Tag: ION

Controversial GAO report on DOD nav webinar June 15

On May 10, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on navigation efforts n the Department of Defense (DOD). Among its findings were that the department regularly fails to establish validated navigation and timing requirements for systems and instead defaults to the capabilities of GPS. Also, that alternate positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) efforts are not prioritized, and sometimes actively opposed, by forces within DOD.

One of the report’s more startling recommendations is that the department change its focus from GPS as the central pillar of its PNT strategy going forward in favor of resilient technologies.

The Institute of Navigation (ION) and Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation (RNTF) are hosting a webinar to discuss the report with two of its authors on June 15 at 11 a.m. ET. Two members of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff have also been invited as panelists.

After a panel discussion moderated by Dana A. Goward, president of the RNT Foundation, attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions of the panelists.

The event is open to the public, but attendees must register in advance.

June 4, 2021
ION webinar explores GNSS interference mitigation

The Institute of Navigation (ION) is hosting a webinar April 20 on “GNSS interference mitigation: A measurement and position domain assessment.”

The webinar takes place at 11 a.m. EDT and is presented by Daniele Borio and Ciro Gioia, authors of a paper on the topic.

Summary

Modern GNSS receivers have to withstand significant levels of interference in order to operate under harsh conditions, such as in the presence of jamming and of other Radio Frequency (RF) threats. A possibility is to implement pre-correlation interference mitigation techniques that operate directly on the samples provided by the receiver front-end. The speakers’ paper provides an assessment of five interference mitigation techniques at the measurement and position level.

The analysis focuses on the adaptive notch filter (ANF) and on four robust interference mitigation (RIM) techniques. Several data collections were performed in the presence of jamming, and the data were used for the analysis that shows that RIM techniques do not introduce biases at both the measurement and position level. While the ANF delays pseudorange measurements, the biases introduced are predominantly common to all the observations with a negligible impact on a single point positioning (SPP) solution.

Learn more and register at the ION website.

March 30, 2021
ION hosts webinar on navigation of Mars Perseverance rover

The Institute of Navigation will host the Navigation of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover from Earth to Jezero Crater webinar on Tuesday, March 23, at 1:30 p.m. EDT.

The webinar will be presented by Gerhard Kruizinga, navigation engineer, Mars 2020 Navigation Team chief, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and moderated by Frank van Diggelen, ION president.

“We are honored to have the Navigation team chief of this historic mission, Gerhard Kruizinga, present his first-hand account of getting NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover from the launch pad to a safe landing on Mars,” van Diggelen said.

The precision landing required very high-precision interplanetary navigation and accommodation of entry guidance target requirements, planetary protection requirements and propellant allocation for trajectory correction maneuvers.

The main navigation objective was to predict the trajectory accuracy at atmospheric entry, such that the entry descent and landing system requirements were satisfied for a safe landing. This presentation discusses the planning to meet all navigation requirements and the actual navigation performance during cruise and landing.

Register here for the webinar.

March 2, 2021
ION names 2021 Executive Committee, Council and Standing Committee Chairs

The Institute of Navigation (ION) has announced the new members of its Executive Committee, Council and Standing Committee Chairs following its Annual Awards during the ION International Technical Meeting and Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, both held virtually Jan. 25-28.

The ION Executive Committee, Council and Standing Committee Chairs will serve a two-year term.

“ION has a distinguished and passionate group of positioning, navigation and timing professionals in key positions to advance the goals of the organization.” said Lisa Beaty, executive director at ION.

The new members include:

ION Executive Committee
• President: Frank van Diggelen, Google
• Executive Vice President: Sherman Lo, Stanford University
• Treasurer: Frank van Graas, Ohio University
• Eastern Region Vice President: Jason Rife, Tufts University
• Western Region Vice President: Tim Murphy, The Boeing Company
• Satellite Division Chair: Patricia Doherty, Boston College
• Military Division Chair: John Langer, The Aerospace Corporation
• Immediate Past President: Y. Jade Morton, University of Colorado at Boulder

Council members
• Eastern Council Member-at-Large: Seebany Datta-Barua, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Eastern Council Member-at Large, Sanjeev Gunawardena, Air Force Institute of Technology
• Western Council Member-at-Large: Paul McBurney, OneNav
• Western Council Member-at-Large: Jihye Park, Oregon State University

