GPS World

Tag: Alan Cameron

  • Sharing new thoughts on three GPS segments

    Sharing new thoughts on three GPS segments

    Possibly during the course of last month’s editorial here, “‘Nearly Perfect’ Not Nearly,” in which I called out the U.S. Air Force for lauding itself a bit much, I veered across the line separating vehemence from over-vehemence. Just possibly. Over-vehemence is a professional hazard of journalism. A gentle reader wrote in to suggest as much. He began, in his polite way, with “As always, I enjoyed your article and it made me think.” Then he offered a few of his thoughts for me in turn to consider.

    First, he urged me to weigh all three GPS segments. The space and control segments operate almost flawlessly, he averred. Except, I can’t refrain from riposting, for the times that they don’t.

    The user segment, we can all agree, is a different story. Most current GPS user equipment can be jammed and spoofed, sometimes very easily, and some have difficulty handling leap seconds and GPS week rollovers.

    The U.S. Air Force and the GPS program office cannot fix the problem with user equipment. This is up to those who manufacture, purchase, install and maintain the user equipment.

    Fair enough.

    Let’s not even get into mapping and guidance algorithms and obsolete data that generate multitudinous stories in mass media about drivers led astray and into danger “by GPS.” Those are the fault, not of the user equipment per se, but of software conjoined to a receiver in a navigation device or smartphone.

    My column in June’s GNSS Design & Test enewsletter covered the same ground and then tackled the potential costs of GPS disruption, citing a study done by Innovate U.K., the U.K. Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation. This included a pie chart of potential economic losses in the U.K. that would stem from a prolonged GNSS disruption. I really should have correleated these with, or at least mentioned in the same breath, the reports done for the National Space Based-PNT Advisory Board by Irv Leveson, because there were several mismatches. In particular, the PNT Advisory Board study concluded that more than 50 percent of the value of GPS to the U.S. economy lies in high-precision uses — substantially higher than estimated in the U.K.

    Regardless of statistics, we should think, my correspondent reminded me, about the performance needs of different uses. It’s not just whether you have PNT or you don’t. The degree to which you have it is the key: accuracy, coverage, 3D versus 2D positioning and other factors determine if a technology can perform to meet a given need. Aviation requires 3D positioning for some operations. Surveying and machine control require submeter accuracy. Road use requires meter accuracy now, and submeter in the future for autonomous driving. Almost 50 percent of the U.K. pie chart, and more than 50 percent of GPS value to the U.S., requires meter or better accuracy. Except for other satnav systems, what known technology can provide this kind of performance over an area the size of a nation, whether U.K. or U.S.?

  • GPS accuracy not ‘nearly perfect’

    When someone utters the words “I’m nearly perfect,” get on your toes. Such self-appraisal usually masks something. It could be insecurity, denial, ignorance or simply fear. At the very least, some level of illusion, if not delusion, is involved.

    With that precept in mind, let’s examine a June 16 press release from the U.S. Air Force, under the headline “New reports confirm near-perfect performance record for civil GPS service.”

    The press release actually says, “The U.S. Air Force released two technical reports demonstrating that the Global Positioning System (GPS) continues to deliver exceptional performance to civilian users around the world….The 2014 and 2015 performance reports confirm that the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) satisfied nearly all measurable performance commitments documented in the GPS SPS Performance Standard.”

    Fair enough. Those are demonstrable facts. Nowhere does the release — other than in its headline — employ the words “perfect” or “near-perfect.”

    The problem is, as current events repeatedly show, people remember only the headline. That may be all that they read or register in the first place.

    Affixing the label “near-perfect” to GPS is “potentially dangerous,” points out Dana Goward of the Resilient PNT Foundation, “because it could exacerbate the public’s growing over-reliance on, and often blind faith in, GPS. Even if GPS did always perform perfectly, all kinds of things can happen to signals after they leave the satellites and before they get to receivers. Personal privacy devices, other jammers, spoofers, solar activity, other electromagnetic interference, even the local geography can significantly degrade or disable a receiver’s performance. That’s why in the GPS System Performance Standard the Air Force specifically says its responsibility ends once signals are in space.”

    Perfection might exist in space, but it doesn’t down here.

