GPS World

Tag: DOT

  • US efforts pointing to coherent, resilient PNT architecture

    US efforts pointing to coherent, resilient PNT architecture

    DoT remarks follow China announcement on “comprehensive PNT”

    The U.S. Department of Transportation “…is seeking the best solutions to ensure that America has a combination of  PNT [positioning, navigation and timing] systems which, when used together, will be difficult to disrupt” according to remarks made at a recently concluded conference.

    Diana Furchtgott-Roth (Photo: USDOT)
    Diana Furchtgott-Roth

    Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology. She made the comments during a keynote address at the Royal Institute of Navigation’s annual conference in Edinburgh mid-November.

    Trained as an economist, Furchtgott-Roth noted that Edinburgh was the home of Adam Smith who in the 1700s referred to the efficiency of free markets as an “invisible hand” guiding economies. She regularly referred to GPS as “the invisible hand” guiding individuals, transportation, and technologies across the globe.

    Citing GPS as a “one of the great and heroic systems of our times,” she also acknowledged wide and generally unconscious reliance on GPS signals, and its vulnerabilities. “A lot of the work in research and technology at the Transportation Department…assumes the existence of GPS. It assumes that GPS will continue to work, sight unseen, without interference.”

    A dedicated GPS-only receiver “sounds as outdated as a pager.”

    While PNT is essential now, she said, it will be even more important in the future as it becomes essential for even more safety applications.

    “Public confidence in these will be critical. People will not be comfortable getting into an automated vehicle or with platooning driverless trucks heading down the highway if they think that their invisible hand is not reliable and that their GPS might be spoofed.”

    As part of this, development and adoption of a wide variety of space-based, terrestrial, and self-contained navigation sensors must be deployed and widely adopted. A dedicated GPS-only receiver, she said, “sounds as outdated as a pager.”

    She also echoed the theme of protecting frequencies, toughening receivers, and augmenting GPS signals as a way of achieving greater PNT resilience.

    The department let a contract in November for demonstration of 11 technologies that could serve as a GPS augmentation/backup system. Furchtgott-Roth said, “This effort will inform implementation of a system that by law is required to be terrestrial, wireless, have wide area coverage, be difficult to disrupt, and be capable of expansion to provide positioning and navigation services.”

    Departing from her prepared script, she added, “The Department of Transportation hopes to come to a decision by next May. Then we will get together with the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security and chose a technology or combination of technologies… And then we hope that our Congress will allocate funds to purchase this equipment. Our top priorities are national and economic security. We cannot have GPS be a single point of failure for transport and other critical infrastructure.”

    The United States published its National PNT Architecture Study in 2008 citing the need for an integrated and resilient approach. Despite its call for use of multiple phenomenologies and an implementation plan signed several years later little has been done as of yet now.

    Furchtgott-Roth’s comments came roughly a month after a Chinese representative to a Stanford symposium that here nation was developing a national “comprehensive PNT” after the fashion of what was called for in the U.S.’s 2008 study.

    Her prepared remarks are available here.

  • 2019 GPS Public Interface Control meeting set for Sept. 25

    2019 GPS Public Interface Control meeting set for Sept. 25

    CGSIC logo

    On Sept. 25, the GPS Directorate will host the 2019 Public Interface Control Working Group and Open Forum to update the public on GPS public document revisions.

    The meeting will collect issues and comments for analysis and possible integration into future GPS public document revisions.

    The 2019 Public Interface Control Working Group and Open Forum are open to the general public. It can be attended in person or by dial-in connection.

    Documents Affected

    • IS-GPS-200: Navigation User Interfaces
    • IS-GPS-705: User Segment L5 Interfaces
    • IS-GPS-800: User Segment L1C Interface
    • ICD-GPS-870: NAVSTAR GPS Control Segment to User Support Community Interface

    Meeting Address: SAIC, 100 N Sepulveda Blvd., El Segundo, CA 90245, The Great Room

    Meeting Dial-in Number: 310-653-2663 Meeting ID: 20190925 Password: 123456.

    Documents and proposed changes and the official meeting notice are posted on GPS.gov.

  • CGSIC updates Interface Control Documents, plans next meeting

    CGSIC updates Interface Control Documents, plans next meeting

    The GPS Directorate has released updates to the below Interface Control Documents (ICD). ICDs are the formal means of establishing, defining, and controlling interfaces and for documenting detailed interface design definitions for the GPS program.

