The CR8894SXF+ is an advanced controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA) for anti-jamming. It is engineered to provide efficient interference protection and real-time situational awareness across critical infrastructure, marine and defense environments where GNSS continuity is mission critical. It is specifically designed to provide a low-power and lightweight solution in a compact size. It features advanced in-band null forming to protect GPS L1/L2 and Galileo E1/E5b signals, helping ensure resilient positioning, navigation and timing in environments with contested, congested or degraded radio frequency conditions. The antenna incorporates Calian’s eXtended Filtering interference mitigation technology to maintain performance and reliability when RF threats are present. The CRPA supports in-band null-forming of 20 dB to 40 dB and out-of-band rejection up to 80 dB across 700 MHz to 2,500 MHz. It includes two independent low-noise amplifier channels, allowing continued operation if one signal band is compromised. The antenna forms nulls in both upper (L1/E1) and lower (L2/E5b) GNSS bands to actively suppress jamming sources. A serial output interface provides real-time feedback, enabling users to monitor RF conditions and system status.
The BlackNaute autonomous positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) system integrates Safran’s HRG dual-core inertial navigation technology, the Skylight multi-mode GNSS receiver board, and an atomic clock to offer navigation resilience in challenging electronic warfare environments. BlackNaute’s built-in atomic clock is designed to maintain precise timing, which is essential for secure communications and collaborative combat operations. The system features advanced anti-jamming and anti-spoofing algorithms, which have been validated in more than 16,000 operational cases. These capabilities allow BlackNaute to detect compromised signals and automatically switch to autonomous and trusted navigation and timing sources to ensure continuity of operations. Its modular design allows it to be adapted across a variety of platforms. Airbus Helicopters has selected the NH90 to be equipped with this new Embedded GNSS and Time INS (EGTI).
Suite enhanced for greater accuracy, coverage and insight
Photo: US Navy
HawkEye 360’s GNSS-I Detection suite includes powerful enhancements to its GNSS interference detection capabilities. The upgrades — designed with defense, intelligence and national security operations in mind — offer unprecedented accuracy, coverage and insight into global GPS jamming and spoofing threats. The update includes a new wider frequency algorithm that better distinguishes individual emitters, incorporates GPS spoofing detection, and is terrain adjusted for better geolocation accuracy, delivering greater situational awareness and more precise geolocation of interference sources worldwide. The enhanced product suite supports strategic decision-making by providing timely, precise insight into potential signal disruptions, enabling stakeholders to better assess risk, respond confidently, and maintain operational continuity in dynamic environments.
For complex intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions
Photo: ESEN-UAS
The GöKHUN unmanned aerial system (UAS) is a tactical vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone system developed for versatile missions on land or at sea. GöKHUN combines the compact mobility of a NATO Class I UAV with the performance data of a Class II tactical system. It uses the SP 210 FI GS 2-stroke engine from Sky Power International. With a take-off weight of up to 110 kg and a maximum fuel and payload capacity of 26 kg, the GöKHUN can remain in the air for up to 16 hours with a minimum payload. Even with a demanding sensor load of 12 kg, it can achieve a flight duration of around nine hours, making it suitable for long-endurance reconnaissance and surveillance missions. The GöKHUN’s cruising speed is between 96 and 158 km/h. The maximum range with direct line-of-sight is over 150 km, with the system reaching a service ceiling of approximately 5,500 m.
Abstracts for Joint Navigation Conference (JNC) 2023, “Enhancing Dominance and Resilience for Warfighting and Homeland Security PNT,” are due Feb. 3. JNC 2023 is the largest United States military positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) conference of the year with joint service and government participation.
The Institute of Navigation’s Military Division will host the conference June 12-15 at the Town and Country Hotel in San Diego. The event will be open to all conference participants, exhibitors, their employees and related organizations. All materials displayed in the exhibit hall will be publicly released after review.
The event will focus on advances in PNT with an emphasis on joint development, testing and support of affordable PNT systems, logistics and integration. Additionally, the conference will cover advances in battlefield applications of GPS, critical strengths and weaknesses of field navigation devices, warfighter PNT requirements and solutions and navigation warfare.
Abstracts must be written for public release with the intent to present in a Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) U.S. only environment. Abstracts not approved for public release will not be accepted.