    Even in space, accidents sure will happen. The Air Force release documents GPS performance for 2014 and 2015. This conveniently draws up short of January 2016, when several GPS satellites broadcast a timing error that triggered equipment faults and failures globally for nearly 12 hours. Thus demonstrating something far from perfection.

    Issuing a statement in the manner done on June 16 perpetuates a dangerous myth, keeps users in the dark about the actual state of affairs, cultivates a What-Me-Worry? approach to positioning, navigation and timing, and abets the lack of political will and understanding of GNSS vulnerabilities.

    We have expanded the focus of this magazine to cover other technologies relevant and applicable to the field precisely because GPS, and by extension GNSS, great though they may be, are not perfect. Not even nearly.

  • Double trouble: GNSS over-reliance and its costs

    Double trouble: GNSS over-reliance and its costs

    This month’s column deals with two troublesome topics: the U.S. government’s over-reliance on GPS, and the potential costs of GPS disruption toward which such a policy may be leading us.

    First things first.

    When someone utters the words “I’m nearly perfect,” get on your toes. Such self-appraisal usually masks something. It could be insecurity, denial, ignorance or simply fear. At the very least, some level of illusion, if not delusion, is involved.

    With that precept in mind, let’s examine a June 16 press release from the U.S. Air Force, under the headline “New reports confirm near-perfect performance record for civil GPS service.”

    The press release actually says, “The U.S. Air Force released two technical reports demonstrating that the Global Positioning System (GPS) continues to deliver exceptional performance to civilian users around the world….The 2014 and 2015 performance reports confirm that the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) satisfied nearly all measurable performance commitments documented in the GPS SPS Performance Standard.”

    Fair enough. Those are demonstrable facts. Nowhere does the release — other than in its headline — employ the words “perfect” or “near-perfect.”

    The problem is, as current events repeatedly show, people remember only the headline. That may be all that they read or register in the first place.

    Affixing the label “near-perfect” to GPS is “potentially dangerous,” points out Dana Goward of the Resilient PNT Foundation, “because it could exacerbate the public’s growing over-reliance on, and often blind faith in, GPS.  Even if GPS did always perform perfectly, all kinds of things can happen to signals after they leave the satellites and before they get to receivers. Personal privacy devices, other jammers, spoofers, solar activity, other electromagnetic interference, even the local geography can significantly degrade or disable a receiver’s performance. That’s why in the GPS System Performance Standard the Air Force specifically says its responsibility ends once signals are in space.”

    Perfection might exist in space, but it doesn’t down here.

    Even in space, accidents sure will happen. The Air Force release documents GPS performance for 2014 and 2015. This conveniently draws up short of January 2016, when several GPS satellites broadcast a timing error that triggered equipment faults and failures globally for nearly 12 hours. Thus demonstrating something far from perfection.

    Issuing a statement in the manner done on June 16 perpetuates a dangerous myth, keeps users in the dark about the actual state of affairs, cultivates a What-Me-Worry? approach to positioning, navigation and timing, and abets the lack of political will and understanding of GNSS vulnerabilities.

    We have expanded the focus of this magazine to cover other technologies relevant and applicable to the field precisely because GPS, and by extension GNSS, great though they may be, are not perfect. Not even nearly.

    At What Cost Ignorance?

    A report recently compiled and released in the UK attempts to quantify the cost of a GNSS disruption, should one occur.  The figure the authors came up with? 1 billion pounds sterling per day.  That’s approximately $1,273,710,000.

    Per day.

    The report, available in either 11-page or 133-page versions, and titled The economic impact to the UK of a disruption to GNSS, looks at what would happen to the UK economy if GNSS were unavailable for five days. Five days is, indeed, a long time. One hopes that a fix could be obtained in less than that amount of time. But one never knows, does one?

    “The economic impact to the UK of a five-day disruption to GNSS has been estimated at £5.2bn.” Thus the per diem figure above.

    The report was commissioned by Innovate UK, the UK Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation. It followed from the January 2016 accident referenced earlier, in which an error in the GPS signal from certain satellites, triggered by the decommissioning of one of those satellites, brought a number of key industrial servers to their knees. The episode lasted 12 hours.

