alarms don’t put out fires but they do save lives and improve response time.

    Twenty years ago, computers rarely had firewall or antivirus protection. As GPS becomes more deeply integrated into communications-enabled systems, its utility increases exponentially but so does its vulnerability to cyber attack. When you update your GPS software or your maps, how do you know they have not been compromised? How do you know your receiver is authentic?

    slide15
    Figure 1. There are demonstrated, well known attacks that can cause receivers to output misleading information without warning. Many of these attacks can be detected using simple methods. Some receivers incorporate detection and countermeasures techniques. Many don’t. Receiver certification provides GPS buyers with a starting point for selecting GPS receivers. Certified receivers can accurately report on interference so it can be located and stopped.

    The U.S. Navy recently discovered counterfeit routers in several of their installations. Well-developed computer security methods such as the Trusted Platform Module found in more than 300 million computers can help secure GPS receivers without impeding innovation.

    The government can also play a role in improving receivers by providing an authenticatable civil signal structure. Well-documented Public Key Infrastructure methods such as digital signing and occasional, short-spread spectrum security-code bursts can be added to the new L1C signal. Receivers voluntarily using these signal features can establish signal provenance with extremely high confidence.

    The public, unclassified keys needed to process these features could be sold and used as a revenue source for the GPS system. Receivers that choose not to use these features can ignore them without adverse impact other than weaker security. The large numbers of in-theater military users who rely on civil signals would also stand to benefit.

    Finally, I would note that situationally aware receivers can provide specific and detailed reports about what they see. Interference-monitoring systems such as Patriot Watch will need detailed reports to sort and associate the multitude of reports they receive into a coherent picture of what is actually happening. To provide adequate geographic coverage, interference monitoring systems will need to accept reports from diverse receiver types on an opportunistic basis. In short, they will have to rely on crowdsourcing as a major operational input.

    As Brad Parkinson noted during my presentation of this material to the November 9 meeting of the National PNT Executive Committee Advisory Board (“Receiver Certification: Making the GNSS Environment Hostile to Jammers and Spoofers,” at www.pnt.gov/advisory/2011/11/), in the early days of electricity, a lot of houses burned down because of electrical problems. Underwriters Laboratories helped immensely by testing electrical equipment to make sure it was reasonably safe, and consumers looked for the UL label. A voluntary, basic receiver certification process similar to Underwriters Laboratories should be pursued to provide the user community with a basis for selecting receivers.

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

  • Letters to the Editor: The Cost of Reliability

    Thanks to Richard Langley for the constellation update in November GPS World, from ION-GNSS. I’m a GPS constellation junkie, and if there was a history of each GPS space vehicle on orbit, I’d read them all. I love hearing the operational tidbits, about a IIF having problems with its cesium clock, or a reaction wheel failing, or how many spare SVs are on hand, and if SVs are slated to be disposed of, and so on. I’ve never been able to find a good centralized source of that type of information, as it seems to be something that just kind of leaks out into the industry press, from uncited sources. I’d been waiting for an update to The Almanac but it’s a moving target, so I understand why you don’t rush to update it every time a new SV is launched, or an SV’s clock changes. Especially with the increase in GNSS launches.

    So thanks for those new updates, and passing them along as they happen.

    A second thing, just kind of my musing of the state of the GNSS constellations, and how the U.S. GPS system is so much different than the others: The cost of reliability.

    With continued launches by Russia, the GLONASS system has, for all practical purposes, reached a fully operational status with 27 satellites set healthy, being commissioned or in flight tests. They are definitely putting far more SVs into orbit faster than the GPS program ever has. Over the years, they’ve put up so many satellites that they have three times as many disposed satellites (90) as they have operational (27) satellites.
    Compass has launched 13 satellites; at least eight are known to be usable.

    In the GPS constellation, there are still more SVs active on orbit than have been disposed of, in the entire history of the GPS program. Think about that for a minute.

    30 active satellites on orbit, and in the entire 40-year history of the program, only 29 have been disposed of. This is a testament to both the forward-thinking design of the GPS system by its many architects, contractors, and builders of the SVs and their payloads. And of course the Air Force that manages the constellation. The GPS system sets the standard for all other GNSS systems. It is not only the most accurate and dependable GNSS system in the world, it is also the most obsolete, in terms of age of spacecraft on orbit.

    The user segment enjoys reliability, at the expense of new features. Because the Block II and II-A satellites exceeded their design life, and now the last of the II-R satellites are reaching their design life, we don’t have all of the signals we could have from a more modernized constellation. Non-professionals like myself don’t have an operational L2C, for ionospheric correction in consumer-level devices. (Waiting on OCX.) We don’t have operational L5 (Waiting on OCX, again.) And what about all of those inter-satellite links for ranging that the IIR, IIR-M, and the IIF (and IIA as well?) satellites have? Are those waiting on OCX too?

    Originally, the IIF satellites were supposed to number 51. Then it was reduced to 33. Then 15. Now 12. 12 isn’t even enough to replace the entire remaining IIA fleet, while maintaining the current level of active SVs. Of course, it doesn’t make any sense to launch lots of IIF birds when GPS III is out there on the horizon, only three short years — we hope — away.

    If the II, IIA, IIR, and IIR-M GPS spacecraft would have had lifetimes similar to GLONASS satellites, the whole constellation would have either fallen into disrepair, or, more likely, been upgraded to IIF satellites a decade ago. And we’d have all of the modern signals that we could ever hope to need. Civilians have the same signals that we’ve had since the beginning of the GPS program. We could have had new signals years ago. but the old birds keep on flying, and so far, we only have two IIF satellites in orbit.

    — Jerry Pasker
    Monticello, Iowa

    Occupy GPS

    It occurred to me recently that maybe all these people all over the country are protesting the fact that 1 percent of the world’s GNSS receivers control 99 percent of the attention.

    While 99 percent of receivers actually outperform that select 1 percent in most metrics — time to fix, accuracy in cities, power consumption, sensitivity, dynamic range, jam immunity, and so on — because they live and work in cell-phones and tablets, they are poorly compensated and don’t always get the respect of their better-dressed cousins.

    — A Reader

  • Expert Advice: MSS Misinformation, and Ten Truths

    By Rich Keegan

    LightSquared is currently conducting a public campaign intended to persuade federal regulators to approve a nationwide broadband service that would be detrimental to users and applications that depend on GPS. The campaign relies on misinformation, revisionist history, half-truths, and clear misstatements of fact. To understand the effort to convince regulators and legislators that the experts are wrong, one must consider 10 basic truths.

    1: The MSS Band Was Not Meant for High-Powered Terrestrial Use. The FCC authorized use of ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) ground transmitters many years ago within the mobile satellite services (MSS) band. The LightSquared campaign claims that this proves the band was intended for primary high-powered terrestrial use. But note ATC means ancillary terrestrial component, not primary. The FCC allowed this use only to fill in small holes in coverage from satellites. The term MSS recognizes that the band was for use by low-powered satellites, not high-powered land transmitters.

    The FCC conditional waiver given to LightSquared, if allowed to stand, would completely change the nature of the band, converting it to primary terrestrial use by 40,000 or more high-powered ground transmitters. Many FCC statements preceding the conditional waiver make it clear that the LightSquared effort is precisely what the FCC said would not be permitted.

    2: Interference to GPS Has Not Been Resolved. LightSquared assured the GPS community when the conditional waiver was announced that all interference issues had been addressed, and its system would not interfere with GPS. It was immediately clear to GPS engineers that this was wrong, and subsequent testing ordered by the FCC, along with that done by manufacturers, federal agencies, and independent organizations, confirmed that the original LightSquared system would cause massive interference with all classes of GPS receivers.

