GPS World

Tag: From the Editor

  • Out in Front: Dual Use, Single Front

    As it was in the beginning, now and always, and to the ages of ages — or at least into the conceivable near future: GPS was, is, and shall be a dual-use system.

    Why, then, reading through the March 15 report of the Technical Working Group (TWG) to the FCC on LightSquared/GPS interference, do we find no mention at all of military receivers?

    Presumably DoD and the GPS Directorate are both concerned and active on a separate front vis à vis the FCC, but what/how/when? Would it not be beneficial for the dual uses to present a united front in some way, or at least to collaborate to some extent? To observe, if nothing else, each other’s testing?

    It turns out there are separate LightSquared/GPS Industry Council and government testing structures, the latter under under the National Space-Based PNT Systems Engineering Forum (NPEF), which will include military receiver tests. Several government members of the TWG are also members of the NPEF. The Executive Secretariat to the NPEF is also a core member of the TWG.

    The two testing groups collaborate and try to be on the same page as to technical assumptions, test methodology, measures of effectiveness, and so on. They will observe and participate in each other’s tests as much as they can — with the exception of national security issues.

    Testing of the military receivers is not a part of the TWG primarily because of classification. Any discussion of vulnerabilities of military equipment is generally classified at least at the Secret level.

    Outside of the TWG, there have been direct meetings between LightSquared and the military officers leading the military receiver testing. The military have asked technical questions and LightSquared has answered them and provided examples of its hardware. LightSquared has flown technical experts to Colorado Springs to meet with HQ Air Force Space Command test leads.

    “To the maximum extent possible,” said Anthony Russo, director of the U.S. National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, “we’ll invite LightSquared to review test plans and make inputs on test methodology, but we do anticipate that some of the end results will be classified and therefore have to be conveyed separately to the FCC.”

    “There is certainly good collaboration between the LightSquared-led TWG and the independent federal testing activities I directed under the NPEF charter. LightSquared has been extremely cooperative in supporting this,” he added.

    In addition to classification issues, there are other reasons to do independent federal testing. LightSquared is focusing on the potential in-band overload issue, while the GPS community is concerned about any potential interference scenario — including out-of-band emission issues that LightSquared is not looking at.

    Russo anticipates at least two reports will go to the FCC in June: “One from LightSquared where we make inputs, but have no official say on what they conclude; and one from me, based on NPEF results, submitted through the PNT EXCOM to the FCC. I expect the latter report to be at the Secret level, although we may be able to do a redacted version for LightSquared and the general public.”

  • Out in Front: Act Now to Protect GPS Signal

    This guest editorial addresses a subject of paramount importance to the GNSS industry, to the U.S. national infrastructure, and to the global GNSS community. I urge you to take immediate action by contacting U.S. government representatives, indicated at the end of this article.

    — Alan Cameron, editor-in-chief

     

    Guest Editorial by Joe Paiva

    GPS has become a key component of the U.S. national infrastructure, the driver of a significant part of the civilian economies of the world, and the enabler of millions of professional precision uses and consumer benefits.The viability of the GPS signal is now threatened — ironically by what appears to be a misguided attempt to increase accessibility to broadband by creating a needless zero-sum result for customers who want both services.

    The threat is real and immediate. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued a conditional waiver to LightSquared, a company engaged in developing 4G-LTE (long-term evolution) cellular networks for wholesale-only basis commerce with its business partners.

    LightSquared Scheme. LightSquared acquired a company providing a combined space-based and ancillary land-based service using the L-band radiofrequency. The FCC conditional waiver, granted to LightSquared on January 26 of this year, allows it to broadcast a new terrestrial broadband service from 1,500-watt terrestrial transmitters — 40,000 of which will eventually be installed by LightSquared — in the portion of L Band (1525 MHz–1559 MHz) immediately adjacent to the 1559–1610 MHz band used by GPS.

    Instead of offering dual-mode handsets exclusively as required by their FCC license, retailers purchasing this combined service can choose to offer terrestrial mobile phones only, which was the change in license terms that LightSquared was seeking via waiver. This change amounts to a de facto reallocation of Lightsquared’s spectrum use from space to terrestrial wireless. In fact, the new broadband service is planned to operate in urban areas, and the space service will operate outside these areas.

    The LightSquared terrestrial broadband signal is about 1 billion times the received power of the GPS signal on Earth. Members of the GPS industry have been conducting experiments and analyses, and these figures come from those very early studies. Soon, we may experience GPS interference — jamming — on an almost unimaginable scale and to a geographical extent that could create widespread havoc.

    Threats. The GPS system works so well that we often forget the complexity behind it and take for granted the service we use daily. One reason GPS works so well and is seldom defeated is that the signals broadcast by the satellites can be received under a wide variety of conditions on Earth. Historically, the FCC and the International Telecommunications Union, understanding potential interference issues, intentionally planned uses of adjacent swaths of the L-band so that satellite-based transmissions, relatively low-power, would be natural neighbors, so as to cause as little disturbance as possible to radio-navigation uses. This dedicated purposing of the bands and the resulting environment of negligible interference is one reason that GPS has become reliable and its use ubiquitous.