    This report hypothesizes a more fleshed-out disaster and estimates the likely impact of a disruption to GNSS availability for up to five days across ten application domains in the UK: Road, Rail, Aviation, Maritime, Food, Emergency and Justice Services, Surveying, Location-Based Services (LBS), Other Infrastructure, and Other Applications.

    The report is worth reading, not only for its figures, methodology, and discussion of mitigation, but also for two salient pages: “A day in the UK with GNSS” and “A day in the UK without GNSS.” At home, on the move, with others, at work, at the shops, when things go wrong, back at home. A post-modern (or post-Beatles) “Day in the Life.”

    Even if the hypothetical disruption were not to last 5 days, but a much shorter period, perusing the two chronologies of with and without can serve to remind us how many of our daily activities are keyed to and thus dependent on GPS/GNSS.

    Having no viable, working back-up — not even on the visible horizon — to such an essential system makes sense how?

  • Is it time for backup?

    alan_bio_pic
    Alan Cameron, Editor-in-Chief

    “It’s always been time.” That was the first answer out of the gate, given in Session 3 of the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit last month. Dominic Hayes, Spectrum Management and Policy for Galileo, EGNOS and Copernicus at the European Commission, was prompt off the mark. “GNSS is so good, so easy and so cheap, other means are falling out of use.” Therein lies the peril.

    That emotion was seconded by every other speaker on the panel. But of course. Virtually no one in the GNSS community at large, let alone those attending the Munich Summit, thinks otherwise.

    Thinking and action do not go hand-in-hand, however. GNSS back-up resembles the weather, in that everybody talks about it, yet … yet … nothing changes. As long ago as 2015, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Deputy Secretary of Defense made noises about building an alternative system to GPS in case of disruption, and certainly there were hand gestures aplenty prior to that.

    backup-coverDo we have a back-up, presently?

    No. The U.S. government is in such a hurry to protect its borders that it gives scant thought to protecting what’s inside: critical infrastructure.

    Is it time?

    It’s always been time.

    Things are more like they are now than they ever have been, what with the cloud and all. We’re storing so much data in the cloud, with more and more of the world’s operations every day keyed to and driven by distributed database processing, in huge data servers around the world. This is according to John Fischer of Spectracom, who is in a position to know. Precise timing at the micro- and nanosecond level plays a huge role in connecting and synchronizing users. But again, he was preaching to the choir.

    Guy Buesnel from Spirent Federal reiterated the new threat sprung from Pokémon Go: a community of gamers and enthusiastic coders, generating homespun spoofing mechanisms for fun. They will soon realize, if they haven’t already, that there’s profit to be made there as well.

    “We have become too reliant on GNSS today,” stated Buesnel. Most interference warnings are low level, but 3 to 4 percent are serious enough to disrupt receiver operations. And that still means you have to take action in response. He stressed the importance of a balanced systems engineering approach, and invoked Brad Parkinson’s PTA mantra: protect, toughen and augment.

    Hayes called for a European Radio Navigation Plan, similar to the U.S. Federal Radio Navigation Plan (FRNP). Later, in response to a follow-up question, he acknowledged that “radio” need not be part of all encompassed systems; the proposed name is a legacy of modeling after the FRNP.

    So far, the FRNP itself is nothing but a model, a little architectural construct of what someday might be. But nothing’s been built, that particular someday is no closer, and meanwhile the threats loom larger.

  • Top-level updates from Munich summit on four GNSS

    Here’s a panorama in broad strokes across the range of GNSSs, garnered from top system spokespersons at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit. It’s been several years since breaking news was aired at this annual late winter/early spring event, but it’s always good for a wide-ranging update, recalibrating levels, so to speak.

    GPS. With 31 operational satellites (24 is baseline) and an estimated 3 billion receivers in use worldwide, what more needs to be said about the gold standard? Its best week ever for accuracy logged a signal-in-space performance average of 45.3 centimeter. The next-generation ground control system OCX “survived quite a struggle” and has emerged from Nunn-McCurdy breach, back on track and seemingly ready for future action. Or at least for future pre-certification tests. SV1 of the GPS III generation has completed all tests and is in storage, awaiting the first GPS III launch in spring 2018. SV02 and 03 are in assembly and integration, SV04 thru 08 are in box-level assembly, and 09 and 10 are on contract. Technical challenges with payload have been resolved.