    Faced with irrefutable evidence of massive interference, LightSquared revised its system design to propose initial use of only 10 MHz of spectrum farthest from the GPS band (Low 10) for an unspecified period of time, after which it would be allowed to add the closer 10 MHz (High 10). While it may be feasible in the future to develop GPS receivers that could tolerate Low 10, several things are reasonably clear:

    • High-precision receivers that can tolerate High 10 and work as well as the ones we now use can’t be built, now or in the foreseeable future. LightSquared’s claims that “we can innovate our way out of this” are wrong with respect to High 10. Filters that LightSquared presently touts to allow Low 10 would not work in the High 10 environment.
    • Based on limited testing and analysis, Low 10 causes less interference than the original plan of Low 10+High 10, but the Low 10 effects on many receivers, particularly high-precision receivers in many high-value applications, remains substantial.

    With this plan, LightSquared claims that 99 percent of existing GPS receivers would not suffer harmful interference. This conclusion relies on a definition of harmful interference of C/N0 degradation of 6 dB for general navigation devices (the GPS industry and FCC precedent require only 1 dB), and on testing cell-phone GPS with a simple pass/fail criterion, ignoring performance degradation and the fact that modern cell phones are much more like general navigation devices and PNDs than older cell phones. Slanted and unorthodox analytical parameters produced this rosy assessment.

    Based on evidence of Low-10 interference, the NTIA and FCC ordered more testing specifically focused on Low 10. In response to mounting evidence of interference at this level also, LightSquared has now offered a third version of its system architecture, using Low 10 and limiting power on the ground. From a GPS interference perspective, this power reduction is useful. However, the latest LightSquared plan does not fully address three key problems:

    • There has been no renunciation of High 10. LightSquared says that in 5–6 years it will need spectrum capacity beyond Low 10. It would be irrational to design receivers now that tolerated Low 10, only to find in a few years that the requirements had changed to require tolerance to High 10 also (which is not possible).
    • There will still be interference with GPS receivers of various important classes in the power-limited environment of the latest plan.
    • None of the evolving plans deals with the massive installed base of GPS receivers.

    3: The GPS Industry Did Not Know of a Spectrum Conversion. LightSquared claims that for many years GPS manufacturers were aware of the proposed ground transmitters and should have designed receivers to avoid picking up strong signals in this neighboring band. These claims of foreknowledge of a recent fundamental change in proposed use of the MSS band are fallacious.

    The U.S. GPS Industry Council at the time of the limited conditional approval of ATC transmitters (circa 2003) consisted of only two or three GPS manufacturers. It is clear from USGIC statements at the time that it did not anticipate a spectrum reallocation. In any case, it is a huge stretch to claim that USGIC represented all GPS manufacturers, let alone the entire GPS industry and users. The GPS industry had no indication that the FCC would ever radically reallocate MSS band for a stand-alone high-powered terrestrial network, prior to November 2010.

    As [GPS World survey editor] Eric Gakstatter has pointed out, a major change with the potential to affect all GPS users should follow certain guidelines. The Air Force GPS Directorate demonstrated this in handling a much less important change to GPS signals: discontinuing support for the semi-codeless technique used in most high-performance receivers. In 2008, it hired consultants to question all manufacturers and many users of GPS about the potential impact. It then proposed that the signal change would occur on December 31, 2020, giving more than 12 years to prepare for the change.

    Should we ask anything less from LightSquared’s far more radical proposal?

    The FCC has a process that would have been much more appropriate for a proposal to reallocate the MSS L-band to high-powered terrestrial use: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Had it followed this process, we might be having a productive discussion of technical aspects.

    4: GPS Receivers Properly Use the MSS L-Band. LightSquared asserts that GPS receivers intrude into LightSquared’s spectrum— a misleading claim. Many GPS receivers in fact have filters that do not block signals from the MSS band. There are several reasons for this:

    • So long as the MSS band was a satellite band for signals from space to Earth, the signals from other systems in that band were low-power and not harmful to GPS reception. GPS receiver designers relied on this and assumed this allocation of the band would continue. The ability to use filters that overlap into the MSS band has enabled both low-cost and high-precision GPS receivers.
    • High-precision receivers cannot produce accurate measurements without using wideband GPS signals that occupy most or all of the GPS band. “Brick wall” filters that could capture all the energy in the GPS band and none of the energy in the adjacent MSS band do not exist.
    • Lightsquared ignores hundreds of thousands of high-accuracy, high-value GPS receivers that receive signals from the MSS band, using it for its intended purpose — satellite to ground communication. Deere receivers use the StarFire system leasing use of transmitters on MSS band Inmarsat satellites. Trimble leases use of MSS band on LightSquared’s own satellites for OmniSTAR correction signals.
    • GNSSs worldwide are modernizing their signals; many of these new signals are wideband. To take advantage of them, modern receivers of all classes will be wideband, as high-precision receivers are now, and will suffer interference similar to that of high-precision receivers now.

    5: GPS Receivers Do Not Ignore Government Design Standards. LightSquared asserts that the fundamental GPS L1 signal specification mandates receiver design standards that the GPS industry has ignored, to save a few cents of cost. These claims are false. The GPS specification defines the signal-in-space and explicitly says that it is not a receiver design standard; it simply uses a nominal receiver design to be able to translate signal-in-space specification into navigation performance effects.

    6: Receiver Replacement Costs and Schedules Are Large. LightSquared has offered $50 million to fund retrofit or replacement of legacy government receivers impacted by its signals. General Shelton of the Air Force Space Command testified to Congress that it would take billions of dollars to replace or retrofit the government receivers. He also estimated a 10-year time frame to test and validate replacement receivers.

    LightSquared says it will not bear the costs of replacing commercial receivers since, it claims, manufacturers are responsible for the improper design of those receivers. This is wrong, as shown earlier. LightSquared should bear the cost of replacing commercial receivers, if allowed to proceed. A realistic time frame needed to replace high-accuracy, high-value commercial receivers is also about 10 years.

    LightSquared argues that in five years, most current GPS receivers will be obsolete. This is clearly not true. Many current high-precision receivers are already prepared to use modernized signals from GNSS constellations. The L1C GPS civil signal, for instance, will not be available on any satellite until 2014, and the full constellation of satellites with L1C will not be available until 2026. Therefore, many receivers in use now will continue to be in use for many more years than five.

    7: Other GNSS Are Also Affected. Because Galileo, Compass, and GLONASS use or will use signals similar to GPS, in the same band as GPS, they will suffer interference very similar to that suffered by GPS. Users will lose the benefits of these other constellations, as well as GPS.
    The United States has entered into formal obligations to protect some other GNSS signals; LightSquared signals are not compatible with these U.S. obligations.

    8: Handset Interference is a Serious Concern. LightSquared handsets do not yet exist, but testing to date makes it clear that the handset signals to communicate with LightSquared base stations also interfere with GPS receivers when they are nearby (a few meters). The interference to GLONASS reception is also likely to be harmful. The interference effects of a group of LightSquared handsets has not been fully evaluated, but will certainly create more interference for nearby receivers.

    Out-of-band emissions from LightSquared handsets, if as high as FCC power masks currently permit, would substantially interfere with all GPS receivers, possibly more than LightSquared base stations.

    9: The Solution Is Not a $6 Filter. LightSquared displayed a Deere high-precision receiver with a “$6 filter” and told Congress this proved it could be done inexpensively and quickly. The claim is based on half-truths.

    • The Low 10 signal can be filtered out using low-cost parts, but the effect on performance is not known. There is good technical reason to be concerned about degraded performance from this filtering.
    • The Deere receiver displayed is not capable of readily being retrofitted with LightSquared’s or any other filter. Like many high-precision units, it is an integrated, hermetically sealed device. Retrofitting would entail returning the unit to the factory, cutting open and discarding the case, replacing the antenna/preamp assembly with a redesigned antenna/preamp assembly, inserting the unit into a new case and sealing it, re-testing the unit, and returning it to the customer. A costly process.
    • Filtering is one element of a design, usually distributed across several stages of the receiver. Changing filtering requires a redesign that may stretch across the entire RF front end, and cannot be done casually.
    • The displayed filter’s specified insertion loss is 3 dB, well above what GPS designers normally accept, and would result in about 2 dB more loss of sensitivity than with current filters.
    • LightSquared has suggested moving StarFire and OmniSTAR augmentation signals to the top of the MSS band, very close to the GPS band, so that filters that included GPS could include them. This is a reasonable approach, but the “$6 filter” might not permit that, as it would excessively attenuate at least the StarFire signal.

