GPS World

Tag: FCC

  • LightSquared: The Ball is in the FCC’s Court

    The FCC’s public comment period regarding the LightSquared/GPS interference issue has ended and the reply comment period is over as well. To date, more than 3,300 comments (not including the 15,000+ that were submitted by the Boat Owners Association of the United States) were entered that the FCC must sift through and arrive at some sort of conclusion. Following are my last comments filed with the FCC as well as my best guess at where this is heading.

    I decided to file a “reply comment” submission on August 15 to the FCC based on an August 11 filing by LightSquared where LightSquared Executive Vice President Jeffrey Carlisle stated “had the GPS industry complied with the DoD’s recommended filtering standards for GPS receivers, there would be no issue with LightSquared’s operations in the lower portion of its downlink band.” It’s a blatantly false statement, so I couldn’t let it pass without a rebuttal. Following is what I submitted to the FCC:

     

    August 15, 2011

    Eric Gakstatter
    Editor – GPS World magazine Survey Scene enewsletter
    Editor – Geospatial Solutions
    High-precision GPS Consultant
    PO Box 663
    West Linn, OR 97068
    Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
    Federal Communications Commission
    445 12th Street SW
    Washington, DC  20554
    Re: IB Docket No. 11-109

     

    Dear Ms. Dortch,

    In addition to my comments posted on July 28, 2011, I’d like to reply to comments submitted by LightSquared in their letter dated August 11, 2011.

    Again, by way of background, as a Contributing Editor to GPS World magazine, my specialty is high-precision GPS receivers of which I’ve been involved with for more than 20 years as a product developer, power user and consultant. I’m in touch with tens of thousands of high-precision GPS users from around the world through my newsletter articles (bi-weekly), webinars and my attendance at technical conferences. I consider myself and I’m considered by others to be an advocate for the high-precision GPS community.

    In Jeffrey Carlisle’s (LightSquared Executive Vice President) comments to the FCC dated August 11, 2011, he stated that “had the GPS industry complied with the DoD’s recommended filtering standards for GPS receivers, there would be no issue with LightSquared’s operations in the lower portion of its downlink band.”

    This is a false statement, and to make matters worse, he knows it’s a false statement. Here’s why…

    LightSquared sells high-precision satellite data communications services to the GPS industry. Before LightSquared was formed in 2010, its predecessors (Skyterra, MSV) sold the same services to the GPS industry for many, many years.  In the course of business over many, many years, LightSquared and its predecessors have encouraged GPS receiver manufacturers to design receivers that look into the MSS band (1525-1559MHz) in order to access LightSquared’s satellite data communication services. This service has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue for LightSquared and its predecessors over many years and continues to be a revenue source for LightSquared today.

    If LightSquared chooses to stop supplying satellite data communications services to the GPS industry, that’s their choice, but they should not fabricate a statement claiming that only the reason for interference in the “lower portion of its downlink band” is due to filtering technology. It’s just not true. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of expensive high-precision GPS receivers were specifically designed to access LightSquared’s and Inmarsat’s satellite data communications services that they sell to the GPS industry.

    LightSquared may state they will continue to offer these services to the GPS industry in the upper portion of its downlink band (1545-1559MHz) to create separation from the lower portion of the downlink band (1526-1536MHz). It’s too late for that. Billions of dollars of expensive, high-precision GPS receivers are already in the market that were designed to look in the entire MSS L-band (1525-1559MHz) for services provided by LightSquared and Inmarsat. Had the GPS user community been given sufficient notice, tens of thousands of high-precision GPS equipment owners could have planned for transitioning their GPS receivers over many years with a manageable financial impact. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The GPS user community was blindsided by LightSquared’s application in November 2010 and the FCC’s waiver granted to LightSquared in January 2011.

    LightSquared and the FCC failed to adequately notify the GPS user community of their intentions. As I’ve submitted before, the precedent has already been set on how to effectively notify the GPS user community about an action that would render several hundred thousand high-precision GPS receivers obsolete. In 2008, the U.S. Air Force proposed to discontinue supporting the semicodeless technique that is used by virtually every civilian L1/L2 high-precision GPS receiver in existence. It was the first time in history that an action would render several hundred thousand high-precision GPS receivers obsolete, a scale which is very similar to the impact of the LightSquared system.

    There was no industry coalition formed to engage the Air Force. There was no industry outcry. A public/private technical working group was not formed to test the effects on receivers if semicodeless was not supported. Why is that?

    The answer is very simple. The U.S. Air Force, to its credit, did a fantastic job of communicating directly with the GPS user community along with the Department of Commerce. It issued public statements describing the impact the action would have on high-precision GPS receivers.

    The U.S. Air Force did its homework. At the end of the day, it set a sunset date of December 31, 2020 to discontinue supporting the semicodeless technique. It correctly determined that 12 years is about the amount of time that would allow a smooth transition with a manageable financial impact to the high-precision GPS user community.

    Imagine if the U.S. Air Force had set a period of one year to transition away from using the semicodeless technique. That action would have destroyed the high-precision GPS user community resulting in billions of dollars in losses and widespread small business closure. Fortunately, they did their homework, understood the impact, and made the correct decision.

    LightSquared, on the other hand, either didn’t do its homework or intentionally kept quiet in order to fly under the radar and push its initiative through before the GPS user community (and others) knew what was happening. In either case, the GPS user community shouldn’t be held accountable in paying for the FCC’s and LightSquared’s lack of communication/notification.

    LightSquared and the FCC incorrectly assumed that communicating/negotiating with the U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC) was the equivalent of communicating/negotiating with the GPS user community. That is a false assumption. The USGIC does not communicate directly with the GPS user community and never has. That’s not their role. I’ve been perso
    nally involved in the high-precision GPS industry for 20+ years and writing a monthly newsletter on high-precision GPS technology for GPS World magazine for more than five years. I attend almost every major GPS conference and high-precision GPS market segment conference in the U.S. and some abroad. The first I’d heard about the LightSquared interference issue was November 2010.

    Even if LightSquared only uses the lower portion of the downlink band (1526-1536MHz) as they’ve proposed, the number of high-precision receivers affected would be at least 200,000 at an estimated replacement cost of $10,000 per unit which equates to a total equipment replacement cost of $2 billion dollars. That does not include the cost of removal/installation, lost productivity, required software upgrades, and training. Do LightSquared and the FCC expect the GPS user community to bear that cost? Hopefully, you can see by the overwhelming number of public comments from small businesses and local government agencies, such an action would be devastating to the U.S. economy.

    Lastly, please do not forget about the potential devastating impact of LightSquared mobile devices (uplink band 1626.5-1660.5MHz) on GPS and GNSS receivers. I’m afraid this is being lost in all the discussion about the downlink band.  The uplink band could have a worse affect on GPS and GNSS receivers than the downlink band.

    LightSquared mobile devices are potentially portable GPS/GNSS jammers. The FCC needs to seriously investigate the interference impact of LightSquared mobile devices (1626.5-1660.5Mhz) on GPS receivers. It is already known that Inmarsat (1626.5-1660.5MHz) devices and Iridium (1616-1626.5MHz) devices interfere with each other, but Iridium devices are only used in remote areas so it’s not a widespread problem. It is also known that these devices interfere with the GLONASS L1 signal (1597-1605MHz). We don’t know the extent of the effect that LightSquared mobile devices will have on GLONASS L1, GPS L1, Galileo L1, or Compass L1 signals. The problem is that no LightSquared mobile devices are available to test. Yes, lab simulations can be performed, but LightSquared devices will be made in Asia, among other places, where the designers won’t care one bit about GPS/GLONASS interference. There is not an acceptable design margin, if any, to allow for sloppy LightSquared device designs.

    Thank you for your attention. If you feel that further testimony is needed, I’m more than happy to oblige.

    Sincerely,

    /S/ Eric Gakstatter

    Eric Gakstatter
    Principal – Discovery Management Group LLC
    Editor – GPS World Magazine Survey Scene enewsletter
    Editor – Geospatial Solutions
    PO Box 663
    West Linn, OR 97068

    I think that three things are batting against LightSquared at this point:

    1. As much as they say they gave fair warning, LightSquared and the FCC didn’t communicate with the GPS user community at all on this issue. The U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC) doesn’t count. They don’t represent the GPS user community nor communicate with the GPS user community at all. So, the GPS user community was blindsided by this in Nov 2010.

    This was either intentional or sloppy, but it doesn’t matter either way. The bottom line is that you can’t give nine months notice on obsoleting 200,000+ very expensive GPS receivers that are installed and used in critical infrastructure applications. It would take many years to transition to new equipment. The U.S. Air Force and Dept of Commerce have already been through this drill already and they determined that 12 years was about the right timeframe needed to transition high-precision civilian GPS equipment to new technology. If LightSquared and the FCC really understood this market, they would know it’s not a four-year exercise.

    2. Even with LightSquared using only the lower spectrum (1526-1536Mhz), it still interferes with $2+ billion dollars worth of high-precision GPS receivers. Who’s going to pay that bill? The GPS user community that was given no advanced notice?

    They can argue all they want about who’s fault it is, new filter technology, DoD standards, etc., but at the end of the day, obsoleting 200,000+ expensive high-precision GPS receivers valued at  $2+ billion dollars would be devastating to American small businesses and Fed/State/Local gov’t.

    3. LightSquared sells high-precision satellite data communications services to the high-precision GPS industry. Before LightSquared was formed in 2010, its predecessors (Skyterra, MSV) sold the same services to the GPS industry for many, many years. In the course of business over many, many years, LightSquared and its predecessors have encouraged GPS receiver manufacturers to design receivers that look into the MSS band (1525-1559MHz) in order to access LightSquareds satellite data communication services. This service has generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue for LightSquared and its predecessors over many years and continues to be a revenue source for LightSquared today.

    If LightSquared chooses to stop supplying satellite data communications services to the GPS industry, thats their choice, but they should not fabricate a statement claiming that only the reason for interference in the lower portion of its downlink band is due to filtering technology. Its just not true. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of expensive high-precision GPS receivers were specifically designed to access LightSquareds and Inmarsats satellite data communications services that they sell to the GPS industry.

    LightSquared may state they will continue to offer these services to the GPS industry in the upper portion of its downlink band (1545-1559MHz) to create separation from the lower portion of the downlink band (1526-1536MHz). Its too late for that. Billions of dollars of expensive, high-precision GPS receivers are already in the market that were designed to look in the entire MSS L-band (1525-1559MHz) for services provided by LightSquared and Inmarsat. Had the GPS user community been given sufficient notice, tens of thousands of high-precision GPS equipment owners could have planned for transitioning their GPS receivers over many years with a manageable financial impact. Unfortunately, thats not the case. The GPS user community was blindsided by LightSquareds application in November 2010 and the FCCs waiver granted to LightSquared in January 2011.

    Of course, I didn’t mention aviation, maritime, military and other safety-of-life applications of GPS. That’s a whole other story…

    Does that mean the FCC is going to tell LightSquared to go home?

    Maybe, but I doubt it.

    In a letter dated August 10, 2011, the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp requested more data from LightSquared and the U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC). Following is an important excerpt from the letter:

    “It is unclear to what extent the GPS receivers and devices tested are current production models, into what market  segments those receivers and devices are most commonly sold, what fraction of a given market segment those devices represent, and their design lifetimes and typical owner-use lifetimes.This information is important in assessing the likely impact, if any, of interference on various use cases over time. We therefore request production and U.S. sales information for each of the devices tested, including (1) the dates of production, (2) the market segment(s) to which the device is targeted or sold,  (3) total annual sales volume and annual sales volume by market segment or estimates thereof, (4) the date on which full support of the device by th
    e manufacturer ceased (or will cease), (5) estimated time period after which the device owner would likely replace or discontinue use of the device”.

     

    The letter also requests updated information from LightSquared based on their proposal to use only the lower spectrum (1526-1536MHz). The timeframe to provide the requested information is very aggressive, with all information to be supplied on or before August 22, 2011.

    I think this is good news in general. It is the FCC’s first solid attempt to understand the GPS receiver markets in which the proposed LightSquared system will cause interference problems, including high-precision.

    The bad news is that the FCC is only requesting market information on GPS receivers that were tested. If you recall in one of my earlier articles, I listed the GPS receivers being tested by the high-precision team. Obviously, if the FCC only used market data from these GPS receivers, the numbers will be underestimated by a large double-digit value and maybe orders of magnitude because many receiver models weren’t included in the test. Also, many CORS in operation are legacy GPS receivers that are out of production. Based on their questions, I have a feeling the FCC will discount those to little or no value, when they actually still provide economic benefit. However, the CORS owner can’t or aren’t in a position to replace them, resulting in a net loss.