Technical representatives
• Fabio Dovis, Politecnico Di Torino, Italy
• Christoph Gunther, German Aerospace Center, Germany
• Allison Kealy, RMIT University, Australia
• Nobuaki Kubo, Tokyo University of Marine Science & Technology, Japan
• Alexander Mitelman, AMM Technical Consulting
• Madeleine Naudeau, Air Force Research Laboratory
• Laura Norman, NovAtel, Canada

Standing Committee Chairs
• Awards Chair: Michael Meurer, German Aerospace Center, Germany
• Bylaws Committee: Deborah Lawrence, Federal Aviation Administration
• Ethics Chair: Heidi Kuusniemi, University of Vaasa & Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, Finland
• Fellow Selection Chair: Terry Moore, United Kingdom
• Finance Chair: Gary McGraw, Collins Aerospace
• Meetings Chair: Jeff Martin, Spirent Federal Systems
• Membership Chair: Okuary Osechas, German Aerospace Center, Germany
• Nominating Chair: Y. Jade Morton, University of Colorado at Boulder
• Publications Chair: Richard B. Langley, University of New Brunswick, Canada
• Technical Committee Chair: Sherman Lo, Stanford University

February 2, 2021
ION changes date for 2021 Joint Navigation Conference

The Institute of Navigation (ION) has changed the dates for the 2021 Joint Navigation Conference (JNC) to Aug. 24-27 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Kentucky.

The conference will be hosted by the Military Division of the Institute of Navigation for the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Its theme will be “Enhancing Dominance and Resilience for Warfighting and Homeland Security PNT.”

The FEDCON U.S.-only sessions will take place at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Kentucky, Aug. 24-26; and the U.S.-only secret sessions will be held at the Air Force Institute of Technology, WPAFB in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 27. The JNC 2021 exhibit hall will be open Aug. 25-26.

This decision to change the date and host the conference in person was made in consideration of the forecasted Spring 2021 global accessibility of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We have made this decision to ensure our attendees feel safe gathering at ION events,” said Lisa Beaty, executive director at ION. “There appears to be good reason for optimism that our military PNT community will be able to gather again soon.”

According to ION, JNC is the largest U.S. military positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) conference of the year with joint service and government participation. The event focuses on technical advances in PNT with emphasis on joint development, test and support of affordable PNT systems, logistics and integration.

December 17, 2020
ION seeks abstracts for ION GNSS+ 2021

The Institute of Navigation (ION) is seeking abstracts for ION GNSS+ 2021: GNSS + Other Sensors in Today’s Marketplace, which is slated to take place Sept. 20-24 in St. Louis. A virtual option for the show also will be available.

The conference will feature two tracks: commercial and policy, and research. The commercial and policy tracks include high performance and safety critical applications; status and future trends in GNSS; and mass market and commercial applications. The research tracks include multi sensor and autonomous navigation; algorithms and methods; and advanced GNSS technologies.

The conference will also feature a new competition, the High Precision GNSS Positioning on Smartphones Competition. According to ION, participants will use a pool of GNSS datasets collected from smartphones and accompanied with high accuracy ground truth to achieve the best accuracy with the datasets provided. The winner will be based on the accuracy of the results. Team winners will win a cash prize, the opportunity to present their results during ION GNSS+ 2021 and be recognized during the ION GNSS+ Awards Ceremony, ION added.

Abstracts must be submitted by March 5. Find out how to submit abstracts here.

December 8, 2020
Jade Morton honored with ION’s Kepler Award

The Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Satellite Division presented several annual awards Sept. 25 during the ION GNSS+ Virtual Conference.

Morton Honored with Kepler Award

Y. Jade Morton received the Johannes Kepler Award for advances in scientific and navigation receiver technology, automated data collection, robust carrier phase tracking, remote sensing, and profound impact as an educator and author.

Morton is the director of the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder ,where she mentors students, faculty, staff and an ever-expanding international network of collaborators throughout the world. She is a prolific author with more than 270 publications. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. She has also authored articles for GPS World.

Receiver Technology Pioneer. Morton has made pioneering contributions to the advancement of GNSS receiver technology and utilization of these enhanced capabilities for scientific discovery. Her work brings together scientific rigor with state-of-the-art engineering innovations to simultaneously improve PNT, while revealing remarkable new applications for GNSS.

Morton’s lab-developed event-driven GNSS data acquisition systems (EDAS), designed to capture severe space weather and ionosphere disturbances of GNSS signals, which could not be handled by existing GNSS monitoring receivers. Her lab designed and built remotely-configurable, multi-GNSS, multi-band, SDR hardware using off-the-shelf components; and developed software including machine-learning algorithms for automatic event detection to trigger raw data recording during these events.

