Tag: ADS-B

Iridium to acquire Aireon to lead aviation safety

Iridium Communications Inc., a provider of global voice, data and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) satellite services, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Aireon LLC.

Aireon is operator of the space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) air traffic surveillance system. The acquisition of Aireon is a defining step in Iridium’s strategy to provide the foundational architecture for global aviation safety, bringing space-based surveillance, safety communications, PNT and operational data together on a single network.

“Aireon has always been part of Iridium’s aviation safety strategy. We founded it in partnership with the world’s leading Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), because we believed space-based aviation safety was a generational opportunity,” said Matt Desch, CEO, Iridium. “The aviation industry is now entering an era of growing air traffic, denser airspace, autonomous aircraft, and greater expectations for safety and resiliency. Bringing Aireon fully inside Iridium better positions us to build what’s needed to support the future of aviation, including more innovations like the future introduction of space-based VHF communications.”

Platform for Aviation Safety
The acquisition unites Aireon’s surveillance and data services, including GPS jamming and spoofing detection, with Iridium’s global satcom network and PNT services that help keep GPS-dependent systems working in contested environments. This combination creates one company providing four critical aviation industry capabilities: knowing where every aircraft is, communicating with the pilots flying them, providing the navigation and timing integrity those aircraft rely on, and translating that information into operational insights that make airspace safer and more efficient. No other satellite operator delivers this combination of capabilities on a global scale.

The Aireon system, which is certified by theEuropean Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), flies as a payload on the Iridium satellite constellation and tracks an average of 190,000 flights per day. Commercial aircraft broadcast information such as an aircraft’s identity, location, altitude, speed, and heading. Aireon’s space-based ADS-B payload captures this information in real time, with 100% global coverage. ANSPs covering more than 50% of the global airspace rely on Aireon data to create safer and more efficient airspace.

The world’s leading ANSPs and investors in Aireon, including NAV CANADA and NATS (United Kingdom), AirNav Ireland, ENAV(Italy), and Naviair (Denmark), each played a vital role in launching the Aireon service, proving its reliability, and establishing it as a critical part of the global air traffic control infrastructure. NAV CANADA and NATS, which together manage the most heavily trafficked oceanic airspace in the world — the North Atlantic Tracks between Europe and North America, were the first to go live with the service. In connection with the acquisition, both ANSPs will sign extended data services agreements through 2035 and beyond, with provisions for continued cooperative development of space-based VHF communications and other new capabilities.

“Aireon and Iridium have been partners since day one, and that partnership is the reason we have been able to build the world’s only space-based air traffic surveillance system and a fast-growing aviation data services business alongside it,” said Don Thoma, CEO of Aireon. “Becoming part of Iridium is a natural next step for our team, our customers, and our roadmap, particularly as our data products expand into new areas like turbulence detection and aviation data analytics. Together, we are building the foundation for the future of global aviation.”

“NAV CANADA is proud of our foundational role in establishing Aireon’s world-first technology,” said Mark Cooper, President and CEO, NAV CANADA. “This sale sharpens our focus on our core expertise: keeping Canada’s skies safe. As a fellow founding partner, Iridium is the ideal owner to guide Aireon’s continued commercial growth. We wish the entire team continued success and look forward to our ongoing relationship as a customer.”

“We have been proud to be a part of Aireon’s successes, most notably making real-time aircraft surveillance over the Atlantic a reality for the first time in history, enabling even safer operations across the North Atlantic,” said Martin Rolfe, CEO, NATS. “As a shareholder for the past eight years, it is now the right time for us to divest. We are confident Aireon is well positioned for the future and wish the team every success in the next stage of its development.”

The Next Transition: Space-Based VHF
Space-based VHF communications represent a major opportunity in air traffic management, extending pilot-to-controller VHF services into oceanic and remote airspace where ground infrastructure cannot reach, without the need for additional aircraft equipment. The model is similar to how aircraft already carry ADS-B transceivers, which enables Aireon to deliver space-based ADS-B surveillance without requiring fleet retrofits.

Aireon’s Growing Data Services Business
Beyond surveillance for ANSPs, Aireon operates a fast-expanding aviation data services business that sells real-time and historical aviation data to airlines, airports, OEMs, governments, and aerospace operators. Product lines already available or launching this year include turbulence detection, GPS jamming and spoofing detection, and safety and efficiency analytics. Additional applications are also in development to support the rapidly evolving airspace environment.

Aireon’s data business is one of its highest-growth areas today and is expected to be a meaningful contributor to the combined company’s aviation growth.

Terms of the Transaction
Iridium is an existing owner of Aireon and will acquire the remaining 61% of equity interests of Aireon in the transaction for a purchase price of approximately $366.7 million from the other owners, NAV CANADA, AirNav Ireland, ENAV, NATS and Naviair. The purchase price will be paid 50% at closing and 50% on the one-year anniversary. Iridium will also assume Aireon’s outstanding debt, expected to be approximately $155 million at closing.