    10: The GPS Industry Supports National Broadband. The GPS industry broadly supports the goal of extensive and pervasive national broadband, and of strong competition among providers. Pervasive broadband would be helpful for applications such as real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning. It would be beneficial to GNSS users to have broadband services available everywhere, but not if the cost is to degrade or deny GNSS service.

    LightSquared’s broadband services require terrestrial base stations and cannot be done with the LightSquared satellites. It is unlikely that low-population areas will be covered with terrestrial base stations due to the economics involved, but if broadband coverage is nationwide, then so too will be GPS interference.

    Rich Keegan is a senior principal engineer at NavCom Technology, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Deere and Company.

  • Out in Front: Feds Playing Footsie

    I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know how Washington works.

    I don’t know if Washington works, but that’s another story.

    Lacking that knowledge, and a competent lawyer to pepper my filings with the requisite “Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1972) . . . claims of nonsegregability must be made with the same degree of detail” language, all my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for agency communications to the National Telecommunications Administration (NTIA) failed. My FOIA won-lost record stands at 0–7.

    The reason cited by the Department of Transportation for withholding 11 documents and blacking out in their entirety the two pages that it thoughtfully provided was that being any more forthcoming might “cause harm to the government’s deliberative process.” If government told the people what it was up to behind closed doors, the people might object. Shades of Tammany Hall. “I’ll decide what is in the best interest of the electorate.”

    Several government agencies, responding to a tasking by the National PNT Executive Committee, sent their thoughts on LightSquared and GPS to the NTIA, which shares responsibility for spectrum with the Federal Communications Commission. At last notice, the NTIA had not forwarded these communiques to the FCC, and it sure does not want to share them with anyone on the outside. The NTIA was first to rebuff my FOIA, followed by others. Only Interior and NASA provided substance, but in both cases the documents had already been released by a House committee.

    The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) knows the system a lot better than I do. Its well (or at least copiously) worded FOIA to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for documents related to LightSquared elicited several boxloads of same.

    A nonprofit organization, CREW uses research, media outreach, and litigation to force officials to act ethically and lawfully, and to bring unethical conduct to public attention.

    CREW is combing through the voluminous documents, as you may now also do. So far, I’ve seen effusive emails from White House staffers to corporate folks they may or may not already know, fawning all over themselves about economic benefits and job creation that a new generation of wireless technology might bring.

    Not a word yet about downside or job loss that undermining an infrastructure cornerstone will produce. In an election year, point to new or hypothetical blooms and hide the detritus.

    This just in: LightSquared formally notified the FCC that any determination must not be based on “the subjective views of the federal agencies involved.”

    Now I wonder what kind of thrall the company thinks it holds the FCC in, to instruct it so?

  • The Hits and the Misses

    GNSS Design & Test Newsletter, November 2011

    LONDON — Technical conferences usually feature hits: advances in technology, new form factors, improved signal processing. But the opening day of the European Navigation Conference in London has dwelt instead on misses: vulnerabilities, threats, weaknesses that leave GNSS increasingly open to attack and disruption. Gaps in our armor, with scant help in sight.

    The first gloomy note sounded during the opening plenary, usually replete with optimistic constellation updates. Colin Beatty, president of the hosting Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), noted the first signs of increasing sunspot activity, heralding the oncoming solar maximum, that have caused instances of several minutes of GPS outage at a time around Singapore. Eleven years ago, he remembered, the last solar maximum created outages of four hours daily over an extended period in a Brazilian off-shore drilling area. The current cycle has only just begun.

    This and other types of interference were repeatedly mentioned — LightSquared among them, though not discussed at length — by both speakers and the audience, in questions and comments. Andy Norris, RIN vice-president and conference chair, asked “Why do the governments of this world not seem to be taking seriously the fact of GNSS vulnerability?”

    A representative of the Ireland Lighthouse Authority stated that “The implications of denial of service become more serious with each passing year,” in the sphere of marine navigation, although clearly the remark applies in a much broader, in fact universal context. “Ships are larger, more valuable, they move faster, with smaller crews, and are increasingly reliant on a sole source of positioning and navigation — GPS.”

    When GPS aboard ships was first introduced for navigation, Rein van Gooswilligen of the European Union Group of Institutes of Navigation recalled, it met with some resistance. If you showed a captain a laptop with GPS navigation, they might look at it for five or 10 minutes at a time. Now they are looking exclusively at it, without any supplemental means of navigation, including visual sighting — and other onboard systems have been discontinued.

    An U.S. Navy officer stated that the service is taking a hard, critical look at reliance on GPS, and emphasized the critical timing aspect as well as navigation. The Navy is reconsidering optical navigation including automated optical — and is very interested in a modernized Loran, although the old Loran-C ahs been done away with in the United States.

    “What are we doing wrong or failing to do,” posed Andy Norris again, “ to get our message on vulnerability across to politicians and other key decision-makers?”

    During a coffee break, I got an advance look at possible counter to vulnerability, an integrated eLoran and GPS receiver, smaller than a deck of cards, from Roke Manor Research Ltd. This has great potential for many GNSS-challenged and/or –disrupted environments, and a product should be released soon. That was the one hit of the day.

    Presentations resumed with the largest conference room packed to overflowing for the first of several sessions on interference and jamming. “Spectrum Wars — Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread” was David Last’s chosen title, a paper co-written with Sally Basker, who provided the economic analysis, and one I hope to present in the January issue of GPS World magazine. He calculated the impact on a low-technology product such as bread of the unavailability of high-tech GPS for precision agriculture, transport, and telecoms at every stage of the value chain to show just how pervasive and real a threat to global security it would be if such systems fail or are made to fail. “A dependence on GPS connects many disparate sectors.”

    Last presented the “triple whammy” of denial:

    • Each new satellite in the GPS frequency band also increases the noise level.
    • GNSS nations compete for spectrum.
    • Communication systems compete with GNSS for spectrum.

    And this is not even getting to unintentional RF interference, intentional jamming, and spoofing, he pointed out.

    Intensely political spectrum wars increase GNSS vulnerability, he concluded, and ominously reminded us that the trigger of the French Revolution was . . . an increase in the price of a loaf of bread.

    Durk Van Willigen of Reelektronika began the next talk by stating, “My presentation won’t make you very happy.” He allowed as how the LightSquared battle was fascinating to observe — especially by non-U.S. countries — and should have been expected. There will be more of them, he said.

    “Once upon a time, spectrum was like oil and gas: we had more than we needed.” No more. There’s “No Escape!” he warned, and he pointed out that, on a business basis, GPS and other GNSS spectrum use is free (paid through taxes), while telecommunications companies must pay for spectrum licenses. “As more spectrum will be needed for communication, the pressure on GNSS spectrum is enormous and will increase. Reducing this financial imbalance,” he proposed, “makes GNSS politically more convincing in its spectrum claims.”

    “All the conditions for a gold rush are present,” he concluded, alluding to the frantic grabs that characterize such phenomena. “GNSS — pay for it, or shrink your spectrum need. Be aware and prepare for the next attack.”

    Carl Milner of Imperial College London and Andy Proctor of Chronos Technology then took up the pragmatic, doing side, and even generated a few near-hits, with talks on the GAARDIAN and SENTINEL projects, respectively. GAARDIAN has largely concluded its three-year run to deliver prototype sensors and probes to detect interference and give alarms, as well as detailed analyses of the GNSS environment.  Milner reminded us that 800 billion (British pounds or euros, nearly equivalent at this point), or 6 to 7 percent of Western Europe’s annual gross domestic product, is dependent on GPS. That means 94 billion pounds in the UK, rising yearly.

    The British economy (and by implication the European, U.S., and global economies) is vulnerable, by this dependence, to interruption of the energy supply, breakdown of communications, transport, and financial services, and potential loss of life  — all with no operational monitoring, detection, recourse, or back-up, prior to GAARDIAN and SENTINEL.