Network established. Her lab deployed these receivers worldwide. The network has enabled unprecedented studies and forecasting of ionosphere/space weather phenomena, detection of satellite oscillator anomalies, and development of advanced GNSS receivers for navigation and remote sensing under challenging conditions.

Morton’s group has made groundbreaking advances in GNSS carrier-phase processing and established theoretical performance bounds. Her group developed optimal carrier tracking loop architectures and implementations, and successfully applied the techniques to processing signals experiencing strong ionospheric scintillation for ionosphere and space weather research; radio-occultation signals traversing moist lower troposphere for weather and climate modeling; weak coherent reflected signals from ocean, land, and sea ice for precision altimetry applications; and navigation in urban canyons and on high dynamic platforms.

Morton is an expert on space weather and ionosphere monitoring. Her research findings range from climatology and morphology of ionospheric plasma irregularities to spatial, temporal and frequency domain characteristics; cause-effect relationships between solar-geomagnetic activities and GNSS signal disturbances; and radio wave propagation theory and simulation. The studies, based on data from her GNSS networks, magnetometers, radar and satellite-based measurements, cover the globe from the arctic to the equator and span an entire solar cycle.

Volunteer service. Morton has served numerous organizations with thousands of hours of volunteer service including organizing each of the ION’s large technical conferences and leading over 10 student teams participating in ION’s autonomous lawn mower and snowplow competitions, is credited as one of the co-organizing founders of the ION’s Pacific PNT conference, has served as the ION Satellite Division Chair and is the current ION President. Dr. Morton is a past recipient of the IEEE Kershner Award and the ION’s Burka and Thurlow Awards. She is a Fellow of the ION, RIN and the IEEE.

The Johannes Kepler Award recognizes and honors an individual for sustained and significant contributions to the development of satellite navigation. It is the highest honor bestowed by the ION’s Satellite Division.

Kimia Shamaei Honored with Parkinson Award

ION’s Satellite Division presented Kimia Shamaei with its Bradford W. Parkinson Award Sept. 25 for her thesis, “Exploiting Cellular Signals for Navigation: 4G to 5G.”

The Bradford W. Parkinson Award is awarded annually to an outstanding graduate student in GNSS. The award, which honors Dr. Parkinson for his leadership in establishing both the U.S. Global Positioning System and the Satellite Division of the ION, includes a personalized plaque and a $2,500 honorarium.

Any ION member who is a graduate student completing a degree program with an emphasis in GNSS technology, applications, or policy is eligible for the award. ION thanks the altruistic experts who served on this year’s selection committee.

September 25, 2020
ION celebrates 75 years of guiding navigators

The Mark 3 Plotting Board was used in single-seat aircraft flying in the Pacific. (Photo: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

On June 25, 1945, in the last few months of World War II, troops from around the globe were headed home and navigation technology was in its infancy.

On that date, the first organization meeting of the Institute of Navigation (ION) took place on the Los Angeles Campus of the University of California with 55 people in attendance. A temporary organization was established to carry on until the fall, when a second general meeting would take place on the east coast.

The first ION Annual Meeting was held Oct. 25–26 that same year at the Hotel New Yorker, with 95 ION members and 35 non-members attending. Proposed Articles of Incorporation were adopted and a council was elected.

By late October, two organizational meetings, two regional meetings and the annual meeting had taken place; bylaws were adopted with plans for incorporation; a permanent organization was established; a National Office was set up at UCLA; and plans were made for future meetings and publication of a journal.

ION’s global impact is documented in more than 2,600 technical papers published in Navigation, the Journal of the Institute of Navigation, first published in March 1946.

On June 25, ION wrote to its members, “Thank you to the thousands of ION members who have committed themselves to our field; and thank you for 75 years of technological advancements that have helped us all discover where we are, where we are going, and when we will get there.”

July 27, 2020
ION cancels 2020 Joint Navigation Conference

The Institute of Navigation (ION) has canceled its 2020 Joint Navigation Conference, which was scheduled to take place Sept. 8-11 in Covington, Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio.

According to show organizers, the decision was made because of COVID-19 and the current U.S. Department of Defense and government travel restrictions that are limiting travel.

The restricted nature of the JNC conference does not make a virtual experience possible, show organizers added.