The acquisition of Aireon is accretive to Iridium’s growth outlook; over the past three years, Aireon’s total revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10%. Iridium expects the acquisition will result in at least an additional consolidated $100 million of service revenue and $30 million of OEBITDA on an annualized basis.

Iridium expects to pay the purchase price with current liquidity, including borrowings under its revolving credit facility, and future cash from operations. After closing the transaction, Iridium expects net leverage to increase to approximately 4.0 times OEBITDA during Q3 2026, with net leverage planned to return to the current levels over the subsequent twelve months. Iridium’s long-term net leverage guide of 2.0 times OEBITDA by the end of the decade remains unchanged and assumes no change in its paused share buyback program.

Aireon will continue business-as-usual operations in the near term, with no planned changes to business strategy. The transaction is targeted to close in early July.

Evercore served as financial advisor and Cooley and Milbank served as legal counsel to Iridium. PJT Partners served as financial advisor and Hogan Lovells served as legal counsel to Aireon.

May 18, 2026
Dimetor, SkAI partner on GNSS interference monitoring for digital airspace
Dimetor and SkAI Data Services are announcing a strategic partnership to increase global airspace security.

SkAI Data Services developed a real-time ADS-B GPS spoofing and jamming tracker — GPSwise. Dimetor is a global leader in connectivity and data analytics for the communications, defense and aerospace industry.

The companies aim to deliver a comprehensive, holistic solution for monitoring GNSS disruptions, covering both lower and upper airspace, for crewed and uncrewed flight operations and other users worldwide.

SkAI Data Services created GPSwise in partnership with the Zurich University of Applied Sciences – Centre for Aviation. The platform is already trusted by airlines, air navigation service providers, and authorities worldwide to provide ADS-B-based awareness of GPS threats.

Dimetor’s NAVSentry platform is an AI-powered solution for detecting GNSS disruptions in real time, combining different technology layers, and securing position, navigation and timing (PNT) data across autonomous and crewed systems, from multiple data sources, including:
- Cellular network data
- Satcom based detection mechanisms
- Other network-based sensors
- Dedicated ground-based receivers.
According to the company, this multi-layered approach delivers actionable, real-time intelligence to aerospace, critical communications, UTM/ATM, UAV operators, logistics, critical infrastructure sectors, law enforcement, spectrum authorities, defense and intelligence.

The companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to combine two fundamentally different yet highly complementary data streams, ADS-B-based information and data from terrestrial sensor networks such as 5G. The integration creates a unified view of GNSS health across the full airspace, both crewed and uncrewed, at all altitudes in real-time.
September 12, 2025
One GPS Mystery Solved, Another Remains

Ever since it came on-line in February 2022, the website GPSJam.org has shown what appears to be regular interference with GPS signals in Texas near San Antonio and Del Rio, and locations north and south of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Only on normal workdays, however. Not on weekends or holidays. Furthermore, whatever was happening also took time off between the Christmas and New Year holidays GPSJam.org also shows similar, though less regular, activity in New Mexico. Experts say this is easily explained as White Sands Missile Range is often the site of electronic warfare training and tests. These are always announced in advance in FAA Notices to Air Missions (NOTAMs) when any interference with GPS reception is anticipated.

The regular patterns observed in Texas and Oklahoma and the lack of NOTAMs led some experts to speculate the source could be inadvertent interference from a commercial or government activity. Said one former official, “It’s just the kind of pattern you see from large organizations. They are off every weekend, federal holidays, and around Christmas.”

Aerobatic-capable Military Training aircraft reporting low NIC values (Image: Stanford University)

GPSJam.org is the brainchild of aviation analyst John Wiseman. The site uses crowdsourced ADS-B reports gathered by the ADS-B Exchange and displays it on a world map. Areas in yellow indicate that between two and ten percent of ADS-B reports for the day had low navigation accuracy. Areas in red had ten percent or more.

Information from the site has proved useful in identifying patterns of regular GPS jamming and spoofing in Russia and other conflict areas around the globe.
The workday patterns in Texas and Oklahoma have appeared on GPSJam.org displays since the site went live in February 2022.

GPS Interference and Aviation

Minor interference with GPS signals is fairly common. GPS jamming devices, while illegal to use, are inexpensive and easy to obtain from vendors on the internet.

Truck drivers wanting to defeat their company’s fleet tracking system, people concerned about being tracked by the government or others, even ministers trying to keep parishioners from texting during sermons – all have been known to use such devices.

Most GPS interference is unintentional. A two-year European Union study found hundreds of thousands of potentially harmful signals, but judged only about ten percent to be intentional. The rest were the inadvertent byproduct of poorly tuned electrical and electronic equipment.