    Galileo satellite top-level block diagram. OHB Systems AG as prime contractor and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) have teamed for production of the navigation satellites. OHB is responsible for the concept, the satellite platforms and the satellite-level inegration and test. SSTL supplies the satellite payloads and supports OHB on system level. OHB also supports the customers during launch preparation and in-orbit testing. (Image courtesy OHB)
    (Click to enlarge.) Galileo satellite top-level block diagram. OHB Systems AG as prime contractor and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) have teamed for production of the navigation satellites. OHB is responsible for the concept, the satellite platforms and the satellite-level inegration and test. SSTL supplies the satellite payloads and supports OHB on system level. OHB also supports the customers during launch preparation and in-orbit testing. (Image courtesy OHB)

    Galileo. With 18 on-orbit satellites (15 operational), the European GNSS can be termed a coming thing. Performance statistics are based on only 11 of these satellites however; the four most recently launched in November 2016 are not yet included. Nevertheless, the system is logging 80-centimeter ranging accuracy. Eight more await launch: four in 2017, and four in 2018. The constellation is broadcasting the Open Service, the Public Regulated Service, and the Search and Rescue (SAR) signal. The SAR service will officially launch in early April — on April 6, because 406 MHz is the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon frequency. Galileo has improved the historic SAR location performance from 3 hours to 10 minutes. The Commercial Service is still in preparation, and will be available in 2020. Spoofing is seen as a very real threat to GNSS overall by the Galileo authorities, as exemplified by the recent bloom of amateur spoofers encouraged by Pokemon go.

    GLONASS. The Russian system will undertake three or four launches this year; one of them will be a triple-satellite launch. There have been several disruptions to efforts to decrease the offset between GLONASS system time and Universal Coordinated Time but the initiative perseveres. English versions of four system interface control documents (ICDs), to include the new CDMA signal, are promised for Q2 2017; Chinese versions are coming, too. Russian-language ICDs are available at glonass.aic.ru.

    BeiDou. With the addition of three new satellites in the past year, China’s system is enjoying improved system performance. Hydrogen clocks are succeeding rubidium clocks, bring an order-of-magnitude improvement in timing accuracy. A BeiDou white paper was published last June, and a revised ICD appeared in November.

    In the massive Chinese mass market, 30 percent of smartphones sold in China now have BeiDou capability; that’s out of a 700–800 million total. Huawei multi-function chip LX1101 is a key driver behind this. Unistrong has released a phone with RTCM input for professional use, blurring the line between mass and professional markets.

    Six to eight satellites will be launched this year, and 10 to 12 in 2018. BeiDou is in a “very ambitious and aggressive race with time to complete the global system.”

    ICG. The United Nations’ International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems will meet in Japan in December of this year, in China next year, and in India in 2019. This can be interpreted as vigorous international interest and “a desire to advance and promote their respective systems’ visibility” worldwide. All pertinent documents can be found at unoosa.org.

    EGNOS. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service has two operational geosynchronous Earth-orbit satellites (GEOs) in operation, plus one in test and one in deployment, ready to swap in. It is extending its Ranging and Integrity Monitoring Stations (RIMS) to several new countries, notably Israel and the Ukraine. EGNOS.v3 is coming and will introduce dual-frequency (L1 and L5) service, and also Galileo with GPS, for multi-constellation corrections. The new system’s qualification is planned for 2022.

    QZSS. This year, Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System will launch the second and third of the figure-eight inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) satellites of the Michibiki type, to become operational in 2018. A GEO bird will also be launched. A seven-satellite system is the ultimate goal.

    Among other announcements of note made during the course of the Summit, although not by the GNSS operators’ spokespersons:

    Key features of the Galileo satellites. Click to enlarge.
    (Click to enlarge.) Key features of the Galileo satellites.

    • OHB, the Galileo satellite manufacturer, said its customer has decided to refurbish the clocks on eight satellites in preparation. “Satellite navigation is nothing but comparison of very precise clocks.”

    • Airbus announced a new concept for train positioning integrity: “virtual valises” to correct train position that will replace or augment current trackside valises that are very expensive to build and maintain.