Interested parties may submit their abstracts at ion.org/jnc.
In 2022, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) continued to improve its service performance, expand global applications, and deepen and promote international cooperation.
On Nov. 4, 2022, a white paper titled “China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System in the New Era” was published. The paper shows the continuous, stable and reliable operational capability of BDS, its applications achievements across the industries, international development with openness and integration, and unremitting pursuit of helping to build a community with a shared future for humanity and a better world.
System Services Performances
In orbit are 45 BDS operational satellites, including 15 BDS-2 satellites and 30 BDS-3 satellites. Figure 1 shows the number of visible BDS satellites worldwide as of BDT 06:00 on Dec. 6, 2022.
Figure 1. Number of visible BDS satellites. (Image: www.csno-tarc.cn)
BDS has reached a continuity of 99.996% and an availability of 99%. The innovative constellation involves inter-satellite links, signal system optimization, intelligent operation and maintenance, software reconstruction and upgrading of in-orbit satellites, and global test and assessment.
As measured by the International GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System (iGMAS), the BDS global positioning accuracy is less than 1.5 m horizontally and 2.5 m vertically (95% confidence) — better than the nominal service performance parameters.
So far, the measured signal power spectrum envelope of the BDS satellites remains consistent with the superior signal quality; the signal-in-space accuracy of any BDS satellite is better than 4.6 m. The time offset between BDT and UTC (NTSC) remains within 26 ns.
The BDS Coordination Framework has maintained consistency with the International Terrestrial Reference Frame 2014, and the accuracy is better than 3 cm. The orbital accuracy of the broadcast ephemeris of the BDS-3 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite is better than 0.5 m, and the clock offset of the broadcast ephemeris of the BDS-3 satellites is better than 5 ns.
BDS concentrates on construction of the application infrastructure and has established four major characteristic service platforms:
Short Message Communication Service
Satellite-based Augmentation System Service
Search-and-Rescue Service
Ground Based Augmentation System Service.
These platforms will expand and upgrade the applications and provide more efficient and convenient services for users.
The BDS Short Message Communication Service platform realizes the interconnection with ground mobile communication systems and networks, and integrates the BDS short message communication functionality into smartphones without the need to change the SIM card or contact number.
For the BDS Satellite-based Augmentation System Service platform, the system’s ground segment includes 30 monitoring stations and two data processing centers. The system will provide single frequency (SF) and dual-frequency multi-constellation (DFMC) services through GEO satellites. The Civil Aviation Administration of China has initiated and organized the technical testing and certification of SF service before applications.
The BDS Search-and-Rescue Service provides users with distress alert information access and distribution, as well as return link services. It is currently at the initial operational stage with sound performances. The operational status of the BDS SAR payload has been submitted to Cospas-Sarsat.
The BDS Ground-Based Augmentation System Service platform’s real-time positioning accuracy can reach 2 cm horizontally and 5 cm vertically. The post-processing accuracy can reach 2 mm horizontally and 5 mm vertically. At present, the BDS ground-based augmentation network has provided the A-BDS positioning and the BDS high-precision services for more than 1.5 billion users in more than 230 countries and regions, with services delivered 2 trillion times in total, equivalent to nearly 3 billion on average per day. BDS has provided high-precision positioning services for more than 20 million mobile phones in the country.
The BDS Applications Industry
The BDS applications industry has achieved sustainable development. In 2021, the total output of China’s satellite navigation and location-based service industry reached about 469 billion yuan (about 67.4 billion U.S. dollars), with a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%. A complete industrial chain covering chips, modules, antennas, boards, terminals and services has been established.
Industrial applications. BDS has been fully applied in various industries — including transportation, agriculture, forestry and fishery, public security, disaster mitigation and relief — and has been integrated into infrastructure such as electric power, water conservation, finance and communications.
As BDS applications fields expand, its in-depth applications have been growing as well. As of June 2022, more than 8 million BDS terminals had been installed in the transportation sector. More than 1.3 million terminals were used in the farming, forestry, livestock and fishing industries, and more than 1.8 million terminals were adopted by public security agencies. Large-scale BDS applications have been advanced in communication and timing services, meteorological monitoring, emergency response and disaster mitigation, and urban management. In emerging applications sectors, BDS has served epidemic prevention and control, telemedicine, caring for seniors, promoting the realization of intelligent health services that serve everyone, and accelerating intelligence and modernization in related fields.