ADS-B tracks of training aircraft performing aerobatics. Red indicates low NIC value reported. (Image: Stanford University)

While most GPS interference is unintentional and localized, spurious signals powerful enough to noticeably impact airborne operations are not unknown.

In two separate incidents last year strong interference near the Denver and Dallas airports impacted air traffic, each for more than a day. The Denver incident lasted for 33 hours before authorities found the source and shut it down. Air traffic was disrupted at Dallas for 44 hours according to government sources, though researchers found the actual interference only lasted for 24 hours. The source of the disruption was never identified.

In 2019 a passenger aircraft was almost lost due to GPS interference while on approach to Sun Valley, Idaho’s Friedman Memorial Airport. As the aircraft flew a GPS-based approach in smoke and haze, the interfering signal was just strong enough to lure it off course and toward a mountain. Fortunately, a sharp-eyed radar controller hundreds of miles away spotted the problem and intervened in time. The source of the interference was never identified.

As a result of the Sun Valley incident and input from numerous aviation groups, the International Civil Aviation Organization told its members there was an “urgent need to address harmful interferences” to satnav signals.

Texas and Oklahoma Mystery Solved

A researcher at Stanford University finally solved the puzzle of the strange recurring sequence of reports from Texas and Oklahoma.

While investigating last October’s GPS interference event near the Dallas airport, PhD candidate Zixi Liu noticed aircraft outside the main area of effect also reporting low Navigation Integrity Category (NIC) values. This began before and continued after complaints from commercial airlines about GPS not being available at Dallas-Fort Worth. These aircraft were in the same general area of Texas, but far enough away that there were large areas between them and Dallas that did not contain any reports with low NIC values.

Low navigation accuracy reports displayed at GPSJam.org. in New Mexico reports were due to GPS interference from military testing. In Texas and Oklahoma, military aerobatics training likely caused reports of low navigation accuracy. (Image: GPSJam.org)

At the same time MS Liu was also investigating anomalous ADS-B reports near San Antonio and Del Rio, Texas. She discovered in all three cases the reports of low NIC values were coming from military training aircraft regularly used for aerobatics. Other aircraft nearby reported good NIC values and showed no evidence interference.

In a recent presentation to the Institute of Navigation, she postulated that Interference with GPS signals was not the cause of the low navigation integrity reports. Rather, the rapid maneuvers and unusual aircraft attitudes of aerobatics caused the airplanes’ navigation receivers to intermittently lose lock on signals from GPS satellites. This caused their ADS-B equipment to report low navigation integrity.

Having solved that mystery, Ms. Liu continues to work on her original question – identifying the source of October’s 24-hour GPS disruption near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Mr. Dana A. Goward is the President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation and a former US Coast Guard helicopter pilot.

February 7, 2023
Celestia Technologies Group joins European move for long-range drones

The ADACORSA Project vision. (Credit: ADACORSA)

Celestia Technologies Group (CTG) is taking part in the ADACORSA project, a European initiative designed to unlock the potential of long-range and beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drones and give Europe a world-class drone industry.

ADACORSA — Airborne Data Collection on Resilient System Architecture — is a major collaborative project launched in May 2020 that aims to demonstrate the safety and efficiency of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in extended out-of-line-of-sight operation ranges.

Specifically, it draws on European expertise in developing sensor and communication technologies for UAVs to underpin their role and reliable capability in long-range applications, including observation, analysis and transport, taking them one step further toward being integrated into conventional airspace.

ADASCORA also seeks to increase public and regulatory acceptance of modern UAV or drone technology. More than 49 specialist companies from 12 European countries are expected to contribute know-how and practical support. The project also aims to research and develop innovative components and systems for airborne observation and detection, telecommunication and data processing along the electronics value-chain.

Task Forces Established

To meet ADACORSA’s ambitious targets, task forces have been set up, one of which will be led by CTG. The company will lead the development of electronic components for reliable and fail-operational environment perception and run one project demonstrator designed to integrate unmanned aircraft systems safely into the common European airspace and ensure that they operate correctly in a multi-unmanned aircraft system environment.

CTG is a Dutch supplier and part of a pan-European company group providing innovative technology products, systems and services to space, aerospace, defense, telecommunications and scientific markets.

Galileo + EGNOS Transponder

CTG will use its expertise in on-board UAV electronics to develop a lightweight, high-performance transponder capable of sending and receiving accurate identification and location data for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Positioning will be based on Galileo, supplemented by its European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), allowing all airspace users to know the location of the vehicle and contribute to safety while supporting other on-board systems such as detect-and-avoid equipment.