    No matter which way this goes, I’m pretty confident the FCC is going to use this opportunity to rattle the GPS industry’s cage. Spectrum is a finite resource and the FCC is going to look at ways to allocate spectrum as efficiently as possible, as they should. Is the MSS L-band (1525-1559MHz) being used in the most efficient manner? Probably not. I bet the FCC orders changes in that area, or at least the FCC sets the wheels in motion towards change. I’m ok with that as long as it doesn’t come at the unreasonable expense of the GPS user community, be it high-precision, aviation, military, etc.

    All of this bruha is really about timing. Given enough time, GPS receiver manufacturers and component manufacturers have a chance to develop new technologies that use the MSS spectrum more efficiently, if at all. Actually, if the FCC pushes forward like they seem to want, it really isn’t MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) spectrum any longer, it would become a Mobile Terrestrial Service. But developing new technologies, designing/testing products and then allowing the GPS user community enough time to adopt the new technology with a reasonable financial impact takes years, a lot of years, not four or five. It takes more years than what LightSquared has to give no matter which part of the MSS spectrum (low or high) one is discussing.

    I think in the short-term the FCC is going to order more testing in order to understand the impact on GPS receivers of LightSquared using only the lower end of the MSS spectrum (1526-1536MHz). We already know it’s going to hammer most high-precision GPS receivers valued collectively at $2+ billion dollars. I don’t have a good grip on how it will affect aviation, military and other receivers in critical apps. We’ll see.

    Actually, I agree with what Jeff Kagan of E-commerce Times writes. LightSquared is playing the public relations game the wrong way and they’re getting their nose punched every time they turn around. They should be spending their energy on talking about how wireless communications will be enhanced by their service instead of scraping up obscure DoD specifications they claim that commercial GPS receivers are supposed to adhere to. I still don’t understand what they bring to the table that Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, etc. don’t. Yes, I get that they are a wholesaler and can bring 4G LTE to small service providers. I’m talking about technology. What technology do they bring to the table? If they are just a new distributor in the mix, there’s not much to talk about and maybe that’s why they are fighting the public relations game the way they are. Interesting enough, earlier this week LightSquared announced they hired a new Senior Vice President for Public Relations and Communications, presumably to attempt to resolve the GPS interference fiasco.

    Dish Network Announces Plan for 4G LTE Network and Applies for FCC Waiver Similar to LightSquared

    Dish Network is trying something eerily similar to LightSquared, but it will have no effect on GPS receivers since their spectrum is far away from GPS (2+ GHz). Dish bought two bankrupt companies last year, Terrestar and DBSD, and have 40MHz of spectrum to play with in 4G LTE. It will be interesting to watch how the FCC deals with this, especially if the Dish waiver is pushed through as LightSquared’s was. With no GPS interference concerns, Dish might be able to field a 4G LTE system before LightSquared can.

    As Phil Goldstein from GPS World’s sister publication, Fierce Wireless, comments:

    “One of they issues that has come to the fore in the wake of the FCC’s decision to grant a similar conditional waiver to LightSquared is that LightSquared’s L-Band spectrum sits adjacent to GPS spectrum, and that terrestrial transmissions from LightSquared’s proposed wholesale LTE network in the upper portion of its spectrum is causing GPS interference. Pointedly, in its filing, Dish said its 2 GHz S-Band spectrum “will not raise the technical issues that have hampered the use of the MSS L-Band, such as the interleaving of the operators’ assignments and the severe interference claimed by systems operating in adjacent spectrum.”
     
    In return for the waiver, Dish said it will commit to a “substantial terrestrial network deployment” of a branded retail service intended to increase wireless broadband competition, including in rural areas, using LTE-Advanced network technology. Dish said it is prepared to work with the FCC “to develop a reasonable, attainable buildout schedule keyed to commercial availability of the LTE-Advanced standard,” and that it is committed to developing a buildout schedule “consistent with FCC precedent and based on the buildout principles established” in Sprint Nextel’s (NYSE:S) combination of its spectrum assets with Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR).

     

    Read the full article by clicking here.

    America’s Web Radio Guest Appearance

    Last week, I was a guest on the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping’s (ACSM) weekly, one-hour America’s Web Radio program. Web radio is actually a very creative idea. You can listen to the live program on your internet-connected computer (11am U.S. Eastern time every Monday) or you can download the recorded program in MP3 format and listen to it using your iPod or other MP3 player. Click here if you’d like to listen to last week’s program when I was the guest.

    Thanks, and see you next time.
    Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric

     

  • Out in Front: A Pawn in Their Game

    Maybe we got played. But we put up a good fight. We really had no option to do anything but fight. So we did, and we’re still fighting the LightSquared attack on the GPS signal. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot.

    Suspicions now creep in that the attack may have been a feint, that the company never really intended to do what it threatened: broadcast a very powerful signal from ground towers, on a frequency immediately adjacent to the GPS signal. LightSquared had its eye on another prize instead.

    Here’s what I have heard, independently from two people who follow the telecommunications industry for a living. Party number one:

    “These guys have b..ls.

    Off the record, their business plan is a 100 percent swap.

    So the more GPS gets irritated by their b..ls..t and says get out of the L-band, the more LS like it.

    Tell your friends to recommend that LS use their other [lower] spectrum.

    Now that’s what they don’t want.

    The trade is 40 MHz of new terrestrial spectrum.”

    Party number two, a Wall Street contact, said the same, implying a direct interaction with top-level LightSquared personnel as its source.

    Somewhere in the very early going, back in December of last year, I read a similar speculation, but gave it little credence because it seemed too good to be true. I’m still wary.

    But such deceit seems consistent with the sly and manipulative behavior that LightSquared has evidenced to date, on top of the near-total lack of any engineering or scientific case for its power play on spectrum. Time and again, company spokespersons made their case on legalistic and rule-making grounds, abetted by no less a person than the FCC chair. Any technical language or justification they used was transparently, almost laughably, unfounded.

    That’s the way government works, unfortunately. The laws of man are held above the laws of physics — even when it comes to rewriting the previous laws of man, which, it turns out, had some logic. The MSS spectrum, about which all this furor has raged, turns out to stand for Mobile Satellite Service spectrum. If the LightSquared signal were held to its license, it would broadcast from satellites, with a small provision for ancillary ground broadcast.

    Even with the Technical Working Group’s strong repudiation of both the LightSquared proposal and the FCC’s conditional waiver, and the stern-jawed joint letter from the Departments of Defense and Transportation, we are far from safe. I have seen too many government boards — local, state, and federal — fly in the face of evidence, to believe that facts rule.

    It ain’t over till the statuesque lady sings.

  • Expert Advice: Who Won?

    Logan Scott
    Logan Scott

    By Logan Scott

    Thousands of man hours and millions of dollars later, we finally have the 975-page GPS Technical Working Group (TWG) report, confirming what five minutes of back-of-the-envelope calculation predicted. Hooray for our side, good job GPS Industry Council; we’ve won the war and the foe is vanquished, never to brighten our skies again.

    Well, maybe. LightSquared is now bypassing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and submitting technical papers directly to the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Working Party that handles mobile satellite services (MSS) and radio determination satellite service (RDSS spectrum) and orbits (ITU-R WP 4C).

    A few comments to all participants:

    To the FCC: Quoting from the National Legal and Policy Center’s February 2, 2011, rather damning letter to U.S. House members Darrel Issa and Edolphus Towns: It is “the special responsibility of federal agencies to not only avoid conflicts of interest, but to avoid even the appearance of conflicts.” Integrity counts. It shouldn’t require congressional intervention for the FCC to do the right thing. An abbreviated,  10-day comment period ending the Monday after Thanksgiving on a ruling of this magnitude and one which would have severely damaged national infrastructure if left unopposed? What were you thinking?

    After wiping the egg out of your eyes, you also might look around your organization and discover you have engineers. They’re the ones who use terms like bandwidth, compression point, and interference. They can tell you things about engineering issues. Your engineers are actually quite good and know what they are talking about. Use them. Listen to them. Maybe even put some on commissioners’ staff. A B.S. degree shouldn’t be a disqualification for helping to set national policy on technical matters.

    To Department of Homeland Security (DHS): GPS is critical infrastructure and needs to be designated as such. If anything, this exercise has demonstrated how easily we could lose the benefits of GPS. LightSquared was not even targeting GPS, but if implemented as originally planned, its system would have damaged diverse areas of critical infrastructure; both civil and military. As a nation, we are entirely capable of shooting ourselves in the foot; no terrorists needed. We have no backup to GPS; protect it.

    To LightSquared: You have a great system concept, but there are sound engineering reasons why the bands adjacent to GPS were designated for space-to-Earth mobile satellite services (MSS). Separation between GPS and high-power systems is essential, particularly with the current state of the art in GPS. Claims that you have been working with the GPS industry for the last eight years and that we gave “the green light to those plans” (June 30, 2011, Recommendation of LightSquared Subsidiary LLC, page 16) do not ring true. Even the most casual analysis of your plans shows significant harmful interference to GPS.

    Some further observations on your recommendations: Trying to game the system and redefine what constitutes harmful interference (1dB versus 6 dB) is probably not a great idea given the GPS system navigates our airplanes and provides E911 capabilities. We routinely use up all of our margins and then some. A 6-dB hit is a big hit on position robustness.

    Similarly, don’t play games with statistical propagation modeling. Your proposed Walfish-Ikegami line of sight (WI-LOS) models are wholly inappropriate for low-altitude aircraft using GPS for precision approach and landing. They are based on LOS street-canyon measurements made in the city of Stockholm and are not intended for handsets more than 10 feet off the ground. Two-ray models accounting for ground reflections show LightSquared signals at levels 6 dB above free space predictions several miles out (Figure 1). Live-sky testing at Holloman and Las Vegas showed “above free-space” levels even for some ground mobile users (June 15, 2011, National Public Safety Telecommunications Council [NPSTC] filing with the FCC, page 7, Item 3). Coverage models are not appropriate as safety-of-life models.

    Upzoning the entire 1.6-GHz MSS band is not likely any time soon, at least in the United States. Figure out what you can do with less spectrum and less power in the low end of the S-E MSS allocation or find other spectrum; maybe pay for it like other cellular operators did. Don’t forget E-S interference, there are dragons there as well. Develop a transition plan and expect to pay for it.

    Figure 1. LightSquared propagation models can underestimate interference by more than a factor of 100 (>20 dB). (Click to enlarge.)
    Figure 1. LightSquared propagation models can underestimate interference by more than a factor of 100 (>20 dB). (Click to enlarge.)

    To the GPS Industry: We have long lived in a world of clean, unobstructed spectrum — and it has been wonderful. At this June’s JNC2011 conference, Air Force General Kevin McLaughlin (U.S. Strategic Command) noted that space is increasingly “congested, competitive, and contested.” The same can be said for radio spectrum. LightSquared is trying to make good use of ~68 MHz of largely fallow spectrum straddling ours to provide a valuable and sorely needed wireless data service.

    There is no successful business model in providing MSS services only. Motorola and Loral/Qualcomm proved that with their Iridium and Globalstar MSS systems. Both original ventures ended in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. LightSquared is the third or fourth incarnation of Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV), which ended in bankruptcy. The core business problem is that MSS is expensive to deploy, provides very little capacity (bits/sec/Hz/km2), and these systems offer poor building penetration. Upzoned for terrestrial services (that is, cellular or ancillary terrestrial component, ATC), LightSquared’s spectrum allocation is worth about $15 billion for the license alone at current auction prices, and that’s for only the United States. With spectrum growing increasingly scarce and valuable, we in the GPS industry should expect, and be prepared for, the day when this spectrum is repurposed. It is not my intent to be an apologist for LightSquared, merely to illuminate the fact that this is potentially very valuable spectrum and it is not going to be MSS forever, especially if someone offers to pay for it.

    LightSquared was stopped, at least temporarily, by regulatory constraints applicable only within the United States. In effect, the GPS industry lobbied for a 34-MHz guard band and won — maybe. This is not a sustainable position. LightSquared may yet prevail on the international stage and/or in a diminished capability. Also, be aware that in parts of the world interference now makes GPS unusable, for example, Balkan ports and parts of Africa.