Attendees who made hotel reservations through the ION JNC website will have reservations canceled for them, and they will receive emails confirming the cancellations. Those who booked their hotel rooms using other methods will need to contact their hotels directly to cancel room reservations.

ION JNC 2021 will be held June 7-10 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, Kentucky/Cincinnati, Ohio, with the classified session hosted at the Air Force Institute of Technology.

July 20, 2020
ION GNSS+ 2020 to be virtual-only show

The annual ION GNSS+ 2020 Conference scheduled to take place Sept. 21-25 in St. Louis, Missouri, will now be held entirely virtually.

The Institute of Navigation (ION) made the decision after careful consideration and in light of COVID-19 and the domestic and international travel restrictions that make it impossible for many speakers and participants to participate in person, the organization stated.

“The virtual platform is the best way to deliver a meaningful technical program experience to all participants,” said Lisa Beaty, executive director.

ION GNSS+ 2020 VIRTUAL will be held over the original dates, Sept. 21-25, in Central Daylight Time and will live stream the plenary and all panel keynote sessions, including the Civil GPS Service Committee meeting, through the virtual web platform. These sessions will also be recorded and uploaded for viewing at a later time. Interactive question and answer will take place virtually.

Individual technical presentations will be pre-recorded and uploaded with slides to the ION GNSS+ 2020 VIRTUAL site each morning for viewing at a later time. Attendees will have the option to submit questions to each presenter. Details can be found in the online program.

Recognizing that industry partners want to connect with ION GNSS+ 2020 VIRTUAL attendees, ION is providing an expanded online exhibitor profile that allows exhibitors to upload a complete company profile with sales information, upload their company logo and company brochures, and will include complete contact information that allows attendees to email an exhibitor directly to ask questions or set up a phone or virtual appointment.

The Institute of Navigation is offering free conference registrations for ION GNSS+ first-time attendees (some restrictions apply) and a COVID-19 economic impact discounted virtual registration fee.

For more information on ION GNSS+ 2020 VIRTUAL, go to www.ion.org/gnss.

July 9, 2020
Institute of Navigation celebrates 75th anniversary

The Institute of Navigation (ION) celebrated its 75th anniversary on June 25.

On June 25, 1945, ION held its first organizational meeting on the Los Angeles Campus of the University of California.

According to ION, 55 people attended this meeting, where a “temporary” organization was established until a general meeting could take place in the fall when articles of incorporation could be drafted and adopted, council members elected and the vision for ION could begin to take shape.

The global impact of ION has been documented in its more than 2,600 technical papers that have been published in Navigation, the Journal of the Institute of Navigation. Navigation was first published in March 1946.

The Institute of Navigation is a non-profit professional organization advancing the art and science of positioning, navigation and timing.

June 25, 2020
ION GNSS+ 2020 to be hosted virtually and in person

ION GNSS+ 2020 organizers have decided to host the event both in person and virtually. The ION GNSS+ 2020 virtual option will mirror the technical program being presented live, Sept. 21-25 in St. Louis, Missouri.

“This year, recognizing that some won’t be able to attend ION GNSS+ 2020 due to restrictions and with the goal of increasing global accessibility to everyone who wants to participate, the Institute of Navigation is excited to offer an ION GNSS+ 2020 virtual option,” the Institute of Navigation (ION) said.

Two session tracks will be live streamed, including the keynote plenary session, all panel sessions and mix of other sessions from various technical tracks. Virtual attendees also will be invited to participated in a moderated Q&A.

In addition, all technical sessions will be audio-recorded as they are taking place, with the slides uploaded to the ION GNSS+ 2020 virtual conference site. Virtual attendees will have the option of viewing all technical presentations on demand and on their own schedules, organizers added. The virtual conference option, however, does not include the pre-conference tutorials or pre-conference short courses.

All scheduled technical papers will be presented by authors in-person in St. Louis. The conference, however, will not include pre-recorded or off-site virtual presentations of technical papers.

ION will also provide an expanded online exhibitor profile that will allow exhibitors to upload a complete company profile with sales and contact information, company logos and company brochures. The online exhibitor profile also will include a link that allows attendees to email an exhibitor directly to ask questions or set up a phone or virtual appointment. Additionally, companies that purchased an island booth will be provided the opportunity to live stream an exhibitor demonstration during a scheduled conference break.

Virtual meeting attendance will be free for all first-time ION GNSS+ attendees. If an individual or organization requires assistance in order to participate in the show, ION is also offering a COVID-19 economic impact discount for the virtual option.

June 11, 2020