The transponder will be based on conventional aviation technologies such as Mode S Interrogator and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) and will integrate new concepts including network identification, meaning the vehicle can fly safely in various scenarios. These include in locations close to airports, in drone fleet operations and within the U-Space environment. U-space is a set of European services and procedures designed to support safe, efficient and secure access to airspace for drones.

ADACORSA has received funding from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 876019. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program and Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Romania, France, Sweden, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, Italy, Finland and Turkey.

September 29, 2021
uAvionix receives patent for drones to use ADS-B safety benefits

Image: uAvionix

uAvionix has been granted a patent that aids safe and secure integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS).

U.S. Patent 10,991,260, “Intelligent Non-Disruptive ADS-B Integration for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS),” provides the ability for UAS to take advantage of the safety benefits of Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasts (ADS-B) while minimizing spectrum use.

uAvionix first revealed this concept in a 2018 white paper titled “ADS-B Inert and Alert – A Solution to the ADS-B Spectrum Concerns.” The Inert and Alert Concept preserves spectrum by allowing the onboard UAS ADS-B solution to remain inert in a non-broadcasting listening mode until a safety-critical event such as a C2 lost-link or other aircraft proximity triggers it to begin broadcasting its ADS-B position as an alert. Once the conditions are safe again, the system reverts to its inert state.

“uAvionix is a firm believer in the benefits of a cooperative airspace for UAS integration,” said Christian Ramsey, president of uAvionix. “Recognizing the concerns by regulators of over-use of the spectrum, Inert and Alert is a means to leverage ADS-B for collision avoidance while significantly reducing those concerns.”

April 27, 2021
LDACS-NAV could guide global aviation

GNSS is a critical single point of failure for navigation in the aviation industry. A new white paper published by Egis says it’s time for the industry to get rid of legacy navigation aids (NavAids) and catch up technologically with the rest of the communications industry.

The following is summarized from “Is This the Time and Place to Finally Back up GNSS?” published by Egis.

Current navigation backups are ground-based navigation aids such as distance measuring equipment (DME). These use post-World War II technologies, with very low spectrum efficiency. Some might find it surprising to learn that they are still using Morse code.

While difficult to jam due to their strong signal, current navigation aids are not cyber secure. Due to their spatial distribution, they can be limited in their support to PBN (performance-based navigation) or any new concept of operations.

The horizontal positioning error was measured under 10 m, so the LDACS-NAV would easily meet RNP 0.3 requirements.

Legacy NavAids — NDB (non-directional beacon), ILS (instrument landing system), VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) and DME — all require a specific frequency band, various equipment, and airborne and ground antennas.

As a result, the average commercial airliner can carry around seven specialized navigation antennas, and as many as 20 when accounting for all the other communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) functions. Having different radio systems is adding redundancy but makes the aircraft and the ground equipment very costly, as well as difficult to engineer and to maintain.

Two major problems could affect the aircraft industry. First, software-defined radio, and powerful low-cost radio systems are available to the public and any ill-intended person could interfere, deactivate or worse, divert these vulnerable systems from their purposes. Second, spectrum is a finite and fixed asset (aviation uses 14% of the total available spectrum).

Why hasn’t this problem been solved already?

There are no market incentives for air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and airlines to make expensive investments in ground infrastructures and aircraft retrofits. With an average lifetime of 25 years per plane, commercial fleets take a long time to be renewed.

Also, the aviation spectrum is protected, which has led to complacency and a lack of pressure to use the latest technologies to improve spectrum efficiency.

Stakeholder Coordination. States, ANSPs, airlines, airports, aircraft manufacturers, communications providers and system providers all have their own interests and perspectives, which increases the difficulty in developing and maintaining a global CNS roadmap.

Deployment. Once a roadmap is agreed on, the deployment challenge remains. For instance, the retrofit compliance date for ADS-B was pushed back from June 2020 to to June 2023 due to the pandemic. The capacity of aviation to evolve depends on when the operational and commercial benefits are clear, such as when GNSS was implemented for navigation.

The Human Factor. Human factors have to be considered for any critical change in aviation. Pilots are trained on navigation aids and GPS, and used to communicating by VHF voice with air traffic control officers. This is the reason why the evolution of navigation and communication systems must be seamless with current systems or require an in-depth human-factor risk assessment.

Potential Solutions

To future-proof aviation and performance-based operating procedures, aircraft need both a broadband, IP-based datalink capable of VoIP and a secure, cost-effective alternative positioning, navigation and timing (A-PNT) system as a back-up to GNSS. Today, GNSS backup is the 70-year-old DME — using the signals from multiple DMEs, aircraft can locate themselves with reasonable accuracy.

The main choices to replace the DME are either an enhancement of DME systems (Multi-DME RAIM, eDME, Mosaic DME) or an A-PNT solution (LDACS-NAV, WAM-TISb, SSR mode N, eLoran).