    The follow-on SENTINEL is mid-way through its two-year life to take the next requisite steps:

    • Actually locating the interference;
    • categorizing it;
    • determining its extent;
    • giving a determination of trust in GNSS,
    • and addressing spoofing.

    The project has a large user base in law enforcement and government.

    The gloom kept descending like London fog with an after-lunch roundtable discussion on “Threats and Vulnerabilities of GNSS Signals,” moderated by Vidal Ashkenazi of Nottingham Scientific Ltd. A few direct quotes from the speakers, even without specific context provided, should give the flavor of the discussion.

    Tim Just, UK Technology Strategy Board. “Consider the motivation of jamming first: is it in relation to privacy or personal choice, or to criminality? There is perhaps a third case, the hacker community, with intent to disrupt. It is very difficult to quantify those today.  Projects like GAARDIAN and SENTINEL, neither with full national coverage, are only just now starting.

    “There is a choice: remove the jammers, or use other technologies to counter the jamming.  The latter is very expensive, and not available to civil market at the moment.”

    Captain Frank Parker, U.S. Coast Guard. “The recent change to U.S. policy, enabling government agencies to use foreign GNSS services is a very important first step [in combatting jamming and interference].

    “A key factor in determining whether the loss of PNT is due to an external factor, or if it could be something inherent in the receiver, is that the multiple international service providers of GNSS share information about the status and health of their constellations.

    Professor Ashkenazi’s second main question, “What is the additional likely contribution of the Public Regulated Service (PRS) of Galileo?” elicited these responses, much encapsulated here.

    Stefan Baumann, IABG GmbH. “We will get improved signal availability with multi-GNSS, but not such improvement in robustness.  M-code and PRS can help; But M-code restricted to military, so PRS is the way for civil user.”

    Captain Parker. “Market forces drove elimination of other redundant technologies in the past. Market forces will determine the success, or not, of PRS, with its new market cost. In the United States, as the standard positioning service of GPS improved over the years, some users of high-precision services dropped off [and relied just on SPS].  The determining factor is not only cost, but also ease of use.

    Michel Bosco, European Commission. “We are convinced about the added value, especially because of its robustness, of PRS.  We are engaged in discussions with user communities on this. We are planning on users being able to adopt the technology as soon as it is there.”

    Stefan Baumann.  “The courts in Germany have interest in GNSS data which is 100 percent proof against spoofing.”  (Thus PRS.)

    One emerged from the conference — and yes, it is indeed raining in London now — feeling as if one were wearing, not so much a badly chinked suit of armor, but a set of the emperor’s new clothes.

  • LightSquared: Five Questions of My Own

    In true Wall Street lawyer fashion, LightSquared Executive VP Jeff Carlisle thinks he’s entitled to receive answers with regards to LightSquared’s GPS-jamming problem instead of providing answers. He seems to forget that LightSquared is the one applying for approval to proceed, and needs to provide the answers and solutions.

    Interestingly enough, LightSquared’s questions really point out how ignorant the company continues to be about the GPS industry, which is surprising since it’s been about a year since it submitted its application to the FCC. By now, you’d think that the company would have performed enough due diligence to become familiar with the GPS industry. From the questions for which it demands answers, apparently not.

    First of all — I’ve written before and I’ll write it again — the GPS user community is in its own corner on this issue. No one is looking out for your interest unless you are able to persuade your congressperson to act on your behalf.

    Incidentally, I spoke to a state legislator last week who reached out to me about the LightSquared GPS-jamming issue. He was one of those legislators who had submitted a letter of support for LightSquared to the FCC during the public comment period. He said that LightSquared lobbyists were reaching out again last week to state legislators looking for letters of support. He said he didn’t know anything about the technology but believed LightSquared’s claims of 15,000 jobs being created. What he didn’t understand was the chaos it would cause to the economy with respect to small business (agriculture, engineering, construction), fed/state/local government, aviation, and military. Of course, once he understood the full impact, he made it clear that he would not approve of a system that would have a negative impact on GPS. When I informed him that there’s a solution being floated by LightSquared (the “fix”), but that it is yet to be vetted and that the upgrade cost would run into the billions, he concluded “we can’t afford it.”

    I think this is a typical situation among legislators and other public officials who have voiced their support for LightSquared. They just don’t understand the issue and take what LightSquared lobbyists say at face value. Once it’s explained to them, they quickly understand that America can’t afford LightSquared’s current proposal.

    Speaking of lobbyists, if you didn’t watch “60 Minutes” on November 6, take a look the following video on the corruption taking place in the U.S. Congress. It’s disgusting.

    Now, back to the subject at hand.

    Yes, Trimble, Deere/Navcom, Garmin, and other GPS manufacturers are putting up a good fight via the Coalition to Save Our GPS. They’ve invested tens of millions, if not more than $100 million, in this debate over the last year, largely on behalf of and in support of the GPS user community. But make no bones about it, if LightSquared is granted approval to proceed, and that action requires your equipment to be upgraded (if an upgrade is even possible), this will be a huge windfall for the GPS manufacturers. They will make a ton of money. Salespeople will sit back and take orders. There’s no easier business than a forced upgrade (do you remember the Y2K problem?).

    That brings us to LightSquared’s first question to which it demands an answer.

    LightSquared Question #1: Isn’t it true that the so-called “non-biased” PNT Advisory Board, which advises the Pentagon, is represented by board members of GPS companies who have a financial stake in LightSquared not getting approval to proceed?

    They are referring primarily to Dr. Brad Parkinson, who has been a Trimble board member for many years, and who even acted as Trimble CEO for a period of time, more than a decade ago, after Charlie Trimble’s departure.

    Dr. Parkinson is an aeronautical engineer. He’s retired from the U.S. Air Force (at the rank of colonel) and is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was the first GPS Program Manager for the U.S. Air Force, and is largely responsible for the GPS getting on the road to being what it is today.

    LightSquared’s question implies that Dr. Parkinson, a Trimble shareholder and board member who has voiced his opposition to the LightSquared initiative, will somehow profit if LightSquared’s application is rejected by the FCC.

    If LightSquared personnel put some thought into it, they’d understand that Trimble (and its shareholders) stand to make a lot more money if LightSquared is allowed to proceed than if it isn’t. In other words, if LightSquared is allowed to proceed, Trimble makes a ton of money in forced upgrades from GPS users who hadn’t planned on it.  If LightSquared isn’t allowed to proceed, Trimble has just spent a year and ~$25 million (my estimate) in direct and indirect costs participating in this fire drill, not to mention the opportunity cost of the distraction of high-level engineers and executives.

    For example, the company/entity/individual who just bought the latest and greatest Belchfire XYZ GNSS receiver six months ago would face   an upgrade charge of thousands because it needs a new circuit board and a new antenna or antenna element. This would be gravy for Trimble because it’s revenue they thought they’d never see for a long time from a customer who just bought the receiver six months ago.

    Again, this assumes a technical fix is possible. That hasn’t been proven yet.  Far from it.

    LightSquared Question #2: Numerous annual reports and SEC filings from GPS manufacturers going back to 2001 acknowledge material harm to their business due to interference with neighboring spectrum. Why did you not prepare your devices with filters if you’ve known for ten years there would be interference problems caused by your devices looking into adjacent spectrum?

    Ok, for how long does LightSquared want to continue ignoring the fact that LightSquared and its predecessors (Skyterra, MSV) encouraged GPS receiver manufacturers to design GPS receivers that “look” into the MSS spectrum?

    Why would LightSquared and its predecessors encourage this?

    The answer? Because LightSquared and its predecessors sell satellite data communications services to the GPS industry using the MSS spectrum (via OmniSTAR), generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue from LightSquared and its predecessors.

    Now, if LightSquared chooses not to sell those satellite data communication services to the GPS industry any longer, that’s the company’s choice, but don’t blame the receiver because it was designed to receive LightSquared’s satellite data communication service it was promoting. That sort of logic is, well, illogical.