Mass market applications. BDS has been widely used in mass market applications, such as mobile phones and wearable devices. In the first half of 2022, among all types of smartphones that applied for network access in China, 128 supported the BDS-based positioning function. More than 130 million smartphones supporting BDS services were shipped, accounting for more than 98% of the country’s total volume. The BDS positioning service is used more than 100 billion times daily on average for a platform that supports mobile map navigation. In particular, mobile phones have been fitted with high-precision positioning services. Lane-level navigation has been implemented in eight cities in China, including Shenzhen, Chongqing and Tianjin. The first mobile phone in the world that supports BDS-3 regional short message communication services has been officially released, enabling users to send short messages through BDS.
BDS international applications. BDS has been applied in more than half the countries and regions in the world, with more diversified application modes and application fields.
BDS products, technologies and services have been recognized by more international users:
In Mozambique, BDS-based UAVs have greatly improved the efficiency of plant protection operations
In Lebanon, BDS-based high-precision technology has been successfully applied to the construction and measurement of the port of Beirut
In Burkina Faso, BDS supported surveying and mapping during the construction of hospitals to prevent and control local infectious diseases, such as COVID-19
In Saudi Arabia, BDS is widely used in fields such as surveying and the collection of geographic information, the construction of urban and municipal infrastructure, and the positioning of personnel or vehicles in deserts
In Asia, BDS-based high-precision positioning services are contributing to the monitoring of Sarez Lake Dam in Tajikistan, the completion of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan Highway, the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline, and the routine operation of China-Europe Railway Express.
International Cooperation
Following the principles of openness, cooperation and resource sharing, BDS has been actively carrying out practical international cooperation and exchanges as well as facilitating the development of global satellite navigation.
Multilateral cooperation. BDS representatives continue to participate in international activities under the framework of the United Nations International Committee on GNSS and other multilateral forums, to advocate joint development of global satellite navigation by contributing Chinese wisdom and proposals. BDS has also participated in international academic conferences in the field of satellite navigation, such as the Institute of Navigation meetings, the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, and the Multi-GNSS Asia Conference.
Bilateral cooperation. The Ninth Meeting of the China-Russia Project Committee on Major Strategic Cooperation in Satellite Navigation was successfully held in September 2022. Under the framework of the Committee, BDS and GLONASS have carried out continuous cooperation in such areas as compatibility and interoperability, system performance testing and assessment, and joint applications. China’s Satellite Navigation Office signed cooperation documents in the field of satellite navigation with partners from the United Arab Emirates and the Arab Civil Aviation Organization, to carry out extensive cooperation and continue to deepen cooperation with Pakistan, Iraq, Thailand, Argentina, South Africa and other countries.
International Standards. BDS is increasingly recognized by international organizations such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Cospas-Sarsat, IEC, 3GPP and RTCM. In November 2022, the BDS Message Service System (BDMSS) was ratified by the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS), making BDMSS the third GMDSS satellite communication system recognized by the IMO. The Declaration of Intent for Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR Cooperation was signed between the cooperating agencies (from Canada, France, Russia, and the United States) of the International Cospas-Sarsat Program and the Maritime Safety Administration of China, meaning China formally becomes the provider of the Cospas-Sarsat space segment.
The Future
In the future, BDS will launch back-up satellites to ensure better performance by upgrading the constellation’s availability. While maintaining stable operation, BDS will speed up in combination with new technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence and Big Data to build a more ubiquitous, more integrated, and more intelligent national comprehensive PNT system by 2035. BDS will continuously adhere to the development concept that “BDS is developed by China, dedicated to the world and aiming to be world class,” promote system development and make contributions to social development and construction of the community with a shared future for mankind.
For analogous updates on the other three GNSS constellations, please see:
Accurate and reliable positioning, timing and navigation (PNT) technologies, such as GPS, have become “invisible utilities” that enable many critical applications, including the electric grid, telecommunications, agriculture and port operations. These systems, however, are vulnerable to accident and attack, including cyber threats and jamming.
Therefore, the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Risk Management Center of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have been working in collaboration with industry and government stakeholders to develop the Resilient PNT Conformance Framework, which provides a common framework for defining resilient PNT systems and addresses strategic risks to U.S. national critical infrastructure. This work is now transitioning to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as the Standards Working Group for Resilient PNT User Equipment (P1952) and will help serve as starting resources for the refinement and development of a standard.