If we look at the most mature solutions, the DME/eDME and the LDACS-NAV are the main options, and they represent a real dilemma.

DME/DME. This solution represents the best GNSS backup currently available. One possibility is to improve the signal to improve accuracy. Other improvements would allow the detection of more than two ground stations, or even receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) capability. Only small improvements need to be made to the signal and to the FMS (Flight Management System), making it the option requiring the least effort and expense.

However, to reach a reliable Required Navigation Performance (RNP) standard of RNP 0.3, additional distance measurements are required, especially at low altitudes, and more DME facilities might be needed. Plus, this solution does not provide a secure, integrated communication and navigation solution and does not improve spectrum efficiency.

Photo: AlexeyPetrov/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

LDACS-NAV. The L-band digital aeronautical communication system (LDACS) for continental ground communication is an IP-based data-link solution with a built-in navigation capability. It uses orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, organized as a cellular network and sharing features with 3G and 4G. It works by detecting signals of opportunity within the communication exchange, and then multi-laterating the signals from at least four ground transmitters to calculate an airborne position. The frequency is ingeniously placed in the L-band between each DME frequency. It is built with interference mitigation algorithms and minimizes out-of-band radiation to protect DME.

This solution is spectrum efficient, cybersecure, doesn’t require additional frequency assignment, and is scalable and adaptable to local needs. Given LDACS is almost certain to be implemented in communications to replace VDLM2, using this capability would be an easy choice for navigation.

Features like air-to-air ranging, surveillance or enhancements to DFMC GBAS are possible. Also, additional navigation information can be transmitted, such as trajectory-based operations and 4D trajectories.

Both Frequentis AG and Leonardo SpA have built fully functional and interoperable prototypes. In March 2019, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) tested LDACS. The flight campaign showed its capabilities in practical scenarios with industrial demonstration equipment. The horizontal positioning error was measured under 10 m, so the LDACS-NAV would easily meet RNP 0.3 requirements.

ICAO Recognition. An International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standardization group has started work on LDACS for both communication and navigation. The LDACS-NAV will first be used to augment the DME system.

More Study Needed

To fully validate the LDACS-NAV concept, further studies and large-scale demonstrations must be conducted, and a cell-planning study needs to determine the number of necessary ground stations.

Also, a detailed cost/benefit analysis must be undertaken to evaluate the cost of an EU-wide LDACS-NAV network. It would take into account the manufacturing and deployment costs of ground stations as well as equipment costs of multi-mode LDACS/VDL avionics, identifying whether it can support navigation functions.

Also studied should be the benefits of having a GNSS back-up system, equipage costs of a dedicated avionic system and the direct operational benefits of providing a reliable, low latency and cost-efficient communication and navigation network for all aviation stakeholders, including secured proprietary information for airlines and aircraft manufacturers, and including full 4D trajectory-based operations and flight-centric air traffic management for ANSPs.

If both the cell-planning study and the cost/benefit analysis suggest a positive economic advantage to implement the LDACS system compared to the current system or the other potential A-PNT solutions, then European institutions could select LDACS as the official long-term A-PNT solution in the CNS Roadmap & Strategy and enable the SESAR Operational Concept high-level goals. This would help accelerate the standardization and industrialization activities to resolve the current lack of redundancy in our CNS systems.

January 4, 2021
Precise time for all: Paper calls for resilient national timing

Image: RNT Foundation

A new white paper sponsored by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation (RNT Foundation) discusses the need and implementation of a reliable and resilient national timing architecture that will include space-based assets. This system-of-systems architecture — GNSS, terrestrial eLoran broadcasts and fiber — is essential to underpin today’s technology and support development of tomorrow’s systems, according to the executive summary of A Resilient National Timing Architecture.

“Everyone in the developed world needs precise time, all the time, whether they know it or not,” said Marc Weiss, one of the paper’s authors and an internationally recognized expert on timing and synchronization. “It is a foundation of every networked technology, digital broadcast, and most navigation systems, to name just a few critical uses.”

Three Paths to Precise Time

“Precise time is so important that everyone needs at least three independent methods of getting it. So, if one, or even two, fail it is not a national disaster,” said Pat Diamond, co-author of the paper. “Our proposed architecture calls for precise time via GNSS, terrestrial eLoran broadcasts and fiber.” Diamond is a long-time network designer, developer, and entrepreneur. He is also a member of the U.S. National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board.

Diamond also pointed out that these three methods should be the backbone for timing distribution in the U.S., but won’t be the only methods. “What we are describing is a baseline architecture that will be added to,” he said. “It is a starting point. We envision in the paper additional distribution methods like time from other satellites, user clocks, and so on, all being part of the mix.”