    Long-time observers of the GPS scene will remember how civilians, and especially potential international users, initially had uncertainty about the U.S. Department of Defense’s statements that the service would be free and not subject to any restrictions in one’s ability to receive and use the broadcast signals. This uncertainty was due primarily to the implementation of Selective Availability (SA), which intentionally degraded the available accuracy of the GPS signal. SA was permanently removed in 2000 by President Clinton’s 1996 Presidential Decision Directive.

    Many factors have enabled users and potential users to see GPS as a reliable, consistent technology that provides significant increases in productivity, efficiency, precision, continuing innovation, and many other benefits. These factors include the reliability of the overall GPS technology, improvements in receivers and in successive next-generation satellites, advances in differential and relative positioning, dynamic applications, and real-time kinematic solutions. And, just as importantly: stable, predictable U.S. policy.

    Investments. Now, by virtue of this unusual FCC action, uncertainty has been thrown into the viability of the hundreds of millions of GPS receivers in use today. Much research and development work is being done on improving receiver performance and taking advantage of improvements planned for the satellites. The most dollars go towards devising new applications, products, and services that improve the quality life of millions of Americans, create new companies, markets, and jobs. These dollars are also being spent by government agencies, not just the Department of Defense, but very visibly by Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, Energy, Homeland Security and Transportation. More than likely, the remaining departments either have active programs that are using or considering using GPS or are positively affected by others’ use of GPS.

    That’s just the executive branch. Other parts of the federal government, as well as state and local governments, do research on GPS technology and applications and actively use GPS to improve the lives of citizens, increasing work and recreation, efficiency, and safety. In many local government settings, there is active cooperation to improve delivery of services by having governmental and non-governmental organizations collaborate around the simple fact of accurate position being available through GPS, with significant cost savings in current lean budgets.

    It is inexplicable that another part of the government would be so cavalier in rapidly and uncharacteristically granting a waiver that clearly endangers the whole system. And only after granting the waiver, which must act at least as a yellow light for LightSquared’s mobilization plans, comes the requirement for a study — to be headed by LightSquared — to determine impacts and mitigation of interference with the GPS signals.

    Why Fast Track? The FCC grant of a reallocation of spectrum use from space to terrestrial on a fast-track waiver did not follow the standard FCC rule-making process for reallocation of spectrum use. The standard regulatory approach allows sufficient time for robust public comment by all potentially affected parties, including the conduct of interference studies and the introduction of comments on interference results in the public record. Instead, the FCC order granting the waiver to LightSquared has mandated what appears to be fast-track GPS interference research.

    Currently, the proposed LightSquared terrestrial broadband service does not have an installed user base. In contrast, the installed GPS user base represents a broad and diverse range of use representing hundreds of millions of users established over 30 years.

    The final Working Group report is due to the FCC on June 15, 2011. The FCC order requires the GPS community to participate “in good faith” in this study effort. In response, the U.S. GPS Industry Council and others are working on this interference study to protect GPS operations under these extraordinary regulatory conditions.

    A further problem created by the FCC conditional waiver is that LightSquared is able to move ahead with its infrastructure development, assuming that viable solutions to the jamming issue will be found. For many GPS users, theoretical fixes are not likely to prove viable.

    Negative Impacts. Preliminary research done by member companies of the USGIC already has been reported in GPS World. The research indicates that LightSquared’s 1,500-watt terrest
    rial transmitters will result in a signal 90 dB stronger than GPS over the coverage area; this amounts to signal strength 1 billion times stronger than GPS. There is more to the research, all done with GPS simulators and signal generators (see env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/data for test results).

    Clearly the jamming level will vary with geography. We don’t yet know LightSquared’s broadcast-tower siting plan. But it is clear that if LightSquared is allowed to broadcast terrestrially on the mobile satellite system (MSS) band, dedicated until now to signals compatible with satellite transmissions, there is a substantial danger that millions of GPS receivers will be adversely affected.

    Some obvious impacts are loss of operational viability of businesses involved in aviation, surveying, agriculture, engineering and construction, vehicle navigation, mariners, transportation, public safety and homeland security, disaster management, utilities, mapping, and scientific research. Several of these involve safety-of-life issues, which are at risk of being jammed.

    Keep in mind that GPS was envisioned as a system for space and time. Its longest life as a useful contributor to society has been as a time standard. Countless networks, whether for computing, broadcasting, power generation — even, ironically, cell phones — are synchronized using the most precise signal practically available. Fixed GPS receiving stations for time reference may be able to be designed to withstand some interference from high-power broadcasting on adjacent frequencies, but nobody has tried so far.

    Any hypothetical fixes for GPS beg a more fundamental question: Why should Lightsquared, a new entrant with no existing business, be allowed to shift the burden of mitigating interference created by its operations to millions of consumers, government agencies, and businesses who have invested in GPS over the last 30 years?