    LightSquared Question #3: True or false? Did the GPS industry manufacture devices knowing there would be interference with neighboring spectrum because this enhanced their performance?

    False. LightSquared promoted GPS receivers be designed to access the MSS spectrum in order to access its satellite data communication services that it sells to the GPS industry. Furthermore, LightSquared profited from it.

    LightSquared Question #4: Who funds the Coalition to Save Our GPS?

    I don’t know. Who cares? Certainly not Friends of LightSquared. Can you really not figure that out?

    LightSquared Question #5: Did the GPS industry falsely claim that it would take billions of dollars and more than a decade to find a solution to this problem?

    I don’t know who made this statement, but it wasn’t me.

    I do believe that LightSquared has no clue as to the extent of the negative economic impact its proposed system will cause — and it doesn’t care. The $50 million the company has pledged to repair damage it creates to federal government GPS users constitutes a sliver of what it will actually take.

    But all of this is moot until any sort of proposed “fix” is fully understood and vetted across all product lines and markets. Clearly, LightSquared does not understand the extent of the problem its system causes; otherwise it would have never predicted an FCC decision by the end of this year.

    My Questions

    I was offered the opportunity to interview LightSquared a few months ago. I declined. It’s senseless to speak to a lawyer or marketing guy about this technology. They don’t know what they are talking about. They just regurgitate the same senseless spin.

    But, given that they keep ignoring the fact that they sell satellite data communications services to the GPS industry utilizing the MSS spectrum, I’d pose these questions:

    Question #1 to LightSquared: True or false, does LightSquared sell satellite data communication data services to the GPS industry via frequencies in the MSS spectrum (1525-1559MHz)?

    Question #2 to LightSquared: True or false, did LightSquared’s predecessors, Skyterra and MSV, sell satellite data communications services to the GPS industry via frequencies in the MSS spectrum (1525-1559MHz)?

    Question #3 to LightSquared: When did LightSquared and its predecessors (Skyterra/MSV) first begin selling satellite data communication services to the GPS industry via frequencies in the MSS spectrum (1525-1559MHz)?

    Question #4 to LightSquared: How much gross revenue, in total, has LightSquared and its predecessors (Skyterra and MSV) generated from the GPS industry since they began selling said services to the GPS industry via frequencies in the MSS spectrum (1525-1559MHz)?

    Question #5 to LightSquared: List all of the frequencies in the MSS spectrum that LightSquared and its predecessors (Skyterra and MSV) have utilized in delivering satellite data communication services to the GPS industry since LightSquared/Skyterra/MSV began selling said services?

    Let’s see if LightSquared is as bold in answering questions as they are in asking.

    Thanks, and see you next time.

    Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric

     

  • The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly

    The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly

    The Good

    This month there is good news — great news, actually — where GPS and PNT (Position, Navigation and Timing) systems are concerned. On October 22, a Russian Soyuz rocket placed in orbit the first two validation satellites, built by EADS Astrium Germany, in the Galileo PNT constellation after making its maiden launch from Kourou. Don’t confuse these recent satellites with the earlier experimental satellites, GIOVE-A launched in 2005 followed by GIOVE-B launched in 2008. These initial satellites served to preserve the Galileo ITU frequency filings and test the first-ever space borne Hydrogen Maser atomic clock, which by all accounts is proving to be extremely accurate.

    21102011-_SCO3184-W-1
    The Soyuz launch of two Galileo IOV satellites.

    While it is interesting the Europeans decided on a Russian vehicle for the first Galileo dual launch, the U.S. recently pinned its hopes on a European Ariane Five (pictured at right) to launch a commercially hosted U.S. government payload known, appropriately enough, as the “Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload” or CHIRP sensor, which was specifically developed by the U.S. government as a test payload to test both the payload sensor capability and the commercially hosted options for sensor payloads in GEO. The CHIRP sensor features a fixed telescope that can view one quarter of the Earth from geosynchronous orbit. So it appears that hosted payloads and international launch cooperation efforts are growing and are apparently working successfully.

    The two newest Galileo satellites deployed four hours after the Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kourou, in French Guiana.

    The Soyuz launched the first two of four validation Galileo satellites designed to validate the Galileo concept by testing both space and ground operations. Two additional validation satellites are scheduled to follow in the summer of 2012. Once the In-Orbit Validation (IOV) phase is completed, an additional 12 satellites will be launched to reach an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) of 16 satellites sometime in 2014, and that date looks extremely doubtful.

    According to our own Richard Langley, “During initial operations, the [Galileo] satellites will be controlled by a joint ESA and CNES French space agency team in Toulouse, France. Once that week-long phase ends, the satellites will be handed over to the Oberpfaffenhofen Galileo Control Centre near Munich, [Germany], operated by the DLR German Aerospace Center, which will be responsible for routine operations. Operating the satellite payloads to provide navigation services will be the task of the Fucino Control Centre, near Rome, operated by Telespazio.”

    Now, does that sound like a confusing and expensive ground support system? Everybody and every country insist on their piece of the pie, regardless of efficiency and continuity of operations. Who knows this might work; only time will tell.

    The approximately $7.5 billion Galileo constellation will eventually, hopefully, comprise a retinue of 27 operational satellites with three on orbit spares by 2020.

    The PNT business is obviously good for the Russian launch business. Russia successfully launched a GLONASS-K1 test satellite back in February, followed by three GLONASS-M satellites this month into a constellation that finally, after 29 years, accounts for 23 operational and three hopefully soon-to-be operational satellites. The first operational GLONASS-K1 is not scheduled to be launched until sometime early in 2012. GLONASS satellites have historically proven to be fragile affairs with extremely short lifespans; it remains to see how long this number and capability will be maintained. Hopefully the new K1 and M generation GLONASS satellites have resolved many of the longevity issues. Only time will tell when and if the Russian GLONASS will ever regain Full Operational Capability (FOC), which requires 24 simultaneously operating satellites. The Russians were briefly FOC in December 1995, but unfortunately only for a few months. The word “simultaneous” is important as Russian scientisst frequently state they have 25 or 27 GLONASS satellites in orbit, but unfortunately only 22 or 23 of them are operating. But it is possible, miracles still happen, that by the time you read this GLONASS may actually legitimately have achieved FOC once again.

    Now on the Boeing IIF side of the house, more good news as it was announced this week that the second IIF satellite (IIF-2), which has been operational with an elevated signal strength for several months, now has its signals back within the specified signal strength and is good to go. GPS IIF-3 was originally scheduled for launch this coming summer, but the latest launch schedules show the launch in September 2012, about 11 months from now. With 30+ operational GPS satellites on orbit plus residuals, hopefully this will be soon enough.

    Apple & GLONASS

    Always betting on the come, we now know that the late genius Steve Jobs directed his enterprising engineers to include GLONASS PNT software in the latest iPhone 4S; the latest version iPhone that sold 1.3 million units in one day. This effectively gives the iPhone 55 potential satellites to choose from for PNT information as well as the Wi-Fi, cellular tower, and SkyHook Wireless PNT information. With the addition of the GLONASS PNT resources, the iPhone may now well be the most versatile and capable general-purpose PNT platform that exists today. Is that a sad commentary for other GPS and mobile phone providers, a marketing challenge, or merely a positive sign of the technologically advanced times in which we live? It may in fact simply be a true reflection of the capabilities of the most recognized and profitable corporation in the world today. Apple is doing many things right, and one of them is listening to the consumer and giving them more than they expect. Consequently, customers are loyal and Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization in 2010, and in 2011 became the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world. Apple is a company Fortune magazine has named the most admired company in the United States for the last three years running. Apple iPhones and numerous PNT applications are certainly in use by thousands of our warfighters in and out of theater. Interesting, to say the least, plus food for thought and a topic for a future column.

    The Bad

    The bad news not surprisingly comes via the U.S. government and no, it is not about LightSquared, because that situation continues to be worse than merely bad. No, the bad news comes in the form of a recently released but curiously out-of-date publication concerning GPS by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  In late October 2011, the CBO released a publication entitled The Global Positioning System for Military Users: Current Modernization Plans and Alternatives.