Government Leadership

The U.S. federal government has a leadership interest and responsibility in all of this, according to the paper. Nations have long recognized the military and commercial advantages of determining and distributing precise time. Great Britain’s Longitude Act of 1714 was really about developing a chronometer to support safe navigation of Royal Navy and British merchant fleet. In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory has been keeping and distributing a national time scale time since 1845.

“Just because the feds have an important leadership role, doesn’t mean they have to build and own a bunch of systems,” said Dana A. Goward, the paper’s third co-author and executive director of the RNT Foundation. “There are a variety of ways these systems can be established. Public-private-partnerships, subscription contracts like the FAA did with their air traffic ADS-B system, and cooperative agreements are all examples. As we move forward with 5G telecommunications and perhaps even timing and navigation, it will be increasingly important to have a rock solid timing infrastructure to support it all.”

The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a terrestrial system to backup GPS timing services by December of this year. While the department does not appear to be on track to meet that goal, it completed a technology demonstration program for GPS backup technologies earlier this year. Two companies demonstrated timing distribution by fiber. Another two demonstrated eLoran.

Many Pieces Already in Place

One of the benefits of the proposed architecture is that much of what is called for is already in place, according to the paper. “We already have fiber networks, NAPs (network access points). eLoran is mature and has been deployed by the Brits. And the U.S. government owns enough former Loran-C sites to establish a nationwide eLoran network,” Diamond said. “All we need is a bit of money and some engineering work to put this all together.”

October 19, 2020
uAvionix pingRX Pro helps drones detect and avoid aircraft

uAvionix has announced pingRX Pro, a detect-and-avoid ADS-B receiver for professional unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). PingRX Pro is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year.

pingRX Pro detects private and commercial aircraft operating on 978 MHz and 1090 MHz. The received aircraft’s identity, position and altitude are visualized on a moving map in real time, allowing the UAS operator or autopilot to remain well clear.

The new pingRX Pro continues uAvionix’s lineage of easy to integrate receivers with direct support for popular Ardupilot-based autopilot systems. By adding the protection of an aircraft-grade aluminum case and detachable remote mount antenna, pingRX Pro provides an ADS-B receiver for professional UAS operators who need performance, quality and flexibility for limitless UAS applications.

“UAvionix has led the way in ADS-B solutions for unmanned aircraft since our founding.” said Christian Ramsey, president of uAvionix. “Industry leaders and BVLOS operators continually choose ADS-B receivers as their primary detect-and-avoid solution. pingRX Pro now offers manufacturers and integrators the installation flexibility they need for their enterprise aircraft. ”

Weighing less than 8 grams, pingRX Pro features uAvionix ping ADS-B, proven in over a half-million ADS-B solutions worldwide, from UAS to airport vehicles to certified general aviation solutions.

PingRX Pro offers an external antenna, allowing operators to install it anywhere on the airframe. UAS are often designed from materials that can block radio frequencies and impair radio performance. By providing an external remote mounted antenna, performance can be maximized while providing critical protection of the receiver mounted inside the fuselage.

ADS-B Out

Diagram: uAvionix

ADS-B uses precision GPS information to broadcast the position of an aircraft in real time. The technology allows aircraft to share the skies more efficiently by telling each other where they are.

With ADS-B already widely adopted by manned aircraft, the task of detect and avoid is eased because the manned aircraft are broadcasting their position directly to the drone operator with no intermediary. While many aircraft not yet equipped with ADS-B OUT, nearly all large commercial operators are equipped.

The United States requires ADS-B OUT on all manned aircraft with an engine-driven electrical system operating near medium and large cities from the surface to 4,000 feet above ground.

Given the likelihood of ADS-B OUT on manned aircraft, and the density in these prime areas for inspection and package delivery, pingRX Pro ADS-B IN enables drone operators to meet their requirement to remain well clear of surrounding aircraft.

PingRX Pro tracks 100 simultaneous aircraft at ranges exceeding 150 miles, all at nearly 200% less power consumption of the alternatives.

Feature image: uAvionix

August 13, 2020
Blue Bear successfully demonstrates BVLOS drone swarm

Launch of the RedKite drone. RedKite is a long-endurance sub-20-kg UAS designed to carry payloads of up to 5 kg. (Photo: Blue Bear Systems)

Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd. has successfully demonstrated a fully autonomous suite of multiple drone swarm assets under beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) conditions.

The technology enables complex drone operations where multiple assets are able to carry out simultaneous tasks controlled by a single user to create a swarm effect.

The five fixed-wing drones clocked up to 15 hours of flying time, over four days, in challenging weather conditions. The swarm comprised a combination of Blue Bear’s Redkite and Cobra fixed-wing systems, which flew multiple simultaneous sorties from a test range in the northwest of England.