    Keep in mind that other users of the MSS band will also be affected. Many commercial and governmental uses of the very band that LightSquared will occupy with its terrestrial transmitters may also be jeopardized.

    We must also remember that the FCC has its own agenda, to implement its National Broadband Plan. What is truly difficult to comprehend is that broadband and GPS will serve the same mobile user.

    Action Needed. Please act now.

    • Write to your representatives in Congress, and to your professional and trade associations.
    • If you are an expert on radio or spectrum or GPS or whatever else is pertinent, make your comments, do your research if possible, and publish your results with all due speed.
    • Petition the FCC to turn the yellow light to red, while other paths to achieving LightSquared’s and the FCC’s goals are investigated.
    • Do not forget the Administration: the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) represents the president and the Administration as official co-regulator with the FCC of the spectrum where GPS operates. In the recent FCC Order, NTIA must review the report on results of the FCC-mandated interference study.
    • Specifically, ask Congress to demand that the FCC include specific language to protect GPS use in the final FCC Order to LightSquared after the interference study is completed.
    • Ask the Secretary of Commerce and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to inform the NTIA Administrator to urge the FCC chairman to take this same action to protect GPS in the final FCC Order.
    • Contact the FCC chairman directly and urge this same action.
    • Finally, help develop user and beneficiary awareness of the grave danger being posed to GPS and make your elected and congressional representatives aware of the impact that interference with GPS would have on your work.

    The large-scale disruption of the GPS service mustn’t be on our hands due to inaction.

    Points of Contact

    Send messages to FCC chairman, commissioners, and NTIA:

    • Edward.Lazarus at fcc.gov (Chairman Genachowski’s office
    • John.Giusti at fcc.gov (Comm. Copps’ office)
    • Angela.Giancarlo at fcc.gov (Comm. McDowell’s office)
    • Louis.Peraertz at fcc.gov (Comm. Clyburn’s office)
    • Charles.Mathias at fcc.gov (Comm. Baker’s office)
    • lstrickling at ntia.doc.gov (asst. secretary for communications and information, NTIA)

    International readers may contact the U.S. State Department, clorere at state.gov. For further contacts, see env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/actnow.

    Joseph Paiva is a consultant to the geomatics industry, with background in private engineering, surveying and mapping consulting, and as developer and general manager for two geomatics products corporations.

     

    High-Precision Users

    High-performance L1 receivers (sub-meter) have a wide-bandwidth RF front-end to improve performance, about 20 MHz, compared to a consumer receiver that typically has a front-end bandwidth of 2 MHz. GPS World contributing editor for survey and GIS Eric Gakstatter discusses this aspect of the issue in his recent e-mail newsletter column at env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/l2high.

  • Out in Front: Tech and Techer

    Can the development and use of smart technologies actually render us dumber? Have we already lost a mental step or two, as we equip ourselves fearlessly for the future?

    Marshall McLuhan, the “medium is the message” guy from back when, preached that tools numb whatever part of the body they amplify. By extrapolation, location-enabling tools render us less aware of our actual place.

    It causes me some discomfort to float this topic in the standard bearer for an extremely advanced high-tech industry. Yet I also felt acute and nearly continuous discomfort while reading a book over the winter holidays; a poke here, a prick there, until I was sitting on pins and needles. I had selected the volume with an eye to finding out why my adult and near-adult children, actively engaged online, have little patience with the printed page anymore, and find books practically abhorrent.

    Of course, every generation has its preferences, but this trend troubles me because it seems associated with a reluctance to truly explore, to think critically, at length, and in some depth. Also, it’s not limited to twentysomethings. I find plenty of affected folks at every age.

    booksThe book is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr. It provided grist galore in the online/print dichotomy — the changes in how we look for, absorb, process, and store information. And as said, it generated no little discomfort as I realized how much I, too, have changed in a decade and a half of increasing online activity, at work and in leisure.

    I began to wonder, as I read, where that other game-changing modern technology, global satellite navigation, enters the picture. Sure enough, it surfaced on page 212.

    A neuroscientist engaged in studying the brains of London taxi drivers found that their hippocampal area increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of street names and traffic-flow data they must memorize. She worries that when cabbies use GPS, that knowledge base will shrink, and possibly that area of the brain will atrophy or fail to develop.

    This is perhaps a trivial example that has little to do with you and me. But consider your experience and your awareness as you follow, head down, your PND or a cell-phone screen to your next destination. Do you register the environment en route, possibly including hazard factors? Do you notice other points of interest that might enrich your experience, occasion a stop, detour, or return trip — or even constitute a better destination? Once arrived, could you find your own way there again, or have you become dependent on silicon and signals?

    GNSS brings undeniable benefits in areas where it creates capabilities that did not exist before, such as measuring millimetric sway of tall buildings or changes in sea level; that is, largely in professional areas. But where it offers convenience or shortcuts in everyday life, that can be a more double-edged sword. The Internet has proved so; recall also canned, frozen, and processed pre-prepared foods, once embraced as modern timesavers. We now find they stripped essential nutrients out of our diet, undermining health and helping create an obesity epidemic.