    We in the GPS industry can and must take steps to improve our ability to operate in congested spectrum. The TWG report showed enormous variations in receiver resistance to out-of-band LightSquared interference. Using a 1-dB C/No degradation criteria, in FAA-certified aviation receivers there was 26 dB of variation in LightSquared signal rejection (Table 3.1.1, page 42). In high-precision receivers, more than 30 dB of variation was seen (Table 10, page 243). Against LightSquared F5L (the lower frequency, 5-MHz-wide LightSquared signal, 1526.3–1531.3 MHz) modulation, high-precision receivers showed more than 70 dB variation in susceptibility to LightSquared interference (TWG Appendix H.1.1.10, Figure 38). Clearly, there are good ways to build a receiver, and bad ways. We need to do better.

    Next

    Among the steps to consider:

    • Narrow front-end bandwidths. If you don’t want to be affected by out-of-band jamming, don’t let it in. This is antijamming (AJ) 101. The corollary of course is that most AJ techniques degrade position accuracy, and so it is with filtering. The C/A code is about 2-MHz wide but there are good anti-multipath motivations for using a wider bandwidth. GPS satellites have roughly a 28 to 32 MHz transmission bandwidth. Beyond that, there is nothing except interference. Filter accordingly and don’t forget: antenna selection plays an important role in determining overall receiver frequency selectivity.
    • Higher 1-dB compression point. Consider designing for a higher 1-dB compression point, particularly if you must use a wider bandwidth front end, say for phase linearity in precision survey receivers or for multipath rejection or for military signals. This also improves IP3 and mitigates intermodulation effects. IP3 is the third-order intercept point of an amplifier and is one of the more important parameters in describing the linear range of an amplifier. Low IP3 leads to higher intermodulation distortion, a process wherein two out-of-band signals can mix with each other in the GPS receiver to produce a third frequency within the GPS band. Yes, higher compression points lead to slightly higher power consumption, but out-of-band signal tolerance improves greatly when combined with downstream filtering. In the longer term, consider adaptive equalization methods.
    • Use L2C and L5 signals. Currently, nine satellites on orbit broadcast L2C and one broadcasts L5, with another IIF successfully launched July 16. One major reason precision receivers fare poorly against interference is that they require wide front ends to implement codeless and semi-codeless modes to measure L2 carrier phase for widelane ambiguity resolution. Wide bandwidths are also needed to precisely measure L1 pseudorange, again for ambiguity determination. Using L2C/L5 mitigates the need for wide-bandwidth front ends and at the same time creates signal diversity in carrier-phase tracking.
    • Report interference. One of the most stunning shortcomings in many GPS receivers, both civil and military, is their inability (or unwillingness) to report jamming and spoofing. In my work with DHS on the National Risk Estimate, one recurring theme across industry sectors is how confusing it is when GPS gets jammed. GPS is often deeply integrated with other systems to the point where it becomes invisible until it fails, and then its failure causes weird failure modes in dependant systems. For example, mobile satellite communication systems can fail if the GPS position is wrong; the antenna gets pointed the wrong way. A simple “I am jammed” alert would go a long ways towards diagnosing problems and taking corrective actions. This is as true for LightSquared signals as it is for personal privacy devices.
    • Integrity Monitoring. If you are lucky, interference causes a signals outage. Some interference types can capture receiver tracking loops and yield false positions. The effects of out-of-band interference on tracking are not well understood. Constantly checking for signal integrity and navigation integrity (for example, receiver-autonomous integrity monitoring) can detect many adverse results without imposing a significant burden on the GPS receiver. The algorithms are well documented. Use them.

    Winston Churchill is famously quoted as saying: “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing — after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” At this point, I think we are still looking at some of the other possibilities and I wouldn’t count the LightSquared situation as a victory for anyone just yet. There is still ample opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but by taking a proactive stance, both politically and technically, we can improve our chances.

    Also, a nice pair of wellies might be a good investment; it’s a big barnyard.

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

  • LightSquared: Comments I Submitted to the FCC

    Okay, folks, this is where the rubber meets the road. The FCC public comment period ends this Saturday (July 30). If you use GPS at all, it would be very wise to submit your comments today. Don’t expect the FCC to make a rational decision. There’s a lot of money and political influence in LightSquared’s camp and those can dwarf engineering/technical arguments even if they are overwhleming. The best weapon the GPS user community has is sheer numbers, but we aren’t showing up!

    To date (July 27), only 1,896 comments have been submitted. That’s not even close to being enough to get the FCC’s attention, and many of those are aviation and geocaching. Also, you see the politically connected comments (chiefs of police, mayors, state legislators, etc.) are largely in support of LightSquared. That’s because LightSquared is mobilizing its political influence machine.

    Submitting your comments to the FCC only takes five minutes. You don’t need to write an essay. Here’s what you need to make the FCC aware of:

    1. What you (or the organization you work for) use GPS for.
    2. How much (approximately) your organization has invested in GPS equipment/software.
    3. How much your organization (business or public entity) depends on GPS.
    4. How it would affect your organization (business or public entity) if GPS was interfered with.

    If you are worried about not getting approval in time from your department, etc, just keep your comments generic and don’t mention your organization name. The value is the story you tell about how important GPS is to you and your organization, not the specific names.

    I suggest composing your comments in a word processor (Word, WordPad, Notepad, etc.) first, then copy/paste to the FCC form so you don’t lose your work in case something goes sideways with the FCC website while you are typing.

    Here are simple instructions to submit your comments:

    1. Go to the FCC comment submission website by clicking here.
    2. Type in the following information:
    • Proceeding Number: 11-109
    • Name of Filer: Enter your name
    • Address Line 1: Enter your street address
    • City: Enter your city
    • State: Enter your state
    • Zip: Enter your zip code
    • Type in or paste your brief comments: Copy/paste your comments

    That’s it. Five minutes and you’re done.

    DO NOT assume the Department of Defense, Department of Transportation, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NITA) or other organizations that have submitted comments will save the day. They are interested in only protecting their own turf, not yours. I still hear people saying, “The FCC will never let this happen because the Department of Defense or DOT will stop them.” If that was the case, this would have stopped months ago. The further along this goes, the more the following statement rings true (that I wrote back in May):

    “The military is going to be accommodated in the name of national security. The aviation industry is going to be accommodated in the name of safety-of-life. The auto navigation industry is going to be accommodated because they are high-profile. The high-precision user is going to be thrown under the bus because we are the most difficult to accommodate (technically) and don’t have a high profile nor are perceived as significant enough to accommodate.”

     

    LightSquared’s latest proposal is to begin using its lower frequency spectrum (1526-1536MHz) first. The departments of Defense, Transportation, and NTIA may bite on this as a compromise for LightSquared’s “good faith effort.” LightSquared says this new plan will accomodate all but 0.5% of GPS receivers. To the FCC, it appears like LightSquared is bending over backwards because they’ve accommodated 99.5% of all GPS receivers. If you didn’t know any better, you’d be impressed, too! The problem for you is that the remaining 0.5% of the GPS receivers are your RTK and high-precision GPS receivers that you’ve spent tens of thousands of your money to purchase! LightSquared’s solution is to have you purchase new equipment.

    If you’re interested in reading my comments to the FCC, the following is what I’m submitting to the FCC today. Feel free to copy/paste parts you agree with and incorporate them into your comments if you choose.

     

    July 27, 2011

    Eric Gakstatter
    Editor – GPS World magazine Survey Scene enewsletter
    Editor – Geospatial Solutions
    High-precision GPS Consultant
    PO Box 663
    West Linn, OR 97068

     

    Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
    Federal Communications Commission
    445 12th Street SW
    Washington, DC  20554
    Re: IB Docket No. 11-109

     

    Dear Ms. Dortch,

    I have serious concerns about LightSquared’s proposal for a nationwide 4G LTE system. I’m afraid that neither LightSquared nor the FCC fully understand the impact of LightSquared’s proposed system on GPS receivers, America’s small businesses, and America’s economy.

    As a Contributing Editor to GPS World magazine, my specialty is high-precision GPS receivers, of which I’ve been involved with for more than 20 years as a product developer, power user, and consultant. I’m in touch with tens of thousands of high-precision GPS users from around the world through my newsletter articles (bi-weekly), webinars, and my attendance at technical conferences. I consider myself and I’m considered by others to be an advocate for the high-precision GPS community.

    Hundreds of thousands of high-precision GPS receivers in the U.S. are used across many market segments including civil/environmental engineering, construction, land surveying, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), agriculture, forestry, road/rail/airport, hydrography, environmental, water/gas/electric/oil/telecom utilities, mining, bridge/dam monitoring, emergency management, defense & intelligence, higher education, and all levels of Fed/State/Local government.

    To illustrate, allow me to describe some examples of how high-precision GPS is being used.

    In road construction, high-precision GPS offers a 5-to-1 efficiency advantage over legacy construction equipment. Can you imagine the delays if road construction projects took five times longer to complete? California’s Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) currently has 846 construction projects ongoing with construction costs of ~$10.5 billion. High-precision GPS receivers are a critical component of these projects. Projects such as the widening project pictured below, are completed way ahead of schedule. For this reason, CALTRANS has invested in 250 high-precision GPS receivers valued at ~$5 million (~$20,000 per receiver).

    CALTRANS Highway 101 project widened the route from four to six lanes to extend the carpool lane for two and a half miles and upgrade a congested interchange in Santa Rosa, six months ahead of schedule

     

    It’s not just large, high-precision GPS receiver deployments that matter. GPS also keeps the public safe.

    In Florida, the 5.5 mile Sunshine Skyway Bridge spanning Tampa Bay has five high-precision GPS
    receivers permanently mounted on it so engineers can monitor the health of the structure. On an annual basis, more than 18 million vehicles travel over the bridge. High-precision GPS is a core technology that ensures the safety of those 18 million vehicles.

    The structural integrity of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay is continuously monitored by high-precision GPS receivers, ensuring the safety of more than 18 million vehicles per year

    It’s not just thousands of public entities that are invested in high-precision GPS technology. Tens of thousands of U.S. small businesses rely on high-precision GPS technology in their daily operations.

    A small land surveying firm owner in Virginia says:

    “I have relied on GPS for survey grade data for at least 15 years. We use GPS every day for all projects. If GPS becomes unavailable or unreliable it will just about put us out of business. Our $500,000 investment would become worthless.”

     

    A four-person agricultural drainage firm owner states:

    “I am president of a small business that relies solely on high accuracy GPS. We do GPS Ag drainage (I and three other employees) we set a base on site all over the state because close proximity RTK correction is the only way to get the vertical accuracy required to do what we do.  Any GPS interference immediately closes my business and puts four people out of work.”

     

    Another small land surveying firm says:

    “High-precision GPS allows us to obtain measurements between monuments which are miles apart to control land boundaries … in a couple of hours that 20 years ago would required 20 to 30 hours of field crew time. The change in technology comes with our investment of approximately $100,000 which is very significant for a small firm like ours. If we are to wake up here in the next year and find our equipment useless for high-precision GPS, the effects would be devastating to us and our clients in both private development and public infrastructure.”

     

    Finally, high-precision GPS users rely on a complex infrastructure of 7,000+ high-precision, fixed-mount GPS base stations deployed nationwide. The infrastructure began with a few receivers in the early 1990s and has been built upon over the past 18 years by the GPS user community volunteering time, money, equipment, and expertise. It would be impossible to replace all of these receivers since the ownership is so disparate. Many are publicly owned and the rest are commercially owned by businesses and used by people in all the market segments I listed above. To illustrate, one such network consisting of more than 875 high-precision GPS receivers is located in the western United States managed by UNAVCO, a university-governed consortium which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

    UNAVCO uses this massive network of high-precision GPS receivers to, among other things, monitor the earth’s crustal plate movement (think earthquake montoring).

    Each dot represents a permanently-mounted high-precision GPS receiver that continuously monitors the Earth’s crustal plate movement

     

    Another type of high-precision GPS network is called an RTK network. It delivers real-time, high-precision corrections to engineers, surveyors, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists, construction specialists, and others. This particular network, owned by Keystone Precision Instruments, consists of 178 fixed-mount, high-precision GPS receivers and delivers high-precision GPS corrections to users in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.

    Like the UNAVCO network, the Keystone Precision Instrument RTK Network is a multi-million dollar investment in high-precision GPS infrastructure.

     
    Keystone Precision Instruments’ RTK Network diagram showing 178 fixed-mount, high-precision GPS receivers that provide high-precision GPS corrections to high-precision GPS users in the northeastern U.S.

     

    Recommendations

    I’m grateful for this 30-day public comment period as I think it will give the FCC and LightSquared a new perspective on the impact that disrupting high-precision GPS receivers would have on the GPS user community and America’s economy.