The drones were equipped with the latest automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology, and the airspace was managed by Blue Bear’s airspace deconfliction software. All of the assets were controlled by a single operator from Blue Bear’s mission command control system in Bedfordshire, England.

“This is an exciting development for us, proving our ability to operate multiple drones, simultaneously, using the latest Blue Bear technology to deliver a swarm effect under BVLOS conditions,” said Ian Williams-Wynn, managing director of Blue Bear Systems.

April 27, 2020
ADS-B to improve air traffic in Europe

Aircraft throughout Europe are guided by EUROCONTROL, which will have access to ADS-B data through Aireon. Here, a plane lands at Schiphol Airport in The Netherlands. (Photo: Sjo/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images Plus)

Aireon and EUROCONTROL have signed a 10-year agreement to integrate space-based ADS-B data into their air traffic management processes across EUROCONTROL’S 41 Member States and two Comprehensive Agreement (CA) States.

The space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data will enhance aircraft management capabilities, contributing to improve predictability, capacity, environmental impact supporting sustainable growth throughout the European region.

It will also support other applications, such as crisis management, contingency management, environmental monitoring, performance monitoring and expanded datasets for post-analysis, traffic statistics and safety-related assessments.

Spanning 43 countries from Turkey to Ireland, Finland to Portugal, EUROCONTROL’s aircraft management states encompass over 11.5 million square kilometers of terrestrial airspace, as well as part of the airspace over the North Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic.

Aireon data will be integrated into the EUROCONTROL’s enhanced tactical flow management system (ETFMS), which provides data to European aviation stakeholders, regardless of operational borders, in real time.

Space-based ADS-B data will enrich ETFMS’s complex traffic demand and slot allocation calculations, which currently rely on ground-based surveillance data and flight plan processing systems. As a result, Aireon’s data will support Europe’s primary flow management system to be more accurate in its trajectory predictions and unlock an otherwise unavailable operational capacity.

“With Aireon’s high-integrity, high-quality data, the EUROCONTROL network manager will have the ability to work with information from beyond the European airspace,” said Eamonn Brennan, director general, EUROCONTROL. “Full integration of Aireon space-based ADS-B data will allow us to be more accurate in our trajectory predictions and ensure higher levels of safety, predictability and efficiency in our flow management operations. This partnership is the latest development in our effort to ensure European airspace is one of the most dynamic and efficient in the world.”

EUROCONTROL. Having been nominated as the Network Manager by the European Commission until the end of 2029, EUROCONTROL is driving a coordinated and technologically advanced approach to the challenges faced by the European air traffic network.

Helping address the improvements that are needed in operations, cybersecurity, service provision, crisis management, airspace design, utilization and more, EUROCONTROL provides support and expertise to air navigation service providers (ANSPs), airlines, airports and military partners in the region to help make European aviation, safe, synchronized, efficient and environmentally friendly.

Aerion. In 2019, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certified Aireon as the first provider of aircraft surveillance-as-a-service. Additionally, Aireon has the only global, single-source dataset available to the industry.

For EUROCONTROL, this means that once the service is integrated into its systems, it will have unprecedented visibility into the full picture of aircraft arriving, departing and crossing over Europe over an area of six flight hours and 3,000 nautical miles around EUROCONTROL Member States.

“EUROCONTROL is a leader in air traffic flow management. They are the first customer to use Aireon data well beyond their own area of responsibility. This will enable them to maximize the effectiveness of their processes and procedures by including long-range arrivals and neighboring States into their capacity and demand measures,” said Don Thoma, CEO, Aireon. “EUROCONTROL recognizes the global value in connecting ANSPs through a common, high-fidelity, global data source that provides situational awareness of actual aircraft position information. We look forward to the benefits all EUROCONTROL customers will see in the near, medium and long-term.”

Aireon’s data will also be integrated in EUROCONTROL’s new system called iNM, which will implement incremental updates to all of EUROCONTROL’s operational systems and digital infrastructure in the course of this decade.

February 28, 2020
PNT Executive Order helpful, but delays market solutions

Dana Goward, President, Resilient PNT Foundation

On Feb. 12, the White House released an “Executive Order on Strengthening National Resilience through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services.”

It is gratifying to see White House attention to this issue. The increase in public awareness it brings will benefit individual users and the nation as a whole.

The order also hints at market driven solutions that could quickly improve America’s PNT resilience.

Needless delays

Unfortunately, the order fails to direct immediate action on this critical national and economic security issue. Instead it needlessly pushes most action and responsibility off for a year or more to do “more study.”

This is hard to understand as most of the “more study” has already been completed. For example, the order tells the Department of Commerce to take up to a year to examine PNT use in various sectors, and identify vulnerabilities and user needs. The Department of Homeland Security has already completed a National Risk Assessment and, according to congressional staff, has recently completed a report on user requirements mandated in 2017’s National Defense Authorization Act.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is given a year to develop a plan to test robust and resilient non-GNSS PNT services (but is not required to actually do any testing). Congress mandated such a test program in 2017 and funded it with $10 million in 2018. After much delay, the Department of Transportation will complete the testing in May of this year.