    In some savage ironic twist, particularly since Carr has plenty to say about how Google contributes to the general online process of mental debilitation, the full 276-page text of The Shallows is currently available via Google Books.

  • Out in Front: Ten Big Ones in Five

    At the opposite end of this book, my esteemed colleague Eric Gakstatter gives you his Top Five news stories of the recently passed year, from a system point of view. Spend five minutes here in this column, and I’ll toss up the Top Ten for GNSS business, as reported in this magazine.

    Not the biggest money deals or revenue generators, at least not in the short term. But the most significant in terms of breaking new ground, pushing out frontiers, integrating with other technologies — the modes through which industry grows and prospers.

    I’m leafing through my back copies in reverse order. This listing goes not by prominence, but by reverse chronology.

    PNDs Up, Then Down By 2015. When you are doing well, rest assured that someone is gaining on you. Smartphones will gradually take over the personal nav market. Stay flexible, innovate, and be prepared to change horses in midstream.

    Rockwell Delivers New MUE. While military user equipment gave this industry its start, the receivers themselves have always lagged behind product available to civil users. Still, security features in the GB-GRAM-M foreshadow what all receivers may eventually require.

    Triumph V.S. from JAVAD. Supercharged with capabilities, a veritable surveyor’s arsenal, and probably a gamechanger — whether or not it makes it in the marketplace. A visionary product.

    NovAtel OEMV-1DF. Almost every month, another smallest-yet consumer-grade GPS receiver emerges. But when high-precision, dual-frequency receivers grind down their footprint and power requirement, you know this is a future wave that will sweep everything along. Not the only tiny high-performance OEM receiver, mind you, just the latest.

    LLC Rusnavgeoset. The joint venture between Trimble and a Russian company will help drive the commercialization of GLONASS, an aspect that system has not yet truly seen. We all talk about the second GNSS of choice, but the second commercialized GNSS is what we really want.

    Smartphone Explosion. The flipside to the first story. This year’s models from Apple iPhone, Google Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7, and all their kin, if not built around location as Apple claimed, certainly have it as core feature. The flip of the flipside: pricing for the GPS component is cut-throat. Absolutely the worst you’ve ever seen.

    GPS-Enabled USB Drive. That’s all it takes — well, download some software and buy a contract — to make a laptop location-aware.
    Spirent Assisted-GLONASS Testing. One more sign that the Russian system, against betmakers’ odds, may yet become the trusty sidekick. Soon, if your mobile doesn’t have it, it’s not 
top-of-class.

    One-Chip Receivers-Plus. Hardly breaking news, since it’s been talked about and even done, sort of, for years. TI, Broadcom, Qualcomm, CSR, and silent runners like Sony and Panasonic are all adding some communication transceiver(s) to GPS and squeezing them onto a single piece of silicon.

    No News Is Big News. Actually not reported here or anywhere, because neither party wants to reveal anything, but some of the biggest deals are cut by chip manufacturers (such as STMicroelectronics, to name just one), with automobile makers around the world. Like it or not, the car/truck is the dominant mechanical paradigm of our age. And if location is in it . . .

    We are indeed fortunate to be part of, and partners in, such a vital scene. Best wishes for this New Year.

  • Out in Front: One and One

    Two figures for your holiday mulling here. I keep putting one and one together, and coming up with three.

    The first one points to a value of $1,000 billion. Or, as we like to say, one trillion dollars. That has a nice ring to it.

    The second one hovers at a lower level, around $230 billion, not nearly as melodic as the first. But if the second one creates the first one, how much magic is there in that — do you see what I’m saying?

    Let me elucidate the second one first. It emerged at the European Navigation Conference, when a spokesperson for Galileo Services put forth the assertion that, currently, European industry holds a market share of around 20 percent of global GNSS hardware, software, and services, a market size he estimated at 180 billion euros, or $230 billion. Thus the first figure.

    The speaker’s point was that in other high-tech sectors, European industry held a market share of 33 percent, so really, they could be doing better. But that’s beside my point, which takes, as a rough estimate — and much subject to debate, granted — that the current global market of GNSS hardware, software, and services lies in the neighborhood of $230 billion.

    Returning to the first figure, it comes from a conversation with Paul Verhoef of the European Commission; a lengthy interview treats other issues, but I don’t want to let this snippet get away. He stated, based on some market research the EC has done but not yet released (you bet I’m trying), that “at the moment, 6 to 7 percent of the European Union gross domestic product (GDP) is directly dependent on the availability of GPS. This is a GDP value of around 800 billion euros; this is more than $1,000 billion.”

    A cool trillion dollars of European economy directly dependent on GPS availability.

    Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew the similar figure for the U.S. economy?

    Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that it roughly equals the European number. So United States and Europe combined, two trillion dollars of GDP directly dependent on GPS availability. Throw in the rest of the world and I’ll bet you’re at three trillion dollars.