    • Munich Aerospace (munich-aerospace.de), a public-private non-profit venture between DLR, the German space agency, Bauhaus Luftfahrt and two technical universities, will mount a Ph.D-level education and research program for 70 individuals, with candidates from 27 nations. This will be located in “the Bavarian Silicon Valley.” It will also undertake a global effort with several other organizations.

    • One of the above technical universities, the Federal Armed Forces University in Munich, announced that it is investigating Lidar for potential use in an asteroid mining project for future space exploration. It also has underway initiatives concerning Lidar + GNSS and inertial + GNSS for autonomous vehicles.

  • Agricultural robot market impacted by urbanization, less land

     

    Robots are way cool. Anyone three or older knows that. And agricultural robots were among the first envisioned civilian applications of GPS. When Brad Parkinson went to Stanford in 1984, one of the earliest demonstrations he and his bright new students conducted was fully automatic GPS control of farm tractors on a rough field to an accuracy of 2 inches. Now it’s a bazillion global industry. See “Agriculture robots market projected to reach US$5.7 billion by 2024” for a few figures on that.

    The market report underpinning that story contained a couple unquantified yet provocative assertions. Here’s one: Rural flight to the cities is a big force in this market’s growth.

    “Progress . . . has primarily driven a growing number of people towards the urban areas and the suburbs. . . . This, in turn, has caused a twofold need for the incorporation of agriculture robots in several countries. Firstly, the growing global population — a lot of it being urban — is pressuring countries to increase food production while steadily reducing the hands available for the agriculture industry. Secondly, the overall land slotted for agriculture in nearly all countries is reducing, thanks to the burgeoning industrial sector and residential construction projects.”

    I find this a bit chilling, a bit 1984-ish, and goodness knows we’ve got enough of that going on already. Will our future trips through the countryside, the shrinking countryside, take us through landscapes populated by nothing by smoothly chuffing engines? Will the term “bucolic” lose all meaning?

    A second factor driving the agricultural robots market is “the increasingly accepted modes of corporate farming.” Now, I know that multitudes must be fed. Still, personally, I buy my food from small, local farmers as much as possible. It simply tastes better. That is indisputable. Arguments rage about whether it’s better for you; I believe that it is.

    I hope the small farmers that my family and neighbors depend on benefit from GPS even though they don’t have huge expensive pieces of equipment. I’ll have to ask them next time I go on a visit. Meanwhile if any GPS and/or robotics manufacturers supply products to the artisanal, shall we say, as opposed to the corporate side of farming, I’d like to hear from you.

  • Editor Alan Cameron to speak at IGNSS 2016 in Sydney

    Alan Cameron
    Alan Cameron

    GPS World Editor and Publisher Alan Cameron will deliver the keynote address at IGNSS 2016, which will be held Dec. 6-8 at the Colombo Theatres, UNSW Australia, Sydney. Cameron will speak on “The Future — Navigated Autonomously.”

    The International GNSS Society (IGNSS) hosts the event, which is the Southeast Asian region’s premiere conference on GNSS and related position, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies.

    The conference will bring together leaders in GNSS and PNT to examine the latest technology, present cutting-edge research and discuss in open forums the implications for policy, market development and positioning infrastructure deployment.

    IGNSS 2016 will showcase a number of contemporary topics including, the role of PNT in automated land and aerial vehicles, the growing range of commercial precise positioning services, hard infrastructure issues such as space based augmentation systems, and soft infrastructure issues such as datum modernization and mitigation of system vulnerabilities. These hot topics will be discussed in the context of the latest system developments fueling the multi-GNSS era.

    Topics will include the following:

    • Emerging Application Areas for GNSS
    • Key Industries and their Reliance on GNSS
    • Aviation and Avionics
    • Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems
    • Maritime Applications
    • Unmanned Aerial Systems
    • Alternatives to GNSS
    • National Positioning Infrastructure
    • Policies and Standards
    • GNSS Augmentation including SBAS
    • Datums and Geodesy
    • National and International GNSS Developments
    • Embracing the Multi-GNSS Era
    • GNSS Receiver Development
    • GNSS Vulnerability
    • Machine Guidance in Agriculture, Construction and Mining

    Learn more at the conference website.