By creating common definitions for different levels of resilient PNT systems, this new standard will enable vendors to differentiate their products from non-resilient PNT systems, as well as enable end-users to make deliberate, risk-informed decisions as to which systems are most appropriate for their applications and needs. The development of this voluntary standard will help influence the future design, acquisition and deployment of resilient PNT systems within our national critical infrastructure.
The IEEE standards process is an inclusive one, designed to gather many stakeholders interested in resilient PNT. If you would like to participate in the standards working group, just notify the group’s chair (Shelby Savage at [email protected]) or its secretary (Patricia Larkoski at [email protected]). Voting membership requires sufficient participation in work group meetings.
The development of this voluntary standard will help influence the future design, acquisition and deployment of resilient PNT systems.
After the standards working group votes to approve the draft standard, it will be submitted to the membership of the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) for final approval. The IEEE Standards Balloting Center will then send an invitation to any SA members it knows to be interested in the subject matter of the proposed standard, and anyone answering the invitation affirmatively will have a right to vote on the final standard.
Compared to the early days of GPS, PNT systems have become highly sophisticated pieces of equipment with a multitude of components, both hardware and software, along with associated vulnerabilities. Additionally, with a wide array of stakeholders and a variety of ideas on what PNT resilience means, getting consensus and developing such a standard would be challenging without an established process.
To help address this challenge, DHS developed the Resilient PNT Conformance Framework with input from industry stakeholders to establish baseline concepts on the definition of resilience and necessary behaviors within resilient PNT systems. DHS designed this framework to be outcome-based and non-prescriptive, to encourage industry innovation.
“To address security and resilience, GPS and PNT receivers need to be treated more like computers rather than radios,” said Ernest Wong, technical manager for the Science and Technology Directorate. “The refinement of the Resilient PNT Conformance Framework into industry standards will help to ensure that future PNT receivers are resilient and designed to withstand and recover from threats.”
Editor’s Note: This article does not represent a formal position of P1952 Working Group, Communications Society Standards Committee, IEEE, or IEEE SA.
The Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) has issued a call for papers for the Navigation 2021 conference.
The conference, which as of now will be held virtually Nov. 15-18, 2021, will bring together experts from industry, research institutions, government agencies and investors whose primary goal is to work together for a more navigable world, RIN said. Conference themes will include PNT systems and technology, robust PNT, PNT applications, animal and human navigation, and navigation in society.
The November 2021 event will unite two established conferences: the International Navigation Conference and the European Navigation Conference.
RIN is accepting papers in the following categories:
Peer-reviewed: Abstracts and, if accepted, papers will be peer reviewed and published to be indexed and searchable. Presentations will be invited in a parallel technical session at the conference.
Presentation: Abstracts will be reviewed and, if accepted, submitters will be invited to present their work in a parallel session at the conference.
Poster: Abstracts will be reviewed and, if accepted, posters will be displayed in the exhibition hall. RIN plans to encourage delegate interaction through poster presentations during the networking sessions.
The best peer-reviewed papers will be invited to submit for consideration to be published in the Journal of Navigation, RIN added.
Navigation 2021 will take place as a virtual conference. According to RIN, it will review the situation in 2021 and if possible run an in-person element to compliment the conference.
“We cannot have GPS signals be a single point of failure for transportation and other critical infrastructure sectors. More safety applications will depend on PNT in the future. Public confidence in these will be critical.
“People will not be comfortable getting into an automated vehicle or with platooning driverless trucks heading down the highway if they think that their invisible hand is not reliable and that their GPS might be spoofed.
“Getting public adoption of other PNT capabilities — space-based, terrestrial, and self-contained — integrated with GPS technology will be critical to the success of any such system.”
— Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology, U.S. Department of Transportation, Nov. 20, 2019, Edinburgh, U.K.
A Single Point of Failure
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is responsible for leading civil positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) issues for the United States. At the moment, the U.S. GPS provides the vast majority of PNT services in the U.S. and around the world. Yet, like all space-based systems, its signals are weak and very vulnerable to interference.