    Boy, I wish I had an investment portfolio that I could throw $230 billion at, and wind up with $3 trillion at the end of the day.

    What, what, what are world governments doing, pinching pennies and cutting back programs and replenishing on need and sliding to the right — when they could be feeding a roaring economic engine, a behemoth that would support and stimulate so many other industries, and their GDPs as a whole?

    Come to think of it, Russia and China are pushing forward with this capitalist plan. It’s Western countries that appear ignorant of, and thus unable to learn from, their own economic history.

  • Out in Front: An Open or Shut Case

    Engineers are an eager lot, by and large. They like talking about their work, openly showing information and results, testing their work against data and alternate hypotheses, getting feedback and even critique from colleagues near and far. They value an iterative, elaborative, collaborative process.

    Politicians and business managers, on the other hand, tend to the dour. They would rather not show their hand, nor do they care to hear what you think of their organization’s work, citing intellectual property or national security reasons.

    This is not just about last month’s abrupt withdrawal of a session’s worth of Galileo papers from the showcase rank of the European Navigation Conference (see story, page 14). It extends across governance of all GNSS, and ultimately affects the frontiers of knowledge everywhere. GLONASS has never been particularly forthcoming with technical details, while Compass has taken reticence to new heights. Or depths.

    The socialist countries have not taken much heat for this practice, perhaps because it is assumed to be part of their political culture. Europe, on the other hand, surprises us a bit. It may be a sign of the changing of the times, the tightening of the GNSS space race. Once Galileo held unquestioned second place as the GNSS of choice to combine with GPS. No longer. GLONASS revives itself on practically a daily basis, and Compass goes about launching satellites with quiet regularity — 
although without much useful information on signal structure.

    The GPS Wing of the U.S. Air Force deserves commendation for the frankness with which it has discussed recent problems. Even the Europeans admitted, “ION was a little better this year. The Americans talked about the failures they had, the problems with their ground stations and satellites.” At least one prominent U.S. government  contractor, however, has moved in the opposite direction.

    European system managers have grown cautious, and stress the importance of protecting intellectual property. “We were too open before.” The case of the behavior of atomic clocks, for example, comes up in discussion. “You take sx months to find a solution, and then give it away in one session. Knowledge, what you find out by trial and error, or even by accident, this is the most critical thing.”

    From another quarter came this opinion: “Detailed information on tests is a clear transfer of technology. It’s not a matter of security, it’s business.”

    Ironically, the Europeans have run into a stone wall of their own, after granting the level playing field that U.S. industry agitated for, in terms of access by foreign companies to Galileo contracts. A European satellite builder visited a U.S. company, on U.S. soil, prepared to solicit a bid. But the U.S. company’s compliance officer — charged with keeping all operations in line with government rules and regulations — repeatedly stood up in the meetings and told colleagues, “Stop talking about how you are doing it and just talk about what it does.”

    Unable to obtain sufficient technical context to prepare a request for proposal, the European company walked away, thinking “They don’t want our business.”

    Opportunity lost.

  • Out in Front: Welcome to Accuracy Anonymous

    The following was delivered as an invited presentation at the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee plenary session, held September 20 in Portland, Oregon.

    Hi, my name is Alan, and I’m an accuracy addict.

    I got my first taste of accuracy back in 2000 when I started at GPS World, and discovered the vast range of very advanced things that people were doing with the signals of the Global Positioning System.

    This filled me with a great feeling of elation, expansiveness, and effectiveness. I can position anything. I can track anything. I can go anywhere, and know where I am. I can direct something else to go somewhere, and have it hit exactly on target. I can examine the minute movements of the earth, the swaying of skyscrapers, the moisture content of the atmosphere, and I can know all.

    I began to feel the illusion of omnipotence — of power over all.

    The more I found out about accuracy, the more I used it, the more addicted I became.

    Very early, I learned that advanced practitioners, such as some of the people in this room, had developed ways of taking two GPS signals, not just one, but two signals, including one that they weren’t even entitled to use, and combining them, distilling them, refining them to produce an even more potent product: high precision.

    High. I was getting pretty high. Almost as high as some of you.

    Because we’re all in this together. In this room, we are all addicts. And when our supply of accuracy gets cut off, or restricted, or we learn that it might soon be diminished in some way, or even that its projected future rate of increase might not be as rapid as expected, or that it might not increase at all, it might just simply stay the same­ — well then, we get upset.

    We want to get high precision, we want to stay high precision, and we want to get higher precision.

    We may have a problem with our accuracy habit.

    It’s not just us, the highly educated, highly equipped, highly advanced users, with near-lifelong histories of accuracy use. Outside this room, outside this convention center and all who gather here this week, outside our offices and labs, the great unwashed masses are getting their first taste of low-grade accuracy. With their cell phones or smart phones, maybe 50-meter, maybe 15-meter, maybe even 5-meter accuracy.