    Although I’m in favor of a nationwide 4G LTE system, I’m opposed to LightSquared’s proposed plan for the following reasons:

    1. The GPS user community knew this was coming and chose to do nothing. This is false. Contrary to what LightSquared asserts, the GPS user community did not know anything about this potential interference until November 2010. LightSquared and the FCC incorrectly assumed that communicating/negotiating with the U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC) was the equivalent of communicating/negotiating with the GPS user community. That is a false assumption. The USGIC does not communicate directly with the GPS user community and never has. That’s not its role. I’ve been personally involved in the high-precision GPS industry for 20+ years and writing a monthly newsletter on high-precision GPS technology for GPS World magazine for the past five years. I attend almost every major GPS conference and high-precision GPS market segment conference in the U.S. and some abroad. The first I’d heard about the LightSquared interference issue was November 2010.

    Furthermore, there is a clear precedent already set that demonstrates how to handle a case very similar to the current LightSquared situation. In 2008, the U.S. Air Force proposed to discontinue supporting the semicodeless technique that is used by virtually every civilian L1/L2 high-precision GPS receiver in existence. It was the first time in history that an action would render several hundred thousand high-precision GPS receivers obsolete, a scale which is very similar to the impact of the LightSquared system.

    There was no industry coalition formed to engage the Air Force. There was no industry outcry. A public/private technical working group was not formed to test the effects on receivers if semicodeless was not supported. Why is that?

    The answer is very simple. The U.S. Air Force, to its credit, did a fantastic job of communicating directly with the GPS user community along with the Department of Commerce. It issued public statements describing the impact the action would have on high-precision GPS receivers.

    The U.S. Air Force did its homework. At the end of the day, it set a sunset date of December 31, 2020, to discontinue supporting the semicodeless technique. It correctly determined that 12 years is about the amount of time that would allow a smooth transition with a manageable financial impact to the high-precision GPS user community.

    Imagine if the U.S. Air Force had set a period of one year to transition away from using the semicodeless technique. That action would have destroyed the high-precision GPS user community resulting in billions of dollars in losses and widespread small business closure
    . Fortunately, they did their homework, understood the impact, and made the correct decision.

    LightSquared, on the other hand, either didn’t do its homework or intentionally kept quiet in order to fly under the radar and push its initiative through before the GPS user community (and others) knew what was happening. In either case, the GPS user community shouldn’t be held accountable in paying for the FCC’s and LightSquared’s lack of communication/notification.

    2. The FCC needs to consider future GPS signals as well as satellite signals from other satellite navigation systems. The FCC needs to investigate the effect of the LightSquared system on the future GPS L1C signal as well as GLONASS L1 (Russia), Galileo L1 (Europe), and Compass L1 (Chinese) to understand the effect on receivers of today and of the future. GPS L1C, Galileo L1, and Compass L1 all use wider bandwidth than today’s GPS L1, which makes them even more susceptible to interference from LightSquared’s system.

    L1 and L5 are the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and Compass signals of the future. Those signals will drive hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue because they will bring high-precision accuracy to our everyday lives, which is something only available on very expensive GPS receivers today.

    Again, precedence has been set. Look at what happened to GPS navigation after Selective Availability (SA) was turned off in May 2000. Overnight, GPS accuracy improved from 100 meters to 10 meters, and subsequently the multi-billion dollar market for GPS automobile navigation devices was launched. Companies like TomTom grew from zero revenue to multi-billion dollar corporations.

    The same is expected to happen again when mainstream GPS accuracy improves from 10 meters to well under a meter using the L1 and L5 signals, but that will only occur if the GPS L1, GLONASS L1, Galileo L1, and Compass L1 signals are protected. Some say that L2 can be used instead of L1 in the future. While that’s true for GPS, L1 and L5 have become the international standard while L2 is not supported by the international community.

    3. LightSquared mobile devices are potentially portable GPS jammers. The FCC needs to seriously investigate the interference impact of LightSquared mobile handsets (1626.5-1660.5 Mhz) on GPS receivers. It is already known that Inmarsat (1626.5-1660.5 MHz) devices and Iridium (1616-1626.5 MHz) devices interfere with each other, but Iridium devices are only used in remote areas so it’s not a widespread problem. It is also known that these devices interfere with the GLONASS L1 signal (1597-1605 MHz). We don’t know the extent of the effect that LightSquared mobile devices will have on GLONASS L1, GPS L1, Galileo L1, or Compass L1 signals. The problem is that no LightSquared mobile phones are available to test. Yes, lab simulations can be performed, but LightSquared devices will be made in Asia, among other places, where the designers won’t care one bit about GPS interference. There is not an acceptable design margin, if any, to allow for sloppy LightSquared device designs.

    The consequence of LightSquared mobile devices interfering with GPS L1, GLONASS L1, Galileo L1, and Compass L1 is hard to imagine and might be worse than interference from the 40,000 LightSquared towers. Although the LightSquared mobile devices are much lower power (2-3 watts vs. 1,500 watts), LightSquared has announced they intend to deploy more than 250 million mobile devices, which could behave like portable GPS jammers.

    Please pay attention this important technical issue that many have chose to ignore.

    4. LightSquared needs to permanently abandon using the upper frequency spectrum (1545-1555 MHz) for terrestrial broadcasting. The idea of LightSquared using its licensed upper frequency spectrum (1545-1555 MHz) for terrestrial purpose needs to be permanently abandoned. It’s clear from the test results that this causes widespread GPS interference no matter which class of GPS is used.

    Finally, I would like to emphasize that the GPS user community should bear no cost as a result of any interference from LightSquared’s system. The GPS user community was blindsided in November 2010. While you can debate whether about the communication between the FCC, MSV/Skyterra/LightSquared, and the U.S. GPS Industry Council, no case can be made that the GPS user community knew of MSV/Skyterra/LightSquared’s intentions earlier than late last year, yet the FCC and LightSquared expect the GPS user community to bear the cost of interference caused by LightSquared’s system?

    Furthermore, far too little testing has been completed in order to fully understand the impact of LightSquared’s system on GPS receivers. Yes, we have a rough idea of the scale of interference from the test reports submitted in June 2011, but the devil is in the details.

    Even if LightSquared only uses the licensed lower spectrum (1526-1536 MHz), as it has proposed as an alternative, the number of high-precision receivers affected would be at least 200,000 at an estimated replacement cost of $10,000 per unit which equates to a total equipment replacement cost of $2 billion dollars. That does not include the cost of removal/installation, lost productivity, required software upgrades, and training. Does the FCC expect the GPS user community to bear that cost?

    For the above reasons, I recommend that the FCC deny LightSquared’s request to proceed and encourage them to use spectrum outside of the MSS band. The resources expended by federal/state/local governments and private corporations to vet LightSquared’s proposal to use the MSS band has run into the tens of millions of dollars, if not more than a one hundred million dollars. I’m afraid the cost of further vetting will double or triple the expenditure as well as result in tremendous opportunity cost as significant resources are expended by public and commercial entities to continue this debate.

    Thank you for your attention. If you feel that further testimony is needed, I’m more than happy to oblige.

    Sincerely,

    /S/ Eric Gakstatter

    Eric Gakstatter
    Principal – Discovery Management Group LLC
    Editor – GPS World Magazine Survey Scene enewsletter
    Editor – Geospatial Solutions
    PO Box 663
    West Linn, OR 97068
    Thanks, and see you next time.
    Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric

  • Final Report of FCC Working Group: Lose LightSquared from L-Band

    “Based on the analysis performed, LightSquared should not be permitted to use the L-Band spectrum for a densely-deployed, non-integrated terrestrial-only network. Such a network would cause unacceptable interference to GPS operations, wiping out an installed base of over 500 million units used in a wide array of public safety, aviation, industrial and consumer applications. While mitigation techniques utilizing filters were discussed in theory, they could not be tested as part of the WG effort because filters do not exist, even in prototypes. No information considered by the WG demonstrated that any mitigation techniques — other than relocation of the proposed terrestrial network to an alternative band — would be successful.” (From the U.S. GPS Industry Council’s overview of the WG report)

    The final report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on three months of research by the technical working group (TWG) tasked to investigate and analyze effects of powerful terrestrial L-band transmitters on the GPS signal and services finally appeared on June 30, nearly two weeks after its assigned date. LightSquared had requested an extension, and apparently the lawyers on its staff used the extra time to write many pages of self-justification and further argumentation of the company’s case. But the facts are clear: the LightSquared signal would devastate services for users of all GPS receivers tested.

    The final report is not easy to find on the FCC’s labyrinthine website. Read the full “final report of the Working Group (WG) that was formed to study the GPS overload/desensitization issue as described by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in DA 11-133” here.

    See also four appendices:
    one, “Appendix A.1: MOPS Based Procedure for Minimum Recommended Testing of LightSquared RFI to GPS Aviation Receivers”
    two, “Appendix G.2: from Alcatel-Lucent Labs, LightSquared L-Band GPS Receiver Equipment Impact Evaluation Testing”
    three, “Appendix H.1.1: JPL/NASA Report on Laboratory Testing of Receivers for the Space-Based Sub-Team and the High Precision Sub-Team”
    and four, “Appendix H.1.10: High Precision Receivers – NAVAIR Anechoic Chamber Test Results.”

    Full data for all device tests conducted by the Working Group is available for download at: ftp://twg:[email protected]

    GPS World readers may also be interested in the thoughtful and intelligible analyses provided by the U.S. GPS Industry Council (“Overview of the Final Report of the Working Group”) and the Coalition to Save Our GPS (“FCC-Mandated Working Group Report Documents Pervasive Harmful Interference with GPS“).

    The TWG conclusions of widespread disruption and harm to GPS services are consistent with those reached by third parties that have reported independent analyses: RTCA, Inc., a Federal Advisory Committee that evaluates aviation, and the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC).

    “The TWG faced an extraordinary challenge of trying to determine if the laws of physics would allow the high-power LightSquared signals to co-exist in adjacent radio spectrum with the low-power satellite signals of GPS over and above the complex regulatory challenges of managing spectrum sharing,” said Charles Trimble, chairman of the U.S. GPS Industry Council. “In the end, the laws of physics won out.”

    Trimble, who co-chaired the TWG, added, “There is no single, simple solution that can eliminate interference for all classes of GPS receivers in the near term. GPS touches every aspect of our lives.  It goes beyond the most widely known navigation applications such as car navigation and cell phones to hugely important applications such as agriculture, electric power grids, communications networks, infrastructure monitoring and construction.”

    Regarding possible effective solutions, he offered the view that “greater separation of the LightSquared signals and those of GPS are necessary if the value of GPS is to be protected and broadband communications can grow to its potential over the long term.”

    In the area of high-precision receivers used for precision agriculture, survey, construction, machine control, mining, geographic information systems (GIS), structural deformation monitoring, and science, the group found that damaging interference existed at times at very long distances for the LightSquared transmitters. NovAtel president and CEO Michael Ritter said, “Allowing LightSquared to interfere with the utilization of these high precision receivers would eliminate the productivity improvements provided to these industries and applications during the past 20 years and will result in significantly higher prices for goods and services from these industries to the consumer.”

    Key Results and Findings from the WG Report:

    1. The LightSquared Terrestrial Broadband Service Will Cause Harmful Interference to Nearly All GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications

    2. Limited Testing of LightSquared Terrestrial Broadband Operations in the “Lower” 4G LTE Channel Does Not Eliminate Harmful Interference to GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications.

    3. Increasing Filtering on GPS Receivers Is Not an Available Mitigation Technique.

    •  No Suitable Filters Exist;
    •  Even if Filters Were Available, They Have Undesirable Performance Impacts on GPS Receivers That Have Not Been Evaluated.
    •  Increased Filtering Does Not Mitigate Interference to Hundreds of Millions of GPS Users in the Installed Base.

    4. The Only Feasible Solution to the Harmful Interference Effects LightSquared’s Proposed 4G LTE Terrestrial Broadband Service Will Cause to GPS Receivers and GPS-Dependent Applications Is to Relocate the LightSquared Service to Spectrum that is Not Adjacent to GPS/RNSS, outside of the L-Band.

     

  • Letters to the Editor: LightSquared Satellite Case Skimpy

    LightSquared Satellite Case Skimpy

    Thank you for the story “LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record.” One thing worth clarifying: you state, “It appears that the purpose of Lightsquared’s satellite service is, now, to provide ancillary service in remote areas not covered by the ubiquitous primary terrestrial network, or in the event that the terrestrial network is destroyed — exactly the opposite of what the FCC authorized and the GPS industry had understood and agreed to.”