    Updated Documents

    • IS-GPS-200: Navstar GPS Space Segment/Navigation User Interfaces
    • IS-GPS-705: Navstar GPS Space Segment/User Segment L5 Interface
    • IS-GPS-800: Navstar GPS Space Segment/User Segment L1C Interface
    • ICD-GPS-240: Navstar GPS Control Segment to User Support Community Interface
    • ICD-GPS-870: Navstar Next Generation GPS Control Segment (OCX) to User Support Community Interface

    Download or view the updated ICDs at GPS.gov or NAVCEN.

    59th CGSIC Meeting Set for September

    The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Coast Guard Navigation Center (NAVCEN) have announced plans for the 59th meeting of the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC).

    The meeting will take place Sept. 16-17 at the Hyatt Regency Miami in Miami, Florida, in conjunction with the Institute of Navigation’s ION GNSS+ 2019 conference.

    CGSIC meetings are free and open to the public. Subcommittees of the CGSIC for Timing, International Information, and Survey, Mapping, and Geosciences will hold meetings Sept. 16, and a summary of these meetings will be presented to the CGSIC plenary session Sept. 17.

    The meeting will include important briefings on the status of ongoing GPS programs and a keynote address by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, deputy assistant secretary, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, U.S. Department of Transportation.

    The CGSIC agenda in development can be found in the CGSIC section of GPS.gov.

  • DOT ignoring GPS vulnerabilities — again

    DOT ignoring GPS vulnerabilities — again

    The U.S. Department of Transportation’s most recent document preparing for the future of self-driving cars almost entirely ignores positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) needs, according to the Resilient Navigation and Timing (RNT) Foundation. And when it does address GPS, it gets things wrong. A Dec. 3 deadline looms for interested parties to file their comments with DOT.

    In comments submitted to the department’s docket for “Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0,” the Foundation — of which I am president — observes that the document does not address GPS service denial at all. While GPS spoofing is mentioned once, the two activities cited as addressing the problem are not PNT-related efforts.

    The comment period is open until December 3. Interested parties can make their own comments and read those already submitted at the website for Docket DOT-OST-2018-0149.

    The cited comment from the RNT Foundation states that, while most self-driving cars are being designed to navigate without external inputs, GPS/GNSS will still be required to initialize location information for vehicle cold startups. Also, most vehicles will reference GPS/GNSS when communicating their positions to other vehicles and traffic control systems.

    Much of the benefit of automated vehicles will come from their participation in Intelligent Transportations Systems. This means wireless networks. The RNT Foundation also urges the department to consider these networks’ critical dependence on GPS timing synchronization in their plans going forward.

    (Image: Pavel Vinnik/Shutterstock.com)
    (Image: Pavel Vinnik/Shutterstock.com)

    The Secretary of Transportation has had a mandate to provide a backup capability for GPS since 2004 that has not been acted upon. The RNT Foundation comments observe that doing so could greatly mitigate all of the concerns mentioned.

    Dana Goward is president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, based in Washington D.C.

     

  • DOT plans 3-year, 5+ participants for drone pilot program

    U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao provided further details of the department’s new Drone Integration Pilot Program at a public event held Nov. 2 at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) headquarters in Washington, D.C.

    Chao was joined by hundreds of drone operators, industry leaders, members of the public, law enforcement and first responders, and local, state, tribal and federal officials.

    The pilot program is designed to safely test and validate advanced operations through various partnerships across the country with oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

    A Federal Register notice lays out the timeframe, requirements, and goals of the new program, which will pair local, state, and tribal entities with private sector players in the drone industry to develop and deploy new operational concepts that are not currently in widespread use.

    The first step is for government officials to complete a Notice of Intent, signifying their intention to complete a full program application. Applicants will have 20 days to complete a Notice of Intent, followed by the requirement that they complete an application through the FAA/UAS Portal within 57 days. Within 180 days, initial program applicants who receive approval could begin deploying drones under the limitations coordinated and agreed to with the FAA. The program will last for three years.

    After evaluating all the applications, DOT will select a minimum of five partnerships. Full details of the Federal Register Notice and Application process can be found here.