    They’re liking it, that first taste. Once they learn how to exploit it, and learn that higher accuracy is possible, they’re going to demand it.

    And some enterprising young engineers are going to build a high-powered LBS app that needs high accuracy, just like other new apps need broadband or WiFi or 3G or 4G. If the capability exists, someone wants to make money off it.

    We may be raising a generation of monsters, who will absorb our habit into their bloodstreams and into their lifestyles.

    Things might get ugly. We know they’re going to change, altering the landscape in ways we may not recognize.

    I’m not talking about just the social landscape, the way accuracy users behave. Not just the user segment. I’m talking about the way accuracy is produced and administered. I’m talking about

    the supply of accuracy, the supply of a substance that is in high demand and to which an increasing number of people are becoming addicted.
    I’m talking about the ground control segment and the space segment.

    Ultimately, I’m talking about who makes the decisions, who funds the decisions, who enacts the decisions, and who enforces the decisions about how much accuracy can and will be produced.

    Today, we know, or think we know who those people are: the GPS Wing, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, the Administration of the U.S. government. We may think we know that those same people will be in charge tomorrow.

    I’m not so sure. Revolutions have happened before.

    I don’t mean to be U.S.-centric. The same developments are taking place, perhaps a bit lagged, in Europe and Russia and China. When the great mass of the Chinese market gets into using accuracy, gets the habit, you’re going to see some effects.

    Returning to the United States, simply because it has the most known and most established of these systems, it is not inconceivable that some Tea Party-like movement, a groundswell should roll right up to Washington, into Congress, and say:

    “Higher accuracy is possible. We are paying for GPS with our taxes, and we want you to spend that money producing and supplying us with a higher grade of accuracy. Don’t give us this talk of responsible stewards. We are calling the shots now. Just do it. Revise the ICD. Up the ante.
    “Give me accuracy or give me death.”

    Ladies and gentlemen, I have expanded, exaggerated only slightly, and perhaps exploded the old dictum that I’ve heard attributed to Charlie Trimble, I don’t know who first said it, but it bears repeating and repeating often: accuracy is addictive.

    Indeed it is. I’m here to tell you.

    I was asked to give you a user perspective. I’ve chosen what is today a relatively small user segment, but a very real one, and a growing one. And most important, one that augurs for the future.

    Perhaps the scenario I just imagined for you exaggerates a bit. Perhaps. I am consciously trying to push further out the boundaries of our thinking.

    We’ve been waiting, some of us, for a long time for the mass market to get involved in GPS. This is now happening, bit by bit. But it has not yet fully happened. When it does, great changes will come. When LBS figures out the key to making money out of location, you’ll see changes you can’t imagine today.

    I started to become aware of how pervasive and how strong accuracy addiction has grown when we experienced a succession of anomalies in the GPS constellation over the last year or so: SVN-49, the last IIR-M satellite; carrier-phase anomalies detected on SVN-48; and now SVN-62, a small variance in the L5 signal on the first IIF. “The signal variation results in no more than a 5-centimeter error with a predictable periodicity of about six hours.”

    In each case, GPS performed within spec, and some therefore viewed these issues as non-issues. “What seems to be lacking is context: what relevance their findings on unspecified and unrequired signal characteristics really have to do with the real-world GPS IIF mission and requirements.”

    I’ve repeated here two printed quotes in the magazine; offline, the point-counterpoint discussion grew a good deal more inflamed. Passions run high when the supply and quality of accuracy appears in question.

    This might seem a minor flare-up today, off in a corner of the field: specialized scientific research spatting with industry giants and their military-industrial complex benefactors.

    But today’s developing applications in aviation, ground transportation, structural monitoring, machine control, infrastructure, and more use techniques such as carrier phase that are not governed, are not even mentioned in the GPS ICD.

    When LBS gets figured out, and high-accuracy LBS and vehicle navigation and crash avoidance become regularly supplied commercial services, when the dependence of financial and communications infrastructure on high precision becomes fully understood and appreciated, then you’ll see some large corporate money that has become accuracy-addicted. Imagine this room in another few years, with GM, Ford, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon attending and very interested, very much so, in aspects of user accuracy that are not currently addressed in the ICD.

    This community will change. Its needs will change. Balances of power and funding will shift. Are we prepared for that? Are we prepared to be surp
    rised? Or are we prepared only to be left behind by tides of change, to become obsolete?

  • Out in Front: Beyond Cute

    Michibiki has more Twitter followers than you and me put together. All of you, and all of me with my 17 followers. Michibiki hit 16,284 when I signed on just now, and she (he?) has not yet even emerged upon the global stage. Perhaps by the time you read this, if the September 11 launch date holds true, s/he will be an orbiting, broadcasting entity.

    Michibiki-Alan
    Michibiki

    Why follow a satellite? One might well ask why follow anything or anyone these days. For utterings momentous or vacuous, leavened in lucky moments by a bit of gossip, or an even rarer bit of news. It’s a good bet that Michibiki’s scriptwriters will display more intelligence than the mass of online mouths. Right now it’s hard to tell; they communicate in Japanese, which comes through my browser as so many question marks.