    But even this can’t work unless they are going to limit the number of subscribers in remote areas. A 4G user will expect decent wireless data throughput, but the subscriber’s connection is shared with other users within a spotbeam covering a large area. All connections must fit within the bandwidth of the single beam.

    Cell networks get around this problem by frequency re-use, possible since each cell covers a small geographic region. The key characteristic of a cellular network is the ability to re-use frequencies to increase both coverage and capacity.

    Admittedly, the LightSquared satellite, SkyTerra-1, is a very sophisticated space vehicle with a record 500 spotbeams. However, it provides a maximum user data rate of 300–400 Kbps, quite a bit short of what you would expect from a 4G-LTE connection. And at 400 Kbps, a 20-MHz spotbeam could still support only 50 to 100 connections.

    Another problem with using the satellite link is that although they have managed to solve the problem of requiring a special user handset, the user will still have to be outdoors and in the open to communicate with the satellite. And it is a geostationary satellite, which means high latency — at least 1/4 second. Using this for voice would create user annoyance.

    LightSquared should stop using the word “ancillary” and stop pretending that their network has a significant satellite component. It is going to have to be all ground-based if they are to provide 4G connectivity. It’s really starting to sound like the satellite is just a way for LightSquared to meet their FCC requirement.

    — Mike Whitehead
    VP Technology, Hemisphere GPS
    [Ed: citations and some discussion ommitted for space; available on request.]

    On Eric Gakstatter’s Survey columns:

    Keep up the good work. I find your e-newsletter columns the best way to stay informed [on the LightSquared issue].

    — editor, survey magazine

    Sounding Off

    When someone comes onto the basketball court with a hockey stick, the referees should not negotiate rule changes. Anything that allows LSQ to proceed either on the high or low ends of their allocated spectrum will in the long run be a blow to PNT users and suppliers worldwide. While this may very well end up as a compromise to the detriment of us all, now is not the time to concede any ground. He who flinches, loses, and this is not the time for engineers to give ground. It will set a precedent that lawyers will use again to decimate the spectrum in the future.

    —Informed particpant

  • LightSquared Prospects; FCC Chair Wants Interference Cleared, Hits Back at GPS

    LightSquared Prospects Dimming. Concerns by government and the private sector about GPS interference from LightSquared’s proposed wholesale LTE service accelerates. Government experts just reported that interference with GPS occurred in high portions of LightSquared’s spectrum bands and little in the lower spectrum. The National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board’s tests showed that some GPS receivers lost signal strength while others were fully disabled by LightSquared’s signal. FCC Chairman Genachowski, under fire for granting LightSquared a conditional waiver, has reiterated that he will not permit LightSquared to begin commercial service without first resolving concerns about potential interference to GPS devices.

    Genachowski hit back at the GPS community in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, “It should be no surprise to anyone involved in the LightSquared matter that the company was planning for some time to deploy a major terrestrial network in the spectrum adjacent to GPS.” Members of the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board have stated that they and the GPS community were not properly notified when the FCC removed the limit on the number of base stations deployed on this spectrum. And so it goes on. (See also LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record.)

    Getting Intimate. Mobile phones are the most personal computing devices. How personal? iPass conducted a study of 3,700 mobile employees at 1,000 enterprises worldwide. Sixty-one percent of these mobile workers sleep with their smartphones and 43 percent of those within arm’s reach. It gets worse. 58 percent of those that sleep with their phones at least occasionally, check it during the night. Not surprisingly, almost a third of mobile workers say their relationship with their smartphone causes friction with their partner. I’d say.

    Frienemies. In a newly extended agreement, Google will continue to provide archrival Apple with map and search capabilities. This kills rampant rumors that Apple will have a home-grown mapping database ready in the near term. In March, AppleInsider discovered an Apple job listing for an iOS Maps Application Developer to “radically improve” Apple’s location-based services. Even for Apple, a mapping database will take time to develop.

    App Stores Aren’t the Holy Grail. App developers whose marketing strategy starts and ends with getting onto app store “shelves” need a reality check. With more than 200,000 apps on Google’s Android Market and 350,000 on the Apple store, it is hard to stand out. According to Distimo, 20 percent of free applications and 80 percent of all paid applications have been downloaded less than 100 times in the Google Android Market, worldwide. Ninety-six applications have been downloaded more than 5 million times, with Google Maps the winner, with more than 50 million downloads in the Android Market.

    Traffic Targeted. Navteq will begin delivering its traffic services in Transport Protocol Expert Group (TPEG) standard format to enable location-targeted traffic services with radius search capabilities and user authentication and session management. The format allows more targeted data to be delivered in smaller file sizes.

    Mobile Advertising Flying High. Many of the location content providers are counting on monetizing with mobile advertising, and things are looking good. AdMob is receiving more than 2.7 billion mobile ad requests daily, spanning more than 80,000 mobile applications and websites. Now they are introducing ads for tablet formats. Ad Mob was purchased by Google last year for $750 million.

    Snippets

    • Nokia is ending the confusion of its dual names by killing the Ovi brand. Ovi maps, Ovi e-mail, Ovi music, Ovi store, and other Ovi products will continue to operate under the Nokia brand name.
    • Industry-backed Future of Privacy Forum is launching a new ApplicationPrivacy.org website to help developers create their own privacy policies. Location privacy concerns have so far been focused on the big players like Apple and Google, but app providers have a critical role.
    • Firefox for Android now includes a “do not track” tool that signals all web pages, images and advertisers that the user doesn’t want to be tracked.
    • Taipei officials are ordering Apple and Google to offer free seven-day mobile app trials in alignment with Taiwan’s Consumer Protection Act.
    • Google is raking in more than 97 percent of U.S. mobile search spending. Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing share the remainder.

    Monetizing with Nothing. The Inside Virtual Goods report estimates $1.6 billion dollars was spent by game players on virtual goods last year and is predicting a 40 percent increase in 2011. There is a gender factor. MocoSpace, mobile entertainment provider, reports that although the percent of male players (53 percent) is only slightly higher than female, men account for 90 percent of all virtual goods purchased in their games. Can you lend me your sword, sir?

     

  • LightSquared, FCC Rebuttals Distort Record

    A claim frequently made by LightSquared spokesperson Jeff Carlisle, and recently by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, that the GPS industry knew long ago about LightSquared’s plan for powerful terrestrial transmitters, would be a telling point — if it were true. But it is not. The verifiable fact is that the GPS industry knew about and agreed to a plan by a previous version of the company, for a different purpose, with a different business concept, and employing a completely different technological approach, one that would not have harmed GPS transmissions and disabled GPS users the way the current plan does. Calling the 2010 LightSquared plan the same as the 2003 Motient plan is running a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

    The GPS industry worked cooperatively with previous incarnations of LightSquared, known variously as Motient, Mobile Satellite Ventures Subsidiary LLC, and SkyTerra, to facilitate the provision of ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) service: a terrestrial service authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as an ancillary component of an integrated satellite offering.

    [Definition of ancillary: Providing necessary support to the primary activities or operation of an organization, institution, industry, or system.]

    The Record. Since at least 2003, the FCC has contemplated terrestrial operations as an ancillary supplement to a primarily satellite-based service. And since 2003, the GPS industry has been aware of this, and cooperated with it. The plan involved no foreseeable harm to the GPS signal or millions of GPS users. In fact, its very design to protect its own satellite signals also protected GPS signals from interference.

    LightSquared’s predecessors — Motient, MSV, and SkyTerra, in succession — presented a series of technical proposals in limited proceedings, and the FCC accepted a series of incremental modifications of its technical rules, all against the backdrop of the fundamental requirement: that the terrestrial operations would be ancillary to and fully integrated with a primary satellite service. The GPS community evaluated changes in the technical rules in this context and did its best to cooperate in technical modifications that would apply to terrestrial operations subject to these fundamental constraints.

    More to the point, those predecessor companies had to protect their own primary satellite operations from interference. The protection that their own satellite operations required was also sufficient — at that time — to protect GPS receivers. Because of these companies’ self-interest in protecting their own satellite signals in-band, the GPS industry focused its efforts on limiting out-of-band emissions from the anticipated ATC operations to GPS reception in the adjacent spectrum band, as evidenced by the agreements reached between the parties involved.

    Ring in the New. The present situation is completely different. The current owners of LightSquared — entities affiliated with the New York hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners — took over SkyTerra in March 2010.  That’s when everything changed.  A new senior management team, a new business plan, and a new technological implementation: 40,000 powerful terrestrial transmitters adjacent to the L1 band in which GPS operates. Nothing previously seen by the FCC or the GPS industry even hinted at this approach.

    LightSquared now proposes an extensive deployment of terrestrial transmitters, operating independently of its satellite offering, which will create interference to GPS far beyond what was contemplated by prior FCC policy and applicable rules. GPS operators understood and agreed that satellite operators in the Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) band could deploy terrestrial service on an ancillary basis to complement satellite-based services in areas where satellite reception was weak. But there was never any agreement to, nor awareness of, the kind of dense and very powerful terrestrial network that LightSquared now seeks to install.

    LightSquared spokesperson Carlisle paints his organization as involved in prior communication to and negotiations with the GPS community in connection with the ATC rules. This disguises an essential point. That was a different organization, with a different ownership and leadership, a different business plan, and a different technology to back it up.

    Carlisle himself says so in a November, 2010 update letter to the FCC, which is when the rumbling really began.

    “In the six years since LightSquared’s [initial terrestrial] application was granted, control of the company has been transferred and its business plans have evolved.”

    FCC chairman Julius Genachowski picked up the ball in a recent letter replying to Senator Charles Grassley’s concerns about LightSquared interference. “It should be no surprise to anyone involved in the LightSquared matter that the company was planning for some time to deploy a major terrestrial network in the spectrum adjacent to GPS.”

    If an untruth is repeated enough times in enough different places, it begins to pass itself off as the truth.

    Two to Ponder. The evolution of LightSquared’s business model involves two key elements, both of them at odds with established FCC policy, not to mention GPS viability — and thus not reasonably anticipatable by anyone.

    First, LightSquared’s proposed terrestrial broadband operations cannot be described as ancillary to the primary purpose for which its predecessors, Motient, MSV, and SkyTerra, received their spectrum and licenses — that is, to provide a service that was primarily a mobile satellite service.

    Second, a requirement for the ATC service in the MSS band was that any terrestrial service be integrated with the satellite service. LightSquared’s new business model contemplates no meaningful integration of terrestrial service with satellite service.

    The deviations from established policy and rules required to accommodate LightSquared’s new business model were not mere technicalities. They represent a fundamental change to a complex and interrelated set of rules and policies that were carefully designed to protect GPS users from interference.

    On Its Head. The November 2010 Lightsquared letter to the FCC described a new business model that turns the original concept on its head. LightSquared for the first time revealed plans to build a “nationwide network of 40,000 terrestrial base stations,” and stated that “the capacity of its fully deployed terrestrial network across all base stations will be tens of thousands of times the capacity of either of [its] satellites.”

    Under the only combined satellite/terrestrial service plan described in the letter, an end user would be provided with basic usage (that is, usage before additional charges apply) of one gigabyte of terrestrial wireless broadband usage but only 500 kilobytes of satellite date usage, less than what is needed to send a single email in many cases.

    It appears that the purpose of Lightsquared’s satellite service is, now, to provide ancillary service in remote areas not covered by the ubiquitous primary terrestrial network, or in the event that the terrestrial network is destroyed — exactly the opposite of what the FCC authorized and the GPS industry had understood and agreed to.

    In 2003, the FCC stated that: “We will authorize MSS ATC subject to conditions that ensure that the added terrestrial component remains ancillary to the principal MSS offering. We do not intend, nor will we permit, the terrestrial component to become a stand-alone service.”

    LightSquared now claims, and at least one FCC commissioner wants Congress to believe, that the GPS industry should have anticipated that what was bedrock when the FCC adopted its ATC rules would become quicksand by 2011. But there is no language in prior Commission orders that might have put the GPS community on clear notice that the rules of the game were likely to be changed in such a fundamental way.

    The Distortion. LightSquared has mischaracterized the GPS community’s earlier cooperation as permission to extend the technical rules, without further consideration, to the fundamentally different, new and far more threatening mode of operation now proposed by its 2010 re-incarnation.

    When the FCC first authorized ATC, it made it clear that in the event that services in bands adjacent to ATC operations, like GPS, suffered harmful interference, it would be the responsibility of the ATC operator, not the GPS provider, to cure that interference. If LightSquared cannot demonstrate that it will not cause – or that it alone will ameliorate – harmful interference to GPS operations, it must not be permitted to initiate service.