    I was unfortunate enough to receive both a soft and hard copy; and to make matters worse I don’t own a parakeet. The good news is we do have several fireplaces in our home and winter is rapidly approaching. Truthfully, the report is that bad and out of date, but at least it is boring and long. Fortunately hardly anyone is likely to actually endure the pain and suffering required to read through the entire document. However if you are a masochist and/or suffering from acute insomnia I highly recommend this CBO report as a possible cure. Some of you might justifiably complain I have no business giving medical advice because I am not a medical subject matter expert (SME) and I wholeheartedly agree, just as I agree that the CBO is definitely not a GPS SME and should stay with what they do know. Whatever that is.

    I can assure you when and if the military needs advice concerning future GPS operations and options the last place they will or should turn is to the CBO. For example, the preface of the document clearly states, “In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, this study makes no recommendations.” Contrary to what you may think this is actually good news, since now we don’t have to waste valuable time dealing with flawed recommendations; garbage in, garbage out. Now if only the analysis were impartial or objective, which it is decidedly not. I would even settle for accurate, which it is definitely not. The information in this document is in some cases, as in M-Code satellites, erroneous and confusing; it is out-of-date where the GPS III nomenclature and options are concerned, especially the spot-beam; and it is always misleading concerning objectivity that presents facts not in evidence. There is so much erroneous and misleading information in this report that I sincerely hope no one else reads it, especially our military users.

    Seriously, all kidding aside, if you must read this document, consider it to be retitled as: The Global Positioning System for Military Users: Outdated Modernization Plans and Alternatives Not Currently Being Considered by the DoD.

    Against my better judgment I am including a link to the CBO document for those of you who practice self-flagellation. I truly regret the number of tree lifespans cut short to produce this confusing, misleading, out-of-date, and totally unnecessary document. Sometime I will tell you how I really feel.

    The Really Ugly

    The “really ugly,” as you have probably surmised by now, refers to LightSquared and the clueless FCC. Can you believe we have been dealing with this fiasco for more than 12 months? You are probably tired of it all, I know I am, but I see that as a true danger signal. The situation is very clear technically, the LightSquared signals, both from the terrestrial transmitters and receivers, will significantly impair and jam GPS signals to the detriment of all GPS users. Of course the political and business ineptness continues apace so who knows how long we will be dealing with this issue, but we cannot afford to let down our guard. Although this is exactly what LightSquared, the FCC, and the current administration, in an upcoming Presidential election year, obviously hope will happen. They hope we will all just get tired of dealing or even hearing about this LightSquared mess and then they win by default. We all have more important matters demanding our attention, right? Of course we cannot and are not going to allow that to happen. We will continue to use LightSquared as a verb when necessary and keep the real facts front and center, right here in GPS World, until all aspects are resolved. You can count on it.

    Until next time, happy navigating.

     

  • Google to Charge High-Volume Users for Map Use

    It couldn’t stay free forever. Google’s recent decision to charge high-volume users may force some of the larger companies to look elsewhere for alternatives. In the meantime, attendees at two San Francisco Bay Area conferences learned that push location marketing is not the cool thing to be into, privacy still is a big deal that thwarts consumer acceptance…and that the word “experience” is being used too much.

     

    SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s major partners, who have more than 25,000 Google Maps application uses per day, will be charged starting next year — a decision that was a hot topic at the Geo Loco conference here. Some say it won’t hurt small companies much — and may even help companies who compete with Google. Either way, some say the decision was inevitable for companies making a profit — and using Google’s resources for free.

    “It’s really not going to affect a lot of people — just those at the over 25,000 uses a day threshold,” said J. Kim Fennell, deCarta CEO, on a Geo Loco panel. Fennell said he sees a lot of commoditization of the LBS space, from maps to navigation. “The big thing, now that maps are commoditized, is better local search capabilities for the consumer,” he said.

    One panel member, Gary Gale, director of Places Registry for Nokia, disagreed, saying that while Google keeps on giving its location products and capability away for free, it may force companies to look elsewhere when it decides to charge them. “People don’t like change. Some people will look for alternatives,” he said.

    According to published reports, high-volume websites will be offered Google Maps Premium, a paid service that costs $10,000 per year. Planned fees will be $4 per 1,000 page loads over the 25,000 per day threshold.

    Google’s Bernardo Hernandez, head of global emerging platforms, told Geo Loco attendees that the company, which recently purchased restaurant guide publisher Zagat, says there are millions of Google Maps users worldwide each day. He said that heading use trends is the continued growth in mobile applications. “Phones are pocket guides,” he said in a reference to the Zagat purchase.

    Facebook Debunks Push Location Marketing

    If one looks beyond a young high-tech company speaker constantly saying the word “experience” (as in consumer experience or user experience), sometimes something important is said. Facebook’s Paul Adams, global brand experience manager, said that companies should not use push location marketing to consumers. Rather, they should have their friends and family tell them what products and services they should use.

    Adams said that Facebook is the platform to do that — basically saying that the average Facebook user has 130-170 friends that equate into about 8,000 friends of friends, exploding into even larger numbers for friends of friends of friends (whew!).

    In other Geo Loco news, location-based deals seem to be lackluster in revenue growth. Groupon Now’s location-based capability is only 1 percent of its revenue. “The motivation for merchants and consumers to participate [in Groupon Now’s program] is just not there. People just aren’t using it,” said David Hagreaves at the Geo Loco conference. Hargreaves, a consultant, said that the big ticket items that Groupon seems to be excelling at — restaurants, spa/beauty — are just not seeing the numbers for LBS.

    Indoor Positioning Big Topic at Two Conferences

    Indoor positioning capability, boosted by Wi-Fi and other technology, seemed to be the hot market topic at both CSR Locations and Beyond Summit 2011 and Geo Loco conferences. CSR rolled out its SiRFstar V and SiRFusion location platform at their conference.

    The products fit in the company’s strategy of offering and enabling mainstream consumer location indoors or outdoors, said Kanwar Chadha, CSR’s chief marketing officer.

    Years ago, it took a long time to get an outdoor position fix, much less a seamless handoff of a signal indoors. However, Wi-Fi technology, combined with satellite positioning, pedestrian dead reckoning (using MEMs sensors), and crowd-sourced location and aided data from a cloud-based server, has made accurate indoor positioning possible, CSR contends.

    Such companies as Micello attended both the CSR and Geo Loco conferences to hawk products that use indoor positioning. Micello is working to offer developers access to thousands of indoor maps to enable applications for airports, trade shows, shopping malls and other complex indoor venues.

    In other Locations and Beyond Summit news, privacy was a hot topic, though it is being labeled as a service provider problem, not a developer’s. “The industry has a lot more work to do in regards to privacy. The younger generation understands the implicit use of location — and privacy has been built into the infrastructure,” Chadha said. “We have no control of those elements. That responsibility belongs to the service provider.”

    A CSR moderator, Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, said that the younger generation “scares the heck out of me” in terms of their willingness to embrace location services without care of privacy issues. “But having said that, you can’t beat the value of LBS when you need it,” he said.

    In other conference news:

    • David Chiu, who spoke at Geo Loco and is running for San Francisco mayor, said there is big opportunity for companies who want to work with the city. He said buses don’t arrive on time — nor does the city know where they are most of the time.
    • James Urquhart, who spoke at the CSR conference and is cloud computing and virtualization marketing manager for Cisco, said that the industry has a rare and huge opportunity to reduce costs that directly affect profit and loss in the M2M space.
    • Duncan McCall, who spoke at CSR and is CEO of PlaceIQ, said that while location-based advertising has been promised for some time, there still are not enough location impressions. He says data is not yet aggregated together in a useful way.
    • While folks have been quick to point out that LBA is in its early stages, Alistair Goodman, Placecast CEO, at CSR, said that his company is seeing advertisers spend six- and seven-figures on campaigns in this space.
    • Kanwar Chadha, CSR CMO, said he does not like the term LBS, but prefers “location experience.”