    For intelligence is what the Michibiki anthropomorphizing — from the creation of a friendly, pettable caricature to the establishment of a Twitter voice — is all about. Savvy marketing by purposeful people to an audience that they have studied and know well. This goes beyond the cute that large segments of Japan have a fondness for. It has the goal of buliding a solid, sustained client core for location-based services, powered by QZSS signals.

    Other places where LBS have failed to take hold — and this means everywhere — despite their vast potential utility, would do well to watch and learn.

    As cell-phone text-message readers and e-mail users (could there be a broader market segment, other than people who eat and breathe?) become accustomed to receiving messages from Michibiki, they will subtly but increasingly think of this 4,000-kilogram, 40,000-kilometer high hunk of orbiting metal and circuitry as a personality, and even, a friend. They will be open to suggestions, impressionable and cute-prone teens and twenty-somethings, especially so. This is the next generation of satnav users. Or I should say, this is the Now Generation of satnav users.

    Young men and women with places to go and friends to see will remember Michibiki, and call upon her/him often. “My guide will tell me how to get there. With added services, my guide will also track my friends right now, and tell me where they are. My guide can do many more wonderful things for me: here is a list of them.”

    By no means  do I suggest that the U.S. GPS Industry Council or the Galileo Supervisory Authority or Roscosmos rush out and commission a cartoon character based on their respective space vehicles. Different markets require different approaches, and careful study.

    The Now Generation of satnav users is coming through, to supplant current users, and uses. They’ll soon rattle your windows and shake down your walls. If your time to you is worth saving, I do suggest that you pick up on social media. That is the message my own marketing staff keeps drumming into this obdurate old head.

  • Out in Front: EGNOS Up

    We now definitively declare “curtain up!” on the second act of the human and technological drama, Interoperable Global Navigation Satellite Systems, by many authors, directors, and actors, upon the global stage. It happened on August 2 with removal of the message 0 (“Do Not Use in aviation”), by the European Satellite Services Provider, from the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) signal. It enables EGNOS use for en-route and lateral guidance approaches.

    The first act of our drama, of course, saw the U.S. GPS achieve operational capability, not to mention enthusiastic worldwide reception and application. We might have declared the second act open upon GLONASS operability, intermittent though that has been — but GLONASS is not (yet) interoperable with GPS. We might have marked its beginning in 2003, when the European Council of Transport Ministers approved the Galileo program, or in 2006, when Galileo launched its first satellite and broadcast its first signal in space. But no useable navigation message has yet emanated.

    The EGNOS signal is essentially a corrected GPS signal. Still, its certification for use in aviation embodies an international, interoperable navigation signal from space.

    (Legalistic note: “After an operational period of three months [following August 2], the EC will declare the Safety of life (SoL) service available to the aviation community, enabling the publication of precision approach procedures with vertical and lateral navigation guidance (APV) based on EGNOS. At that time, European air navigation service providers will be in position to implement satellite-based precision approaches . . . .)

    Chairman Mao said “The march of 10,000 li begins with a single step.” We have taken more than a few steps, though still at the beginning of our journey. Curtain’s up, vistas are wide. Let’s keep moving.

  • Out in Front: Welling Up

    oilcover
    September 1992.

    One of the first industrial uses of GPS came in survey and seismic exploration for offshore oil, as evidenced by the cover story of this magazine’s September 1992 issue. A salient passage from that 18-year-old “Quality Control For Differential GPS in Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration” article:

    “Users are in danger of being mesmerized by the apparent simplicty of the technology and abandoning quality-control principles . . . . The key to routine operations is rigorous real-time quality control.” Eerily, among the companies acknowledged for support of that article was BP Exploration.

    Oil companies early-adopted GPS and private satellite differential correction services, and remain enthusiastic users today, for monitoring of and navigation around deep-sea rigs. The March 2010 cover story shows how this field continues to forge ahead, now as early adopters of multi-GNSS technology.

    Positioning, navigation, and timing had nothing to do with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but some important lessons float there for our learning. They concern engineering principles — principally in not forsaking them.

    The full Deepwater Horizon story has yet to emerge, but it seems abundantly clear that corner-cutting and downright elimination of basic practices led to the disaster. When a natural aberration occurred, it blew right through several weakened backup systems and safety guards, ones that were withdrawn or restricted only days earlier, to shave costs and time.

    Beancounting and other modern business practices have undermined vital enginering principles — rigorous mathematical analysis, based firmly in the laws of physics, situational and historical experience, and what may seem to be overcautious safety margins — not just in the Gulf, but everywhere we look, including our own GNSS backyard. Control of technical programs in both private and public sectors now rests in the hands of non-technical people who owe highest allegiance to the almighty dollar. CPAs trump engineering Ph.D.s. If a disaster hasn’t happened (yet), there’s no need to guard against it, they believe.