    Webinars Scheduled. The FAA is hosting three webinars providing an overview of the program, application process and specific criteria and deadlines that must be met. The webinars will be held on the following times.

    • Friday, November 3 at 9:00 a.m. ET
    • Friday, November 3 at 3:00 p.m. ET
    • Monday, November 6 at 3:00 p.m. ET

    Registration is required to attend.

    The pilot program will evaluate a variety of operational concepts, including night operations, flights over people, flights beyond the pilot’s line of sight, package delivery, detect-and-avoid technologies, counter-UAS security operations, reliability and security of data links between pilot and aircraft, as well as local management of UAS operations subject to FAA oversight.

    Industries that could see immediate opportunities from the program include commerce, photography, emergency management, precision agriculture, and infrastructure inspections and monitoring.

    The program will help tackle the most significant challenges in integrating drones into the national airspace while reducing risks to public safety and security. The program is designed to provide greater regulatory certainty and stability to local governments and communities, UAS owners and operators who are accepted into the program.

    In less than a decade, the potential economic benefit of integrated unmanned aerial systems into the nation’s airspace is estimated to equal up to $82 billion and create up to 100,000 jobs,, according to AUVSI’s The Economic Impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

    Chao told attendees the program application and deployment process will move quickly because a priority for DOT is encouraging innovation in the drone industry while maintaining safety for communities involved.

    “The drone pilot program will accelerate the safe integration of drones into our airspace by creating new partnerships between local governments, the FAA, and private drone operators,” Chao said. “These partnerships will allow local communities to experiment with new technologies like package delivery, emergency drone inspections, and more, on terms that work for them and in ways that support a unified and safe airspace.”

    “This program will put community and industry partnerships at the leading edge of aviation technology,” said FAA Administrator Michael P. Huerta. “What we learn through testing operational concepts in these communities will be invaluable and give us clarity on rules that ensure safety and continued innovation.”

    “More and more businesses and public safety providers are embracing UAS to expand and enhance their service offerings,” said Brian Wynne, president and CEO, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. “This growing demand illustrates a new renaissance in aviation and technology, which requires sustained collaboration and support by government at all levels.”

  • DOT conducts GPS backup study

    The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is studying responses to its November 2016 request for information concerning back-up systems for GPS. DoT is investigating possibilities and practicalities of using one or more positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) technologies to ensure PNT resiliency for critical infrastructure in the event of a temporary disruption in GPS availability.

    The filing period closed Jan. 30.

    RFI Response

    Several companies responded to the RFI. Statements from Satelles, NextNav, NovAtel, Allied Partners, Harris, UrsaNav, and Orolia dba Spectracom were not made public because they “contain confidential business information data.”

    Statements are available at the web page from Oakridge National Laboratory, UrsaNav and iPosi, SAE International, the GPS Innovation Alliance and Locata Corporation, which made its response openly available “to kick off the necessary public discussion.”

    Senate Inquiry

    At a Feb. 8 Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Roy Blunt asked DoT Inspector General Calvin Scovel about progress on GPS back-up, which DoT and the Deputy Secretary of Defense announced they would “be working on” in 2015. Scovel responded with information about the Federal Aviation Administration’s next-gen plan, which did not address the question.

    Sen. Blunt then asked Scovel to submit a written answer for entry into the final record of the hearing: “My question for the record will be that this commitment made in 2015 concerned about the current dependency that so many people have with GPS, is ‘Are they moving forward with a backup system if the current GPS system goes down?”

  • GPSIA Submits Filings Supporting 1 dB Standard for GPS Adjacent Band Assessment

    WASHINGTON – On Friday, Oct. 16, the GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA) submitted two filings regarding federal spectrum policy. Comments were filed in response to a public notice in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) GPS Adjacent Band Compatibility assessment, and testimony was submitted for the record to a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in response to its recent hearing, “Improving Federal Spectrum Systems.” Both filings stressed that the “1 dB standard” is the appropriate criterion for testing the compatibility of terrestrial broadband and GPS operations.

    The GPS Innovation Alliance has consistently supported the more complete use of underused spectrum where technically feasible. In both filings, GPSIA expressed support for each government entity’s ongoing efforts and stressed the importance of protecting GPS, one of the country’s most important and ubiquitous national utilities.