    A cursory examination of Carlisle’s and Genachowski’s backgrounds reveals nothing pertaining to engineering or technical knowledge. Both are lawyers. Such professional experience has proven to go far in Washington D.C., of course. That and a line of talk.

    Interestingly, Carlisle served as deputy chief and then chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau from 2001 to 2005 — the period during which the earlier, less harmful ATC agreement was reached.  Carlisle managed the development of FCC policies on broadband and competitive entry into the local exchange market, and was the architect of FCC policies on bankruptcy of common carriers.

    Genachowski has a long-term and reportedly close relationship with President Obama, who appointed him to the FCC chairmanship.  His background as a Supreme Court law clerk has led some to speculate that he may play a strong role in determining legal strategy on FCC court cases. His official bio states that “Prior to his FCC appointment, Genachowski spent more than a decade working in the technology and media industries as an executive, investor, and board member.”

    The GPS industry is amply on record as supporting the goal of ensuring that all Americans have access to broadband services, and President Obama’s goal to make more spectrum available for wireless broadband operations. However, pursuit of those goals cannot jeopardize the many critical functions performed by GPS in the national economy, security, or defense, and the overall U.S. infrastructure.

  • The System: Third Report by LightSquared/GPS Technical Working Group

    Plus: Locata as Alternative PNT, Indian SBAS, Galileo Launch

    Slow but steady progress of the Working Group (WG) convened by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to study the GPS overload/desensitization issue is related in the group’s Third [monthly] Pogress Report, filed with the FCC on May 16. For the third consecutive time, the report contains little in terms of actual results of testing for interference/desensitization of GPS receivers by the proposed LightSquared terrestrial signal. It continues to carefully lay out the ground rules adopted by several subteams for testing the particular receivers in their domain. As of the date of filing, it reported, “testing is underway for six device categories and has been completed for the Space-Based Receivers category.”

    As related in May’s The System, the Working Group has self-divided into sub-teams.

    Aviation Sub‐Team. Laboratory testing was scheduled to be completed by May 20, conducted by Zeta Associates. The team’s report is being compiled, and some receivers were to be made available for field testing near Las Vegas.

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a flight advisory warning pilots that GPS service in one area of Nevada could be “unreliable or unavailable” May 16–27, during LightSquared testing. Tests were to be conducted in six-hour blocks.

    “Pilots are strongly encouraged to report anomalies during testing to the appropriate ARTCC to assist in the determination of the extent of GPS degradation during tests,” said the advisory.

    Cellular Sub‐Team. Two of the three laboratories engaged to perform radiated and conducted testing have added work shifts to complete their processes by the TWG’s deadline; the third lab is being configured. Forty-five models of GPS-enabled cell phones will undergo testing, following a detailed procedure described in Appendix D to the report.

    General Location/Nav Sub‐Team. This team recently added new members representing public safety users at the request of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC). See related article, “LightSquared Interference with Emergency Service.“ The sub‐team has accumulated live‐sky GPS test data for use in dynamic testing scenarios, and plans further field tests in the Las Vegas, Nevada, area, described in Appendix G.

    High-Precision, Networks, Timing. The sub teams have completed testing of all devices in the NAVAIR lab facility. Some team members expect to have some receivers of the same models that have been tested by NAVAIR available for field testing in Las Vegas, and are working to develop test procedures for the field tests.

    Space-Based Receivers. The team completed its laboratory testing activities as reported on April 16, and is now reviewing the initial draft analysis of the impacts.

    Senate Letter

    Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is showing increasing signs of life in response to the problem. As of May 23, a total of 32 senators had signed a letter to the FCC initially drafted on April 15 by two U.S. senators from the heartland, Pat Roberts (Republican, Kansas) and Ben Nelson (Democrat, Nebraska). The joint public letter urges action in the form of “asking the FCC to take all necessary steps to protect GPS.”

    What sway, if any, the Senate holds over the FCC, which forms part of the executive (presidential) branch of government, remains unclear. However, the letter does signal some heightened interest in Washington, presumably as a result of hearing from constituents. Kansas and Nebraska, of course, have large-scale farming activity, in which precision agriculture driven by GPS plays a significant role.

    The two original authors state that “the International Bureau, a sub-organization within the FCC, granted a conditional waiver to allow a single company, called LightSquared, to build tens of thousands of ground stations that may cause widespread interference to neighboring GPS signals.”

    The letter goes on to outline the many key roles that GPS plays in economic activity and specifically in “economic recovery,” public safety, aviation, and national defense. “Reliable GPS affects virtually every American,” Nelson and Roberts assert.

    They close by “calling on the FCC to ensure that GPS is not compromised in any way. To do so, the full commission must be involved and require LightSquared to objectively demonstrate non-interference as a condition prior to any operation of its proposed service. Anything less is an unacceptable risk to public safety.”

    The latest signer, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, writes on his website that “Given the FCC’s haste so far, I worry that LightSquared will not have interference problems resolved before given the green light to become fully operational. Farmers shouldn’t have to worry that they’re planting the correct seed or applying the precise amount of fertilizer needed for the soil to optimally produce the crop, and ambulance drivers shouldn’t have to weather taking a wrong turn or driving into a ditch because a new system is scrambling their existing navigational technology.”

    Grassley adds, “If anything, the shadows around the LightSquared project should have led the FCC to proceed with caution rather than step on the gas. Yet the opposite happened. The agency originally planned to take public comment on a key regulation necessary for green-lighting the project for only one week. The commission relented and held the comment period open longer only after consumers and affected businesses protested.”

    Defense. Congressman Mike Turner included language in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that requires the Secretary of Defense to notify Congress if he determines there is widespread interference with the military’s use of GPS caused by a commercial communications service. Turner, the House Armed Services Subcommittee chairman on Strategic Forces, has legislative jurisdiction over space and satellite systems, and included the provision in his Mark of the NDAA.

    LightSquared Interference with Emergency Services, Public Safety

    Law enforcement, emergency medical service (EMS), and fire first-responders in the state of New Mexico who participated in LightSquared/GPS interference testing at Holloman Air Force Base have submitted reports verifying a negative effect of LightSquared transmissions on their GPS equipment.
    A cover letter from the New Mexico E-911 program director states that the reports “substantiate concerns that the LightSquared network will . . . jeopardize 911 and public safety nationwide.”

    The director of emergency services for Otero County, New Mexico, writes that “during the testing process the [ambulance’s automatic vehicle location] unit was limited to only being able to see 7 satellites at any location and upon moving just 50 yards from our position at the test site towards the [LightSquared] tower were diminished to 3 or 4 satellites and at 60 yards unable to establish any satellite connections. This is still approximately 1/8 of a mile from the tower.”

    The tests were conducted on April 15 and 16 of this year at Holloman Air Force Base, in a live sky environment.

    Locata Flight Results; ICAO to Weigh for Alternative PNT

    “The Need for an Alternative PNT” was presented to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) 10th meeting in Montreal, Canada, on May 19 by the Australian delegation, proposing a new method for alternative position, navigation, and time (APNT). ICAO accepted the paper, and the Locata technology it describes, placing it on the table as a potential back-up to GPS. The organization will take up the discussion at its next meeting in October.

    Locata Corporation of Griffith, Australia, also released preliminary post-processing analysis on data collected during its APNT flight trial on May 9. An aircraft fitted with a Locata receiver and several truth-reference devices recorded data for three hours while flying at approximately 7,000 feet. The Locata receiver tracked a ground-based network of six LocataLites, which provided positioning signals to cover an area of approximately 1,500 square kilometers. The aircraft flew pre-defined patterns that gave varying distances to LocataLites (3–49 kilometers) during the test.

    During this trial, the Locata first acquired and tracked LocataLite signals at a range of 51.9 kilometers, according to the company, which provided an early-stage assessment of the performance of the Locata pseudorange-based (code) solution against a high-precision carrier-phase differential GPS solution. Figure 1 shows the difference in East, North, and Height between the high-precision GPS truth carrier solution and the Locata code solution. Relative to the high-precision GPS, the Locata code solution has a 95 percent RMS in horizontal of 2.1 meters and 3.2 meters in vertical. The company attributed the larger difference in the vertical to worse dilution of precision in the vertical component for this specific physical deployment of its network. Over this test data analysis, the Locata’s average VDOP of 3.3 compared to an average HDOP of 1.5.

    One test objective, the company stated, was to obtain information on the significant tropospheric effects inherent in a ground-based system over these sorts of ranges. Further detailed analysis is now underway to measure and then reduce the residual biases present in the Locata code solution. For this first-pass data analysis these biases are approximately –0.8 meters in North and –1.1 meters in height. When these residual biases are further analyzed and reduced, Locata anticipates that the 95 percent RMS code-solution accuracies will improve to better than 1 meter horizontal and 2.5 meters vertical.

    Locata emphasized that this is an early-stage analysis of first flight tests, expressly designed to provide data for a better understanding of the Locata system’s performance characteristics in ICAO-type APNT applications, and for a USAF-contracted LocataNet deployment at White Sands Missile Range that will cover more than 6,500 square kilometers. Further flight trials are planned in the near future to refine the system.

    In Q3/2011 Locata expects papers to be published on carrier-phase performance observed over multiple flights, with presentations during ION 2011 Conference in Portland, Oregon.

    Figure 1. Difference in East, North, and Height between preliminary Locata pseudorange-based solution and high-precision differential carrier-phase GPS solution.

    Indian SBAS Aloft

    The Indian Space Research Organisation successfully launched a GSAT-8 satellite, carrying a GPS-Aided Geo Augmentation Navigation (GAGAN) satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) transponder, on May 21, aboard an Ariane-V launch vehicle, from Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite will be stationed at 55 degrees east longitude.

    Galileo Picks October 20

    The first two operational/validation satellites of the Galileo project received a launch date of October 20 of this year. Antonio Tajani, European Commission vice-president for industry and entrepreneurship, predicted that this will keep the system on track for provision of “three early services in 2014/2015 based on an initial constellation of 18 satellites.”

  • The System: First GPS Intereference Report Sent to FCC

    First Overload Interference/Desensitization to GPS Receivers, Systems, and Networks Report to FCC

    The joint working group co-led by the U.S. GPS Industry Council and Lightsquared, investigating potential problems of LightSquared/GPS interference, delivered its first monthly report on March 15 as directed by the FCC. The report (PDF) lays out a schedule for receiver selection and testing and names 34 members, two working group co-chairs, and four information facilitators of a technical working group (TWG) supervising and analyzing the assessment of GNSS receivers operating under conditions of a dense national network of high-powered cell-phone transmitters. “TWG members represent a diverse group of interested parties including equipment and chipset manufacturers, aerospace/aviation companies, wireless providers, engineering firms, public safety, and various federal agencies. Additionally, several individuals have volunteered to be advisors to the TWG,” said the report.

    The TWG held its first meeting on March 3 in Arlington, Virginia, and via a conference bridge for members around the globe who were unable to attend in person. In that and subsequent teleconferences, the TWG focused on the first seven items from the Work Plan:

    Establish pertinent analytical and test methodologies and assumptions underlying the test regime: definition of harmful interference, relevant information regarding terrestrial broadband network, interference analysis assumptions, and evaluation of potential test methodologies.

    • Select categories of receivers and receivers to be tested.
    • Develop operational scenarios.
    • Establish methodology for analyzing test results.
    • Derive test conditions based on the established operational scenarios.
    • Write test plan and procedures.
    • Identify and engage appropriate test facilities.

    LightSquared provided technical details to the TWG regarding the equipment planned for its terrestrial broadband deployment, including the channelization plan, output power, out-of-band emission (OOBE) characteristics, and emissions mask.

    The GPS community is concerned that desensitization/overload due to strong signals outside of the GPS band may cause GPS receivers to operate in a non-linear mode with reduced gain (that is, gain compression) for the desired GPS signal. Other receiver impairments may also arise as a result of the nearby strong signals.

    The TWG has agreed to move forward with a combination of laboratory-based and field-based testing programs. Field testing will be performed at outdoor test locations using transmitters, filters, and antennas similar to those that LightSquared plans to deploy in its commercial operations.

    Other items of interest in the report:

    Definition of Harmful interference at the GPS/GNSS/Augmentations/L-Band Receiver. “The TWG members have discussed a number of receiver parameters related to the definition of harmful interference. In the FCC Rules, harmful interference is defined as ‘interference which endangers the functioning of a radionavigation service or of other safety services or seriously degrades, obstructs, or repeatedly interrupts a radiocommunication service operating in accordance with [the ITU ] Radio Regulations.’