    Has anybody here seen my old friend Loran-C?
    Can you tell me where he’s gone?
    He guided ships and airplanes,
    But it seems the budget’s slashing-prone.
    You know, I just looked around, and he’s gone.

  • Out in Front: Brussels Calling

    The European Commission rang up the other day, concerned that a recent column contained misperceptions about the Galileo Open Service Signal-in-Space Interface Control Document (ICD). I replied that if misperception exists, it is shared by at least some in industry. Though the EC has abandoned a plan to charge for licenses, its requirement for a free license and continued talk of patents on the Galileo signal dampen industry enthusiasm for making Galileo receivers, at least in North America.

    Herewith, some Brussels counterpoint. “In the previous [ICD] there were some patents characterizing the signal, that could not be commercially exploited. The new publication completely removes these. We now propose a licensing agreement that aims to eliminate any barrier in the wide exploitation of the asset. Both licenses [research and manufacture] are based on non-discrimination. There is no exclusive basis, and they are absolutely free of charge. Furthermore, there is no geographical limitation.

    “Regarding the duration of the license, we are assuming 10 years. We believe this is a proper timeframe, considering the lifecycle investment of this sector. A patent can be enforced for 20 years. The patents that we own are already about five or six years old. If you add 10 years, you almost get to the end.

    “We ask companies to provide us with information on the use of these patents: whether they are used for high-precision receivers, for testing purposes, and so on. We ask for an update on a yearly basis, for information on the intended use. The only purpose is to have a good grip on the marketing, to guarantee a traceability of market needs, to interpret its evolution in a fast-changing context, and therefore enable the Commission to closely follow and support customer needs. In case a manufacturer will develop some patent on top of our patents, they have to notify us. That is, I believe, standard practice.

    “It is not our intention to create barriers to access of this signal. Manufacturers have nothing to fear from providing basic information in these licenses. We want to foster innovation and promote competition.

    “It might seem we are a team of lawyers creating problems where there should not be any. I am an aerospace engineer, not a lawyer.

    “[Complaints] could be more a point of perception. In concrete terms, we are not much different [than GPS]. We want to keep track of what we are giving away for free. We want the widest possible access to the signals. If there are any doubts, we invite manufacturers to contact us directly to work out any misunderstandings.”

    The EC was sincerely surprised to learn of discontent with the process and the patents, and hopes to have further dialog with all manufacturers.

    I was puzzled by the patents: why were they taken in the first place? It’s as if you had drawn a line in the sand, from which you now feel unable to back away, even though you might like to, and it’s clearly the best idea. The EC maintains these date from the public-private partnership effort, where intelllectual property rights were (IPR) were for the private sector a non-negligible form of revenue. Since funding has shifted to public money, “the situation has changed, and we have modified our approach.”

  • Out in Front: What’s in a Number?

    Computers killed a trusty companion of my teenage years. That is, after those proto-computers known as pocket calculators knocked him out and left him unconscious on the cooling floor.

    But I come to praise my slide rule, not to bury him.

    I marveled at the way he worked. You had a tactile relationship with numbers on a slide rule. You could see — and feel — how a small adjustment here effected a big change over there. With computers, it’s just numbers in, numbers out.

    Maybe that high-tech approach led both the GPS Wing and the Government Accountability Office into trouble with constellation gaps. GPS satellites have proven themselves very hardy in space, outlasting their predicted lifetimes. The GPS Wing has grown to lean on those longer lives a bit, and what with Congress and the Administration booting budgets a year or two to the right with addictive regularity, the Air Force has saved money by replenishing upon need. And need has been not all that great, so replenishment, and the contract awards and manufacturing that feed the replenishing line, have been allowed to relax.

    But not the mathematical models that someone has held to more conservative standards. Those models use the shorter predicted satellite lifetimes. When those models were projected against the real-world timelines for IIF and Block III — whoa GAO! Some black gaps suddenly yawned.

    Now we learn that GAO and the Wing will re-undertake this exercise, factoring instead the longer lifetimes that the satellites have proved capable of. Tinker a small adjustment here, see a big change out there.

    Speaking of numbers, I’ve grown fond of 20, and lately enamored of 200. The former being the number of years we have published this magazine, the latter the new world record for GNSS technical articles, attained by one Richard B. Langley.

    With characteristic Canadian unbravura, Langley fidgets and frets that we have made too much of him on this magazine’s cover and page 42. It looks too braggy for him and he feels uncomfortable with it. But I have prevailed upon him to swallow his humility, to take one for the team. We bask in his reflected glory.

    Quick, what’s the difference between 160 and 144.5? Not in absolute terms, but in tactical advantage. If I add a metric, east longitude, geosynchronous orbit, does that help? I’m puzzling out why Compass would move its G1 satellite from one location to another after only ten days in space. Better ground control might be the answer. But more mystifying, why China’s spokespersons at the Munich Summit would proffer the first location, when they must know very well — in fact, they so admitted when I confronted them with it — that the second is actually the case.

    Numbers don’t obfuscate. People do.