A recent example of how dangerous that can be in automated transportation systems was revealed recently in an accident report released by the British government. Interference from an unknown source caused a 15.5 kg drone to get away from its operator and crash. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The report cited analysis showing that such a weight could have easily killed someone on the ground.
Even more concerning, GPS signal characteristics are well known and therefore easy to imitate. Thousands of cases of “spoofing” have been documented with government and malicious actors causing receivers to report they are far from their actual location. In the worst cases, this can cause accidents or enable criminal acts.
One result of all of this is the President of the United States issuing an Executive Order encouraging “responsible use” of PNT systems. It also directs steps to encourage development and adoption of alternative systems. This includes a White House-level plan for research and development of non-Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) PNT.
In Europe the European Union (EU) has warned that space based PNT alone is insufficient for “…critical applications requiring continuous availability and fail-safe operations.” The EU has also established a monitoring system to detect sources of GNSS interference, and the European Space Agency (ESA) has established an on-going program funding study of both space and terrestrial alternate PNT systems.
Multiple Cooperating Systems
The ultimate solution, though, according to senior government officials, will be development and use of many diverse PNT systems working together to ensure users have what they need when and where they need it.
Image: DOT
The National PNT Architecture, jointly developed by the US departments of Defense and Transportation, envisions a multitude of PNT sources ranging from GNSS provided by national governments, to inertial and clock suites acquired by users as needed.
“Many people are fond of talking about a GPS backup,” said one administration official.
“It’s more appropriate to use the plural ‘backups’ since one system isn’t going to meet everyone’s needs. Even GPS doesn’t meet everyone’s needs which is why we require complementary PNT capabilities.”
The idea that multiple redundancies are required for an essential function as long been a core principle of systems engineering. This is clearly foundational in the National PNT Architecture.
It is also a feature in more recent documents.
One example is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) PNT strategy publicly released in August of last year. It envisions use of a multitude of systems as a way of “Ensuring a U.S. Military PNT Advantage.”
Image: DOD
It categorizes these in three layers. A global layer of GNSS and other satellites, a regional layer that includes STOIC and eLoran, and a local/autonomous layer populated by inertial, clock, lidar, radar, scene matching and beacon-based systems.
Another project taking the architecture approach is described in detail by the recently completed MarRINav report. Sponsored by the European Space Agency, it analyzed the PNT needs of maritime commerce in the United Kingdom.
The project concluded that a “hybrid approach” using GNSS, eLoran, and the short-range R-mode VDES would be the best and least expensive combination for maritime. It also recommended a local navigation system such as Locata for port cargo operations. The study found that such a combination of systems would also benefit other transportation and infrastructure sectors.
Implementation
Yet identifying solutions is often much easier than making them happen. Especially for national projects with dozens of stakeholders. Stakeholders who may often have competing interests. And there is always the question of “Who pays?”
In the United States both the Congress and the executive branch of the U.S. government are addressing these issues, and in potentially complementary ways.
Congressional Mandates. With GPS as the cornerstone, both the DoD strategy and the National PNT Architecture show the need for one or more complementary systems to “overcome PNT capability gaps, predominantly resulting from the limitations of GPS.”
According to one senior official close to the issue, these systems need to be, “integrated with GPS and each other” and within the U.S. “serve all parts of the country — urban, rural, wilderness — even coastal maritime areas.” The idea being that they will constantly reinforcing GPS services while also serving as a safety net for users when during GPS disruptions.
The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 requires DoT to begin filling this layer in the National Architecture by the end of this year. The law, passage of which was overwhelmingly supported by both parties, mandates the department establish a difficult to disrupt, wide area, terrestrial timing system to backup (and complement) GPS timing signals. The system also must be expandable to provide navigation services. Even as a timing service, though, it has the potential to make navigation more reliable. Studies have shown that combining such a timing signal with GPS and other GNSS signals can dramatically decrease users’ vulnerability to jamming and spoofing.
The law also enables the system or systems to be established by leveraging commercial entities and expertise through cooperative agreements, public-private partnerships, and similar arrangements. These tend to be the most expeditious and least costly methods for putting such services in place. As such, they are expected to be very attractive to government program and contracting officials.
On military side, the in-process National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 requires DoD to quickly complete this part of their architecture also. Hinting that the department has failed to respond to combatant commanders “Joint Urgent Operational Needs,” it directs DoD to provide warfighters non-GPS PNT by 2023. It also directs the department to “enable civilian and commercial adoption of [these] technologies and capabilities”.