  • Indoor Location Apps Lead to Compelling User Experience

    Indoor location technology is evolving; indoor mapping is coming along and apps that seamlessly work in and out of doors will make a compelling experience more compelling. Bringing mobile location to indoors will stimulate our industry. The killer app? Apps that can self learn to be personalized to a user’s life, lived in and out of doors (check traffic before I leave my desk). Hop on board.

    Indoor Mapping. The indoor market is getting more interesting as Google’s Street View Mapping edges indoors. In a new pilot project, Google is providing glimpses through the front doors of retail businesses. Restaurants, hotels, stores, and other venues will show a 360-degree inside perspective. The imagery will appear on Google’s Places pages, all using the same Street View technology that enables its other map images. The company’s plans are to eventually allow users to virtually enter indoor spaces from street maps. It is a way for businesses to entice new customers. Companies in the pilot volunteer for inclusion. The project links nicely to indoor mapping plans under way.

    Finding Location Indoors. Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) introduced a new mobile phone processor to improve the accuracy of indoor navigation. It is a “self learning” indoor location platform that fuses real-time Wi-Fi, satellite positioning data, MEMS sensors, and crowd-sourced location data. The company claims it can achieve continuous and rapid indoor position fixes. The system’s distinction, says CSR’s Dave Huntingford, is it doesn’t require manual surveys to build and maintain its Wi-Fi and cellular location data base. The CSR system debuts next year.

    Leading Vehicle Integration. “The automakers that can provide the most elegant integration of vehicle and mobile apps will lead the next revolution of providing social media and other capabilities in cars,” states a report from market analysts IHS iSuppli. Integration is critical as automotive infotainment will derive functionality from smart mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Globally, Toyota and Ford lead in successful integration of car infotainment systems with mobile devices, IHS iSuppli reports. A study of production-ready applications showed that the Toyota Entune and Ford Sync AppLink apps had the highest performance on at least four criteria, including content variety, level of integration, daily relevance, and implementation.

    Being Watched? The well-publicized case in front of the Supreme Court may define the power of police forces to put location devices on vehicles for surveillance. The court’s decision may extend beyond vehicles into the far more prevalent police practice of tracking cell phones. According to the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles police tracked 295 phones, up 35 percent from the previous year. The paper reports that a magistrate in Texas who approves cell-tracking requests has used public records to estimate that U.S. federal courts issue 20,000 to 30,000 cell-phone tracking orders annually. In 2010, in comparison, state, local and federal courts approved a little over 3,000 wiretaps.

    Location Data too Accurate? Precise location info spawns lawsuit. Customers concerned about HTC’s location tracking practices have hit the company with a lawsuit. HTC is charged with using the AccuWeather app to track customer’s precise locations and providing it to advertisers who use it for location targeted ads. It boils down to location precision. The suit claims that HTC collects “unnecessarily precise” location data. Weather is a regional phenomenon based on coarse location and can be easily determined by cell towers, and not the GPS data HTC obtains. The AccuWeather app is integrated into some HTC phones and cannot be uninstalled, according to the suit. HTC can be added to the honor roll of company blunders that fuel concerns about the misuse of location data.

    New Innovators. Localmind was one of the winners at recent competitions for young location-oriented companies. This real-time, location-based clever Q&A platform leverages social check-in services. Users can ask questions of others. For instance, someone might query about waits at a restaurant, liveliness at a bar, or the state of the Wi-Fi at a coffee shop. Another winner, Tagwhat, offers a multimedia location guide that reveals videos, photos, narratives, and audio about the world around people wherever they go, based on the users’ pre-selected, customized interests such as food, music, movies, heritage, and sports. Containment in a personalized bubble may or may not be a good thing. A third winner, Right Back on Track (RBT), enables schools to reduce truancy and drop outs. The system lets schools and families know the whereabouts of truant students to enable interventions to attract the students back in school.

  • Expert Advice: Realizing Europe’s SatNav Ambitions

    Exp-Adv-NovBy Axelle Pomies and Gard Ueland

    The 21st century today faces and will continue to encounter many new societal challenges, all mutually interdependent: health, environment, agriculture, ageing population, personal security, public and civil protection, safe and efficient transport and mobility, citizen rescue, land management, energy (supply, security, and efficiency), full employment, new consumer services, high-tech industry, business security, connectivity, globalization, intellectual property management and protection.

    All these challenges have a common denominator: the economic health of Europe: growth, competitiveness, and job creation. Along these lines, the European Union (EU) created the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. Its goal is to achieve growth by “developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation, promoting a more resource-efficient, greener, and more competitive economy, fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.”

    The role of European institutions in the growth process is especially decisive at a time when all organizations struggle to borrow, spend, and invest in the current economic situation. The need to stimulate the economy and to ensure competitiveness and return on investment in Europe is more important than ever. Among the growth-enhancing items identified in the EU2020 strategy, research and development (R&D) and innovation are part of the top priorities: “3 percent of the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) should be invested in R&D” is one of five top EU targets. The European Commission also put forward the Innovation Union concept initiative “to improve framework conditions and access to finance for research and innovation so as to ensure that innovative ideas can be turned into products and services that create growth and jobs.”

    Given EU budgetary restrictions, as stated in the EU2020 strategy, the financial framework must be “devised to maximize impact, ensure efficiency, and EU value-added.” This is why the EU budget must be carefully invested in research and innovation areas that both have strong growth potential and satisfy Europe’s political, societal, and economic interests.

    The domain of satellite navigation applications, rapidly becoming a pillar of 21st-century society, offers a splendid opportunity among the most promising ones!

    Key GNSS Applications

    • Transport. Increased safety and efficiency for aviation, maritime and inland waterways, rail, road transport, and more.
    • Environmental protection. Support to environmental driving, car parking, waste control, low-cost sensors for landscape monitoring, resource monitoring. and land administration through surveying and mapping…
    • Health. Tracking and tracing of medical goods, assistance to elderly and disabled people.
    • Agriculture. Precision agriculture, livestock management…
    • Mobility. Navigation, road tolling and charging, location-based services, multi-modal transport services…
    • Security and Safety. Pay-as-you-drive insurance, law enforcement, protection of intellectual property rights, secure asset and personal tracking, unmanned vehicles, integration of GNSS, satellite communications, and global monitoring for environment and security, customs and freight monitoring…
    • Timing and Networks. Synchronization of smart grids, telecommunications, banking, and digital video broadcast networks…

    Public Funding Requirement

    EU public funding is necessary for Europe to attain excellence, compete in a global market, and expect future commercial and societal benefits.

    GNSS positioning, navigation, and timing technology is fast becoming a mature commodity, but major improvements are still required. Without EU public support, such as the Framework Programs for R&D, GNSS development will continue to follow a purely economic approach from industry, that is, maximizing return on investment rather than seeking to innovate technology. Industries will naturally look to combine commercial off-the-shelf sensors and functions, with minimal effort on R&D, rather than improving GNSS technology’s ability to meet evolving needs.

    This approach jeopardizes both European excellence in the GNSS field and the future take-up of European GNSS infrastructure.

    Foster Knowledge, Create Jobs. There is a compelling need to foster European knowledge and capability to reach excellence in the GNSS field, in order to maximize competitiveness, growth, and job creation in Europe. The purely commercial approach will continue to place the U.S. GPS as a standard; this constitutes a major risk for Galileo and for the EU economy as a whole, as it would continue to rely on a GNSS service over which it has no control.

    Therefore, EU public funding, through such initiatives as framework programs (FPs), competitiveness and innovation programs, and Horizon 2020, is essential to ensure the use of European infrastructures and the generation of benefits for Europe. This will give the means to the EU industry to get a better share of the global GNSS downstream market.

    It is a question of business, growth, employment, and return of EU investment in the European GNSS programs. As an example, most non-aviation applications of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) infrastructure exist solely from the stimulation of FP6 and FP7 projects.