    “Harmful interference affects different types of receivers in different ways. The key factors that pertain to the functioning of GPS receivers and/or whether service is degraded, obstructed, or interrupted are accuracy (position, velocity, time), availability (ability to perform a given function), coverage (within what space can a function be performed), integrity (what is the probability that the results are correct), and continuity (what is the probability that a given function can be completed). Metrics for harmful interference are developed from an understanding of the consequential relationship between negative impacts and receiver parameters, which include effective C/N0, PVT accuracy, time to first fix, loss of lock, cycle slips, etc. The signal conditions to be taken into account are defined in the GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS) Performance Standard, 4th Edition, Interface Specifications (ISs), GPS policy, and both the present and planned future signal environments will be considered.Environmental and field conditions in which GPS receivers operate will also be considered.

    “It should be possible to assess interference impact, up to that which includes harmful interference, using metrics in terms of receiver parameters that include measurable changes in effective C/N0 as well as position accuracy, time to first fix, loss of lock, cycle slips, etc. Related to this discussion is whether there is any margin that could be budgeted for terrestrial broadband operation, and if so, what that amount could be. When considering systems guaranteed for safety-of-life operations, there may be very little or no margin.

    “There is general agreement within the TWG that the device testing protocols should include changes in effective C/N0 and degradation of other key performance measures so as not to exclude data that might be relevant for the post-testing analytical phase using operational scenarios.

    Overload interference/desensitization at the GPS/GNSS/Augmentations/L-band Receiver. “Desensitization/overload due to strong signals outside of the GPS band may cause the GPS receiver to operate in a non-linear mode with reduced gain (i.e., gain compression) for the desired GPS signal; there may also be other receiver impairments caused by strong signals outside the GPS band. The TWG will consider these mechanisms further after testing is underway and sufficient samples are available to adequately assess such mechanisms.”

    Evaluation of Potential Test Methodologies. “The TWG has agreed to move forward with a combination of laboratory-based and field-based testing programs. Laboratory tests are repeatable, allow for the creation of a fully controlled environment and the ability to test multiple scenarios and many devices in an efficient, repetitive manner. Field tests expose devices to a real-world environment where measurements can be performed at various distances and morphologies from terrestrial broadband network sites in order to gauge the effects of distance and physical environments on terrestrial broadband signal strength and potential interference. One advantage of field testing is that it captures a complete, live test environment comprehensively and helps develop keener testing or analysis insights that modeling cannot offer. The major disadvantage or concern is that field testing uses the present environment, not the environment that might exist at some future or past time. Interference testing analysis has to consider worse-case assumptions, and not only the current test reality.

    “Laboratory testing will be performed either using conducted testing, where devices are connected directly to transmission sources via 50 ohm connectors, or through radiated testing in anechoic or other radiated emissions chambers. While conducted testing is the preferred laboratory methodology, anechoic chambers will be used where conducted testing is not practical, is not recommended by the manufacturer, or where connectorized devices cannot be made available within the established test timeline.

    “Field testing will be performed at outdoor test locations that will utilize transmitters, filters, and antennas similar to those that will be deployed by Lig
    htSquared in its commercial operations.”

    The TWG identified seven categories of receivers that it considers representative of non-military GPS user equipment operating in the United States: aviation, cellular, general location/navigation, high precison, timing, space-based receivers, and networks.

    Seven sub-teams are focusing on these receiver categories. The sub-teams are responsible for determining device selection and prioritization criteria, defining operational scenarios, listing testing conditions and test plan procedures, and recommending appropriate test facilities.

    Save Our GPS Coalition Forms

    Representatives from a variety of industries and companies have formed the Coalition to Save Our GPS to resolve what it terms a serious threat to the national positioning, navigation, and timing service: the FCC conditional waiver to Lightsquared allowing expansion of terrestrial use of the satellite spectrum immediately neighboring that of GPS, potentially causing severe interference to millions of GPS receivers.

    “GPS is essential to Americans every day — it’s in our cars, the airplanes in which we fly and the ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks that help keep us safe. It’s also used in many industrial applications and even synchronizes our wireless, computer, and utility networks,” the group stated. “LightSquared’s plans to build up to 40,000 ground stations transmitting radio signals one billion times more powerful than GPS signals as received on earth could mean 40,000 ‘dead spots’ — each miles in diameter — disrupting the vitally important services GPS provides.”

    The Coalition (www.SaveOurGPS.org) includes representatives from aviation, agriculture, transportation, construction, engineering, surveying, and GPS-based equipment manufacturers and service providers.

    Initial members of the coalition are the Aeronautical Repair Stations Association, Air Transport Association, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Case New Holland, Caterpillar Inc., Edison Electric Institute, Esri, Garmin, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Deere & Company, National Association of Manufacturers, OmniSTAR, and Trimble. More members are expected to join in the near future.

    The following is from a statement issued by the coalition:

    “[In] The unusual waiver granted in January to LightSquared by the FCC . . . the usual FCC process of conducting extensive testing followed by approvals was not followed. Instead, the process was approve first, then test. Additional safeguards are needed, so the coalition recommends:

    “The FCC must make clear, and the NTIA must ensure, that LightSquared’s license modification is contingent on the outcome of the mandated study. The study must be comprehensive, objective, and based on correct assumptions about existing GPS uses rather than theoretical possibilities.

    “The FCC should make clear that LightSquared and their investors should not proceed to make any investment in operating facilities prior to a final FCC decision (or at least make it explicit that they do so at their own risk). While this is the FCC’s established policy, it failed to make this explicit in its order.

    “Further, the FCC’s, and NTIA’s, finding that ‘harmful interference concerns have been resolved’ must mean ‘resolved to the satisfaction of preexisting GPS providers and users.’ Resolution of interference has to be the obligation of LightSquared, not the extensive GPS user community of millions of citizens. LightSquared must bear the costs of preventing interference of any kind resulting from operations on LightSquared’s frequencies.

    “This is a matter of critical national interest. There must be a reasonable opportunity for public comment of at least 45 days on the report produced by the working group.”

    WAAS Official Again

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on March 18 that WAAS PRN 135 has resumed normal operations. “The WAAS team recently received the final report from Lockheed Martin on the failure of Galaxy 15,” reported FAA GNSS program manager Leo Eldredge. “After a review of that report, the team determined that the satellite was ready to be returned to operations.”

    The FAA said that PRN 135 is currently located at ~120°W and enroute to its final destination of 133.1°W, but is now broadcasting operational corrections that can be used by both aviation and ground users, including those in Northwest Alaska.

    In April 2010, satellite operator Intelsat reported it had lost contact with PRN 135 (named Galaxy 15) and it was drifting uncontrolled. At that time, the FAA reported that it would drift out of WAAS service within a few weeks. Instead, PRN 135 remained within a usable condition/location, although drifting east, until December 2010, when it ceased operating. On December 23, Intelsat reported that the power from the Galaxy 15 battery completely drained during its loss of Earth lock and the baseband equipment command unit reset, as it was designed to do. Shortly thereafter Galaxy 15 began accepting commands, and Intelsat engineers began receiving telemetry in the operations center.

    Intelsat determined that static electricity charge caused the initial failure, and has uploaded new software to prevent the event from occurring again. There are now three operational WAAS GEO satellites:

    ◾ PRN 133 located at 98°W.

    ◾ PRN 135 located at 133.1°W (currently at ~120°W); will arrive at 133.1°W on or about April 4, 2011.

    ◾ PRN 138 located at 107.3°W.

    EGNOS SOL Operational

    The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) was declared operational for safety-of-life (SOL) services on March 2. The service consists of GPS corrected signals intended for transport applications, particularly aviation, where lives could be endangered if the performance of the navigation system is degraded.

    The SOL coverage area, expected performances, and conditions of use are described in the EGNOS Safety-Of-Life Service Definition Document (SDD, see env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/egnosSOL). The two operational EGNOS satellites — Inmarsat-3-F2/AOR-E at 15.5 degrees west longitude using PRN code 120, and Artemis at 21.5 degrees east longitude using PRN code 124 — now transmit Message Type 2, indicating that the signals are available for safety-critical purposes.

    Air-navigation service providers can now publish SBAS precision approach procedures, localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPV), based on EGNOS. On March 22, EGNOS operator European Satellite Services Provider published the first EGNOS LPV approaches for use at Pau Airport, near the Pyrénées in southern France.

    EGNOS improves accuracy and provides integrity to the GPS signal over most of Europe and parts of North Africa. The system uses a monitoring network of 40 ground stations to provide the corrections with 99.9 percent availability over the core service region. Accuracy is measured by GPS user equivalent range error typically about 4.2 meters after EGNOS corrections for GPS signals from satellites at a 5-degree elevation, and 2.4 meters for satellite signals arriving from a 90-degree elevation. If reliability falls below a minimum level, EGNOS users are alerted within six seconds.

    Russian SBAS Satellite Passes Transponder Tests

    The Luch-5A geostationary communication satellite under construction has successfully completed a cycle of transponder tests. The satellite includes a transponder for the System for Differential Correction and Monitoring (SDCM), the Russian satellite-based augmentation system. SDCM will provide integrity monitoring of
    GPS and GLONASS satellites and differential corrections and analyses of GLONASS performance: real-time differential corrections with horizontal accuracy of 1–1.5 meters, vertical of 2–3 meters.

  • The System: Test Data Predicts Disastrous GPS Jamming by FCC-Authorized Broadcaster

    Representatives of the GPS industry presented to members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) laboratory evidence of interference with the GPS signal by a proposed new broadcaster on January 19 of this year. The meeting and subsequent filing did not dissuade FCC International Bureau Chief Mindel De La Torre from authorizing Lightquared to proceed with ancillary terrestrial component operations, installing up to 40,000 high-power transmitters close to the GPS frequency, across the United States.

    The document describing the testing states that the Lightsquared initiative “will have a severe impact on the GPS band” and “will create a disastrous interference problem for GPS receiver operation to the point where GPS receivers will cease to operate (complete loss of fix) when in the vicinity of these transmitters.”

    On January 26, the FCC waived its own rules and granted permission for the potential interferer to broadcast in the L Band 1 (1525 MHz–1559 MHz) from powerful land-based transmitters. This band lies adjacent to the band (1559–1610 MHz) where GPS and other GNSSs operate.

    The FCC called for further testing to be led by LightSquared and completed by June 15.

    Prior to the decision, representatives of the U.S. GPS Industry Council and GPS manufacturers Garmin and Trimble presented “Experimental Evidence of Wide Area GPS Jamming That Will Result from LightSquared’s Proposal to Convert Portions of L Band 1 to High Power Terrestrial Broadband,” to five members of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, including its chief, two members of the FCC International Bureau, one from the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, and two from the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

    A full PDF of “Experimental Evidence of Wide Area GPS Jamming” is available.

    The document conveys results of testing on a common portable consumer automotive navigation device and on a common general aviation receiver. The consumer GPS device began to be jammed at a power level representing a distance of 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers) from the simulated LightSquared transmitter. The consumer device lost a fix at 0.66 miles (1.1 kilometers) from the transmitter.

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-certified aviation receiver began to be jammed at a distance of 13.8 miles (22.1 kilometers) and experienced total loss of fix at 5.6 miles (9.0 kilometers) from the transmitter.

    During the laboratory testing, GPS signals were simulated by a Spirent GSS6560 GPS simulator, representing a constellation of 31 GPS satellites, the current configuration. LightSquared’s signal was simulated using a Rhode and Schwartz SMIQ-03S signal generator with digital modulation, amplified to achieve the relevant signal strengths. Full technical specifications and parameters are described in the Experimental Evidence document linked above.

    The industry report concludes: “The proposed LightSquared plan . . .  will deny GPS service over vast areas of the United States.”
    In its decision document on January 26, the FCC not only authorized LightSquared to proceed, it turned up its nose at assertions that the entire process had been conducted in near-stealth mode as well as on an accelerated track.

    LightSquared was established in mid-2010 by “an experienced team of global telecommunications executives and investors.” From 2001 to 2005, Lightsquared executive vice president Jeff Carlisle served as deputy chief and then chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau.

    See also “Act Now to Protect GPS Signal.”

    and

    “The FCC’s Decision on LightSquared: High-Precision Users Would Be Affected Most.”