Presidential Order. The administration’s approach is outlined in a February 2020 presidential Executive Order. The order focuses on commercial entities that contract with the government, critical infrastructure, and research and development.
It calls for, within the next 24 months, agencies to “develop contractual language for inclusion … n the requirements for Federal contracts … with the goal of encouraging the private sector to use additional PNT services and develop new robust and secure PNT services.” The hope is that these new services will be adopted beyond just those companies who routinely serve government needs.
The departments of Energy, Transportation, and Homeland Security are also required to publish plans on how they will engage various critical infrastructure sectors to evaluate the degree of responsible use of PNT by each.
Also, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is tasked to “coordinate the development of a national plan… for the R&D and pilot testing of additional, robust, and secure PNT services that are not dependent on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).” OSTP has already begun this and is seeking input from the public.
Competition and Many Players
Because PNT user needs are so varied and nuanced, most industry observers see growing opportunities for existing and potentially new providers.
“Systems and equipment that improve GNSS services, or that complement and augment GNSS are likely to find ready markets,” said Andrew Bach, a consultant on financial and other PNT issues. “User demands and needs are only going to become more sophisticated as their economic exposure increases.”
Congressional and administration focus on alternative PNT should enhance and multiply such opportunities. So, while there may be no silver bullet for solving national PNT concerns, the need for a robust and resilient architecture of PNT systems will likely mean abundant opportunities for providers.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a report on alternative sources of PNT on May 6. It was submitted to U.S. congressional committee leaders on April 8.
Section 1618 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of Dec. 23, 2016, required the DHS to address the need for a GPS backup by identifying and assessing viable alternate technologies and systems.
The report is a summary and analysis of that assessment by the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) of PNT systems currently used by critical infrastructure. It also provides recommendations for the federal government’s next steps to increase the resilience of critical infrastructure to disruption of GPS services.
In the report, DHS offers the following recommendations to address the nation’s PNT requirements and backup or complementary capability gaps:
Temporary GPS disruptions: End users should be responsible for mitigating temporary GPS disruptions. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration maintains sufficient PNT capabilities to assure the continued safe operation of the national airspace, albeit at a reduced capacity, during GPS disruptions. The federal government can facilitate this mitigation for various critical infrastructure sectors, but should not be solely responsible for it.
PNT Diversity and Segmentation: The federal government should encourage adoption of multiple PNT sources, thus expanding the availability of PNT services based on market drivers. Encouraging critical infrastructure owners and operators to adopt multiple PNT systems will diffuse the risk currently concentrated in wide-area PNT services such as GPS. Federal actions should focus on facilitating the availability and adoption of PNT sources in the open market.
System Design: PNT provisioning systems, assets, and services must be designed with inherent security and resilience features. Critical infrastructure systems that use PNT services must be designed to operate through interference and to identify and respond to anomalous PNT inputs. These attributes are applicable to the PNT receivers and the systems that use them.
Pursue Innovation that Emphasizes Transition and Adoption: Incorporating PNT signal diversity into the PNT ecosystem should be pursued with an emphasis on research and development that prioritizes successful transition and adoption into existing GPS receivers, taking into account factors such as business case considerations, financial costs, technical integration, and logistical deployment.
Table 1 shows timing requirements for critical infrastructure are, according to the report.
Table 1. (Image: DHS report)
Table 2 from the report shows proposed timing solutions submitted by industry to DHS during a Request for Information (RFI) in December 2018. Systems that can meet or exceed timing requirements for critical infrastructure are indicated in green.
Table 2 (Image: DHS report)
Satelles responds
The Satelles company, which offers STL, issued a statement on the report. “This important report highlights the urgent need for GPS backup for critical applications, and it identifies and characterizes a variety of solutions that are available to meet this need today,” said Michael O’Connor, CEO of Satelles. “The report also describes the essential role of the federal government in urging industry to implement multiple technologies, without making the mistake of providing or selecting a single PNT solution.”
Continued O’Connor, “DHS goes on to define a baseline requirement for timing services accuracy for critical infrastructure. Not only does Satelles meet or exceed the precision timing specifications stated by DHS, but also our solution provides national coverage (including Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories) and is commercially available now.”