    Finally, the cycle of EU public funding — which creates projects that link people not used to working together, to stimulate creativity and foster innovation — also must be underlined. Through these programs, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), large companies, academia, and research institutes from EU countries and beyond can meet and work together. To link people and brains and stimulate creativity is a perfect springboard for new ideas and market opportunities.

    We emphasize at this point the huge risk of the absence of FP7 GNSS applications R&D budget until 2014 — the dedicated FP7 budget being exhausted due to extensive cuts, leaving only ϵ100 million in the GNSS FP7 budget line, instead of the ϵ350 million granted at the outset. A lack of public support for R&D effort would significantly limit the potential of innovation and growth as well as European ambitions in GNSS.

    The European Parliament Resolution of June 7, 2011, on “Transport applications of Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Short- and Medium-term EU Policy” revives hope among European downstream research and innovation actors. Among other things, Parliament calls on the European Commission (EC) “to ensure that the ϵ100 million likely to be underspent in payment appropriation for research within the 7th FP is made available for the development of GNSS applications.”

    Applications a Promising Market

    GNSS-based positioning/timing technologies and services must be part of the long-term growth priorities of the European Union. As part of the solution to the next generation of challenges, GNSS technology can contribute significantly to all major EU policies.

    GNSS applications and services development can bring immediate benefits — creation of new industrial activities and hundreds of thousands of jobs — and enhance daily life and well-being of Europe’s citizens; the core vocation of GNSS applications is fully in line with the Lisbon Treaty.

    Further, GNSS applications and services constitute one of the most promising sectors for European growth. The global GNSS market amounted to around ϵ130 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach ϵ240 billion by 2020. This corresponds to a sustained growth rate of more than 11 percent per year.

    EU public funds invested in GNSS applications R&D would catalyze growth, enabling market development and maximizing the efficiency of EU budget. With only a small part of its budget dedicated to GNSS applications R&D, the EU would see both an important and decisive impact on the GNSS market and a snowball effect, seminating further applications and domains with GNSS technology.

    The 2010 FP7 budget for GNSS R&D was ϵ30.5 million. Assuming that EU27 member states made similar contributions at the national level and that two-thirds of GNSS R&D investments come from the private sector, the total EU investment in GNSS applications R&D totalled ϵ180 million in 2010.

    Since the EU GDP of GNSS applications and services amounted to around ϵ26 billion in 2010, the rate of GNSS GDP to investment in applications R&D’ corresponds to a factor more than 100. In other words, ϵ1 invested by in GNSS application R&D generates about ϵ100 of revenue.

    The Need for Dramatic Increase

    As stressed in the EU2020 strategy, “R&D spending in Europe is below 2 percent [of GDP], compared to 2.6 percent in the United States and 3.4 percent in Japan.” The Barcelona EU goals specify that R&D financing should be shared between public (one-third) and private sectors (two-thirds).
    In 2011, EU public investment in GNSS applications R&D is expected to be 0.1 percent of EU GNSS GDP — well below the required threshold. If the R&D budget is not restored, this rate will come very close to zero until 2014.

    In the Barcelona and Europe 2020 goals, the level of EU contribution to GNSS applications R&D investments can be computed (Figure 1). Ensuring EU benefits would require annual public support to GNSS applications research rising from ϵ100 million in 2011 to ϵ200 million in 2021.

    Schema_HD
    Figure 1. Minimum level of EU public funding required for GNSS applications R&D from 2011 to 2021.

    Increased investment would enable Europe to boost its current 20 percent market share to reach the 33 percent share that Europe enjoys in other high-tech sectors. This would mean creation of more than 400,000 new jobs in 2020.

    Contrary to the United States, China, and Russia, the EU lacks a large military applications R&D program, which elsewhere helps support industry investments in commercial and civil applications. Given European investments in other sectors and investment of other countries in GNSS application R&D, a level of EU public investment between ϵ100 million and ϵ200 million per year is essential.

    Horizon 2020

    Galileo Services makes the following recommendations for the EU program Horizon 2020.

    GNSS technologies and services.

    • Support European industry in investing and developing critical technologies, applications, and services based on end-user requirements: security, reliability, robustness, and high performance;
    • Pursue research to improve GNSS performance, mainly multi-constellation multi-sensor receivers;
    • Encourage innovative ideas, whatever the domain may be, through very open calls for proposals.

    Market penetration and development.

    • Adequate value-added content (such ashigh-precision or indoor digital maps) to leverage application development;
    • Market analyses and business cases, with a focus on new uses of GNSS;
    • Promotion and awareness activities;
    • Standardization in relevant domains;
    • A certification process for safety- and security-critical applications;
    • Demonstrations and pilot projects, focusing on implementation of GNSS solutions tightly integrated in the user workflow, involving all value chain actors;
    • Use of large European companies  — industry locomotives — and SMEs’ innovative capability to penetrate markets and spin off new business opportunities;
    • International cooperation established by: favoring EU industry interests within bilateral discussions between EU and non-EU countries, involving non-EU partners only if providing opportunities for market penetration beyond EU boundaries or specific skills and/or technology not available in Europe, and setting up adequate intellectual protection rights (IPR) policy.

    Other support.

    • Expectations of significant public-sector funding and regulations will stimulate private GNSS investment. Such tools are widely exploited in America, Russia, and Asia;
    • Regional and national procurement plans would benefit from coordination at the EU level;
    • A close dialogue has been established between European institutions and GNSS downstream industry, represented by Galileo Services, in recent years. In this framework, crucial issues such as licensing rules, IPR policy, and international cooperation can be discussed. This initiative must be pursued and even reinforced.

    Galileo Services is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 as a major partner for the Galileo program and GNSS application development. Although Galileo is a key area of interest for Galileo Services, the association focuses on all types of PNT systems such as GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, EGNOS, WAAS, and so on. Having merged with OREGIN (the Organization of European GNSS Industry of equipment and services) in 2009, Galileo Services network represents more than 180 member organizations from Europe, North America, and Asia, ranging from SMEs to large companies. Gard Ueland is president of Galileo Services, and Axelle Pomies is its permanent representative.

  • Out in Front: Catch a Wave

    Expecting guidance from FCC regulators by year’s end? LightSquared purports to do so, but a more measured evaluation finds a December decision unlikely.

    The current test cycle — hopefully not the final one — just reached its end on November 4 at White Sands Missile Range, under the Air Force’s watchful eye. That testing focused only on “cellular and personal/general navigation” receivers as specified in a September letter from the National Telecommunication and Information Agency. According to unconfirmed reports, this round of testing did not include the JAVAD GNSS precision receiver with a new filter prototype, although LightSquared lobbied strongly to have the potentially bacon-rescuing device included.

    Even if allowed, that move would have been highly premature, and ultimately misguided and misguiding. The 33 other high-precision and network GPS receivers that underwent May testing would all have to be retested, with the new filter incorporated somehow in each one, before any meaningful conclusion about technical feasibility could be drawn. Then retrofit cost issues would have to be addressed. Months of work remain before any fair and complete evaluation can occur.

    A National PNT Engineering Forum summary of the cellular and personal/general navigation testing at White Sands is expected by November 30. A complete report may not appear until December. An FCC decision that same month, or the next, or the next, would be speedy and premature beyond any precedent that even the trigger-happy commission has yet set for itself.

    As a basis for a decision on the waiver, the cellular and personal nav testing is still insufficient. At least one, probably two more rounds of testing — at bare minimum — involving the recent proposed filter fixes and a complete range of high-precision receivers should take place before putting national security, infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of billions of dollars of public and private-sector investments at risk.

    This doesn’t mean everyone not directly involved in testing can chill.

    This is a political and very high-stakes financial struggle, not just a series of complex technical issues. Decisions when they are made will reflect political  considerations and financial motives as well as technical test results.

    Everyone who cares about the outcome should sit down today and write letters or e-mails to their three congresspeople — two senators and one representative — stating strongly and clearly their views and reasons. Even if you have written before. Congress is the only place currently that any form of leverage can be exerted.

    We are riding a wave of change, and precariously at that. While keeping our balance, we must continually gauge the water, the wind, our own stamina — and warily watch the great white sharks that are circling.