    Galileo’s GATE Opened

    The Galileo Test and Development Environment (GATE) in Berchtesgaden, Germany, officially opened on February 4. The system operator, IFEN GmbH of Poing, Germany, jointly with the German Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Development, announced the opening for use by commercial and organizational entities seeking to test equipment with the coming Galileo signals. GATE was developed on behalf of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with funding by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

    The test area extends across a valley of approximately 65 square kilometers, southeast of Munich, where antennae atop surrounding peaks broadcast the various Galileo signals. Technical details and specifications of the test environment are at www.gate-testbed.com.

    The GATE infrastructure is capable of transmitting the Galileo Open Service, the Safety-of-Life Service (functional, with certification as a next step), the Commercial Service, and a Public Regulated Service  dummy signal.

    The GATE system upgrade has been further extended to also support user integrity testing, simulating simple alarm-triggering events on the system/satellite level, supporting GPS and GATE/Galileo dual-constellation receiver-autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM), individual user integrity test scenarios, and tests of receivers with different RAIM functionalities.

    Next-Generation GLONASS

    As this magazine goes to press, a Soyuz rocket carring a new GLONASS-K1 satellite has moved to the Plesetsk Cosmodrome launch pad for a scheduled blast-off on February 24. Assuming all goes well, the satellite’s eventual transmissions will include Russia’s new CDMA signal on a GLONASS L3 frequency. Further information and photos will be posted to env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/glonassk.

    In Other Developments. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said it lost contact with a military satellite launched on February 1, a painful incident following the failed launch of three GLONASS-M satellites in December.

    The Geo-IK-2 satellite, designed for geodetic studies, remains in its transfer orbit because the upper stage failed to restart for its second circularizing burn. Based on the GLONASS-M bus, Geo-IK-2 carries laser reflectors, GPS/GLONASS receiving equipment, and an altimeter. Communications with the satellite have been re-established but it is not clear how useful it will be in its current orbit.

    Galileo IOV August Launch

    The European Space Agency announced that the first two Galileo in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites will rise on August 31. They will ride aboard a Soyuz-ST-B rocket from the Kouros, French Guiana, Space Center. There was no word about the third and fourth IOV satellites, which had at one point been scheduled for an October launch, at a time when the first two were penciled for a June launch.

    JAVAD Receivers Track Compass B1 Signal

    JAVAD GNSS has announced that, with modified firmware, all of the company’s receivers can now track the Chinese Compass B1 signal. The company states that Compass is the sixth GNSS system that its receivers can track, joining GPS, GLONASS, Galileo (the two GIOVE in-orbit validation experimental satellites), SBAS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service or EGNOS), and Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).

    JAVAD GNSS made available several plots, shown here. One is a log file, collected on JAVAD’s TR_G3TH board in Moscow during the last weekend in January, reporting up to 26 satellites from the various systems, locked simultaneously. Also provided below are several other plots showing the new capability.

    The company further stated that it will add Compass tracking to almost all receivers in near future, as a firmware upgrade.

  • The System: FCC Asked to Authorize Potential Interferer

    In November, December, and January, a regulatory drama with high potential impact on the GPS signal and domestic U.S. GPS users began unfolding before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As this magazine goes to press on January 24, the issue remains far from resolved, although hearings and far-reaching decisions may have transpired by mid-February.

    A company called LightSquared applied to the FCC in late November for modification of its authority for ancillary terrestrial component (ATC). It asked the FCC to grant it permission to broadcast a co-primary terrestrial wireless service in the L-band frequencies typically reserved for space systems and radionavigation satellite services. Lightsquared wants to broadcast in those frequencies, not only from space but from powerful terrestrial transmitters that could effectively overload the GPS signal for millions of users in metropolitan areas across the United States. LightSquared asked the FCC to fast-track its request.

    The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has expressed its concern that LightSquared’s proposal to sell wholesale terrestrial-only services could interfere with navigation and E-911 systems. NTIA is concerned that terrestrial-based devices operating in the mobile satellite services band could interfere with GPS timing receivers, aeronautical communications, and the Inmarsat mobile satellite service used by the Department of Defense.

    Write to Congress. Members of the GPS community who are concerned by the proposal may contact their Congressional representatives, to advocate for a fully independent technical study by the NTIA before the FCC takes any action. Contact information and appropriate case file numbers are given at env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/fcc.

    The FCC may have decided not to follow the Administrative Procedures Act, which directs it to consider a waiver request under an open and transparent rule-making, so that all affected parties may comment. It appears that the FCC could grant a waiver to LightSquared for a terrestrial wireless broadband service, but condition the service going operational on interference studies. Lightsquared has proposed that such studies be conducted under its own direction.

    Voices within the GPS community have asked for an independent, third-party, unbiased technical analysis to precede a fact-based rule-making, rather than a study organized and led by the interested party.

    LightSquared previously received authorization to build a hybrid network using satellite and terrestrial-based communications. The waiver would allow its wholesale customers to offer terrestrial-only services. The company’s buildout is scheduled to include a 40,000-cell-site terrestrial network deployed by Nokia Siemens Networks that will cover around 90 percent of the population of the United States.

    The trade publication RCR Wireless reported that Lightsquared may have run short of funds. “The company has raised about $2 billion to date. Reuters is reporting that Harbinger Capital Partners, which is funding LightSquared, has let some employees go as it attempts to right-size the company. The Harbinger fund now is valued at about $7 billion, a steep drop from the $26 billion it once counted.” The finding may shed light on why Lightsquared sought fast-track approval over winter holidays.

    24+3 GPS Configuration

    The U.S. Air Force 50th Space Wing announced completion of phase one of the two-phase GPS constellation expansion called Expandable 24, also known informally as 24+3, to increase global coverage and provide users with more robust satellite availability.
    Phase one concluded when the last of three satellites that began repositioning maneuvers in January, 2010, completed its journey on January 18. Phase two, a repositioning of three more satellites, started in August 2010 and is expected to end in June of this year. At that time, the GPS constellation will attain the most optimal geometry in its 42-year history, maximizing GPS coverage for all users.

    GPS IIF-2. The second satellite of the next generation, GPS IIF-2, received a launch date of June 23 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

    EC: $1 Trillion in Europe Depends on GPS

    The European Commission (EC) presented its mid-term review on the development of Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). The report reiterates previous statements that Galileo will deliver initial services in 2014 — despite outside and unofficial speculation that the date may slip to 2015. The report also estimates that 6–7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of developed countries in Europe, an amount that equals €800 billion ($1 trillion U.S.) depends on satellite navigation; that is, on GPS, for the time being.

    A December editorial in this magazine hypothesized that, on that basis, roughly $3 trillion of the global economy depends on GPS.

    Costs Rising. An EC message to the European Parliament and European Council served notice that reaching full operational capability for Galileo will cost €1.9 billion more than the €3.4 billion already allocated. The EC foresees an average annual expense of €800 million to operate Galileo and EGNOS.

    The administrative body for the European government issued one of its strongest statement yet as to the value of the satnav systems, however. “The ultimate objectives are not being called into question.” EC Vice President Antonio Tajani added, “We are satisfied with the progress made so far and committed to bringing this project to fruition.” The EC indicated its willingness to find alternative methods of financing the project.

    Check-up. Meanwhile, the first in-orbit validation (IOV) satellite goes through readiness testing at the European Space Agency’s technical center in the Netherlands. Four identical Galileo IOV satellites are in preparation, and the first to be completed has been selected for qualification testing, as the Protoflight Model (PFM). Satellite payloads were designed, developed, and assembled by EADS Astrium in Portsmouth, UK, with the overall satellite designed and developed by Astrium in Ottobrunn, Germany, and assembled by Thales Alenia Space in Rome, Italy.

    The PFM will endure simulated launch vibrations on an electrodynamic shaker, followed by sudden shocks simulating those during separation from the launch vehicle. Finally, it will take an acoustic battering matching the launcher’s sound pressure and frequency. The Galileo IOV satellites will be launched two at a time; a dispenser will hold them together within the launcher fairing and eventually release them in orbit. Pyrotechnic devices will shoot them safely away from the dispenser and each other.
    Once ESTEC testing is complete in February, the PFM will be reunited with the rest of the IOV quartet in Italy for a follow-up round of thermal vacuum testing, to prove that they can withstand the temperature extremes of space. Finally, the satellites will travel to Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana in South America, to be launched on Russian Soyuz rockets.

    Pictured: Galileo protoflight model runs through its test paces at ESA.

    Michibiki Produces 3-Centimeter Accuracy

    According to a report in the Japanese business daily Nikkei, researchers in Japan conducted a test that yielded continuous 3-centimeter positioning accuracy for a car driving at 20 kilometers (approximately 12 miles) per hour, using a conventional GPS receiver equipped to receive corrections from the new QZSS satellite Michibiki. The authors imply that, unaided, the same equipment would have produced accuracy in the range of about 10 meters.

    The report also states that the Japan Aerospace Exporation Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi, who have partnered to develop and launch the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), have conducted further tests shown that the augmentation system maintains its accuracy with cars driving up to 80 kilometers (48 miles) per hour.

    QZSS’s current Michibiki satellite can cover Japan for eight hours a day; two additional satellites, planned for the future, will join it to provide continuous coverage and GPS corrections over mainland Japan and parts of Australia.

    As a commenter from the United States pointed out, “There’s nothing new about 3-centimeter GPS accuracy. The surveying, construction, and agriculture industries have been using 2–5 centimeter level real-time kinematic GPS technology for well over a decade. Post-processing can get GPS accuracy down to the millimeter level and measure tectonic plate movements. By the way, Michibiki (aka QZSS) does not work without GPS. The United States helped Japan build QZSS.”

    Nonetheless, if the tests used a conventional, consumer-grade GPS receiver, the results are indeed impressive. The availability that a full QZSS constellation will bring — the explicit goal of the project — in Japan’s skyscraper-dominated urban landscape should enable many heretofore impractical or impossible projects in car navigation, construction, tracking and monitoring, and location-based services.

     

    Shelton Space Commander

    Gen. William L. Shelton assumed command of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) on January 5. Shelton replaces Gen. C. Robert Kehler, who will take over at the U.S. Strategic Command.

    Shelton has served in various assignments, including research and development testing, and space operations. As commander of AFSPC, he is responsible for organizing, equipping, training, and maintaining mission-ready space and cyberspace forces and capabilities for North American Aerospace Defense Command, U.S. Strategic Command, and other combatant commands around the world. Shelton also oversees Air Force network operations; manages a global network of satellite command and control, communications, missile warning and space launch facilities; and is responsible for space system development and acquisition. AFSPC is comprised of more than 46,000 professionals, assigned to 88 locations worldwide and deployed to an additional 35 global sites.

     

    Des Dorides for European GNSS Supervisory Agency

    Carlo des Dorides of Italy will head the European GNSS Agency, formerly known as the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA). The Czech Republic’s Transport Ministry joined the European Commission (EC) in making the announcement. The GSA will gradually move its headquarters to Prague over the next two years.

    “The election of the Italian candidate is unambiguously good news for both the Czech Republic and Galileo itself,” said Karel Dobes, the Czech government envoy for the Galileo system. “His idea of the future shape of the agency rests in a stronger and greater agenda than nowadays, which would provide greater opportunity for our firms to get lucrative orders. It is a business with the highest value added, thanks to which local firms and the whole Czech Republic may get billions of crowns in the future.”

    Des Dorides was profiled by GPS World magazine as one of the 50 Leaders to Watch in GNSS in 2006. At that time he was head of the Concession Division of the Galileo Joint Undertaking, the GSA’s predecessor.

     

    GLONASS Goes for 
Ten-Year Plan

    The GLONASS plan for 2011–2020 is ready and now undergoing the final stages of approval, Sergey Revnivykh, Deputy Director General of the Central Research Institute of Machine Building of the Federal Space Agency, told a Russian business newspaper.

    “In March–April, the program will be presented to the government. I can say that the amount [of funding] is sufficient to meet the prospective demands of consumers and ensure parity with other navigation systems. During the program period, 2012-2020, GLONASS, in [terms of its] parameters will not yield to the planned development of the GPS and Galileo systems.”

    According to Revnivykh, by 2019 the GLONASS constellation will consist entirely of new-generation GLONASS-K satellites. In addition to existing FDMA signals, they will transmit CDMA signals in the format of CDMA (the same format as GPS and Galileo) and their service lifetime will increase to 10 years. Flight testing of a GLONASS-K prototype, originally scheduled for December 27, was postponed to a later date, to be determined in early February.

    Two prominent executives associated with GLONASS were dismissed, and the program came under increased scrutiny after a launch disaster drowned three new satelites in the Pacific Ocean.