The order gives the Department of Commerce six months to make available a time source to support critical infrastructure. For more than 60 years, the nation’s master clock has been available to users at the department’s NIST Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Note the challenge has not been the clock, but that the nation has no way — other than vulnerable GPS signals — to distribute time at the needed level of accuracy to millions of critical infrastructure nodes. Government studies in 2007 and 2014 determined that the best way to do this was with a ground-based system. The Department of Transportation’s ongoing testing program is examining this issue again.

Market-driven solutions

Aside from increasing public awareness, the best thing the Executive Order does is to point a way forward for market-driven resilient PNT solutions.

The order calls for federal contracts to (in 21 months, if everyone does their jobs on time) require that vendors use existing and new resilient PNT sources.

If this eventually happens, the government could leverage its enormous influence in the market and stimulate creation of one or more commercial distribution systems for resilient, non-GNSS PNT. This is a great concept, and very much in keeping with America’s tradition of letting market forces solve some of its biggest problems.

But this solution will not spring into life on its own.

No commercial entity will invest tens of millions of dollars, or more, in a PNT system without assurance in advance of an income stream. Especially since federal contracting officers can and will waive the requirement if offerors cannot reasonably meet it.

If stimulating a market solution is the administration’s intent, it must stay actively involved and encourage the process for some time to come.

This includes complying with the 2018 law that requires establishment of at least one wireless, terrestrial, difficult-to-disrupt source to back up the timing signals provided by GPS.

Fortunately, this can be done by leveraging the free market at minimal cost and with little administrative effort.

By contracting to subscribe to a commercial service that will provide resilient PNT signals, the government need only invest a relatively small yearly sum using a fairly simple contract vehicle. Such a contracting technique has been used before with great success.

In 2007 the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did this as a way to establish its ADS-B aviation tracking and safety network. Once the subscription contract was let, the commercial provider was able to get financing and quickly build out the system.

Today, the FAA gets the information it needs, doesn’t have the headache of owning and maintaining a large network, and even shares in the revenue the system owner earns from selling data to other companies.

Additional leadership needed

It is important to remember that, regardless of the issue, presidential pronouncements are not enough.

In 2004, President G.W. Bush directed a number of actions to protect the nation’s critical PNT, including establishment of a GPS backup capability. While 16 years later his directive is still official executive branch policy, that mandate and many others from his order are still unexecuted.

Real improvements to PNT resilience and our nation’s security depend not on one-time pronouncements, but continued leadership focus and engagement.

This is always a challenge for initiatives driven by the White House. It will be doubly so in this case as there is no clear department leader for civil PNT issues the administration can rely on while it attends to the next issue of the day.

February 20, 2020
Some airlines miss ADS-B Jan. 1 deadline

Photo: icholakov/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus

BahamasAir has missed the U.S. deadline for the new ADS-B mandate and is now forbidden from flying certain three of its four jets in United States airspace. The airline said it has adjusted its aircraft deployment accordingly, reports Forbes.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration mandated in 2010 that aircraft be equipped with hardware to use NextGen, a satellite-based air traffic control management system, to replace traditional ground radar technology. This step of the transition requires aircraft to have Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Out (ADS-B) capability either at time of manufacture or retrofitted with a kit.

BahamasAir was unable to equip three of its Boeing 737-500s with ADS-B before the Jan. 1 deadline, so those aircraft have been taken off the routes it flies to Florida. It has one 737-700 and five ATR regional airliners that have ADS-B, and is using those aircraft for Florida. It also leased some planes to meet holiday season demands.

The airline says it’s maintaining its full schedule with no changes and the old 737s should be fixed in the next few months. Meanwhile, the agency has granted an exemption to the government of Canada for two of its old airframes.

Canadian Changes

The Royal Canadian Air Force operates four Challenger 601 business jets to take government and military officials on shorter flights in the U.S. and Canada. Two of those jets are too old to receive the ADS-B upgrade, so the FAA has said it will be allowed into U.S. airspace but may not get the most convenient routing from air traffic control, according to AVWeb. The FAA does have a process to waive the ADS-B requirement, but it has warned that the exemptions will be issued only under exceptional circumstances.

On Jan. 2, an Air Canada flight leaving Saint John was forced to avoid United States airspace on Thursday and take a longer path to Toronto, avoiding flying over Maine because of the mandate, reports the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. The change in flight pattern added roughly 20 minutes to the trip. Air Canada won’t speculate if the longer flight path and extended travel time will happen again.

January 6, 2020