    Regarding the DOT effort, GPSIA offered suggestions relating to certain aspects of the proceeding and voiced support for the “1 dB standard” in testing — which would determine Adjacent Band Masks based on a measurement of received interference test signal power levels that cause a 1 decibel (dB) degradation in the receiver’s Carrier-to-Noise Density Ratio.  As outlined in GPSIA’s comments, the organization’s support for the 1 dB standard is based on its long and well-established history in international and domestic regulatory proceedings and difficulties associated with other standards.

    GPSIA wrote: “While DOT has proposed recording other performance metrics, such as loss of signal lock or degradation of pseudo-range or position accuracy, GPSIA believes these are inappropriate metrics for interference assessment since their inherent basis is an interference level that seriously degrades the RNSS spectrum environment and causes significant disruption to GPS receivers.”

    Degradation of accuracy or otherwise attempting to determine effects on the “user experience” are not practicable interference metrics, and DOT should rely upon the 1 dB protection criteria in derivation of the Adjacent Band Masks.  GPS receivers are used in a tremendous range of end user applications beyond simple navigation.  It is unclear how it would be possible to determine whether there has been “material degradation” in the functioning of this wide range of GPS applications, much less what constitutes degradation that is “material.”

    GPSIA also submitted testimony for the record in response to an Oct. 7 hearing by the House Subcommittee on Commerce and Technology, where the potential for repurposing spectrum currently reserved for use by satellite applications for terrestrial broadband was discussed, but without addressing the difficult technical challenges associated with repurposing satellite spectrum.

    A key theme raised in the GPSIA testimony is support for allocating similar uses for spectrum in close proximity to each other.  Doing so is an approach that is preferable to adopting receiver standards.  GPSIA also explained the unique technical differences between communications and navigation spectrum use.

    “A straightforward approach is to minimize the number of dissimilar spectrum applications in close spectral proximity to each other,” GPSIA said. “Put another way, similar spectrum uses should be grouped together to the greatest extent possible to minimize the number of band edges or ‘border areas’ where dissimilar uses in close proximity create serious interference challenges. This approach minimizes the need for the FCC to engage in extensive rule making to balance the interests of dissimilar spectrum uses in every spectrum ‘border’ area.”

    GPSIA then noted that “attempts to attribute Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) interference issues mainly to poor receiver design are misguided. The FCC has long understood that receivers designed to receive one set of frequencies can be ‘overloaded’ by transmissions in adjacent frequencies.”

    In fact, overload interference is not unique to GPS, whose receivers are typically designed to withstand adjacent band transmissions hundreds of millions of times stronger than GPS signals and compare favorably to other common types of mass market receivers.

    GPSIA again voiced support for the 1 dB standard for testing, explaining that communications systems operate above the noise floor spectrum while GPS signals are below the thermal noise floor when they are received.

    “Because GNSS operates below the noise floor, the most appropriate means by which to assess the potential of new adjacent band systems is whether the new service causes a 1 dB degradation in a receiver’s Carrier-to-Noise Ratio.” Other interference metrics, the GPSIA explained, “are based on interference levels that seriously degrade the GNSS spectrum environment and will cause devastating disruption to GPS receivers.”

    “Use of a 1 dB standard is vastly superior to an approach that attempts to assess whether there is ‘actual’ harm to an incumbent service, which wrongly assumes that you can accurately predict the impact of a new service across a heterogeneous series of devices in adjacent spectrum. Defining harmful interference by reference to a level of degradation to a particular key performance indicator among a limited universe of devices and applications fails to account for and support future innovation, including known and currently unknown applications which could take advantage of ever increasing accuracy of the position, navigation and timing functions of GPS. Use of a defined change in the noise floor (1 dB) provides a readily identifiable and predictable metric that all interested parties can take into account now and in the future.”

    GPSIA’s testimony concluded by urging policy makers to engage in “rational, long term spectrum planning,” noting that a focus solely on regulation of receiver characteristics is likely to have limited usefulness and may be inefficient and harmful to continued innovation in affected spectrum uses.

    The GPS Innovation Alliance recognizes the ever increasing importance of Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies to the global economy and infrastructure and is firmly committed to furthering GPS innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. The GPS Innovation Alliance seeks to protect, promote and enhance the use of GPS. For more information, visit www.gpsalliance.org.