SBG Systems has built a program designed to sponsor student teams participating in competitions, as well as offer discounts for universities and research centers on inertial sensors and post-processing software.
Through the program, the company sponsors students participating in competitions in various fields, such as robotics, autonomous vehicles, UAV, rockets, unmanned and solar boats and more. This includes support during the competition, as well as during the installation of SBG’s latest inertial navigation systems in the teams’ vehicle prototype, the company said.
SBG’s Ellipse series is also eligible through its education program. The series is composed of SBG’s miniature inertial measurement units, attitude and heading reference systems and inertial navigation systems. In addition, the entire product line has been renewed. The new Ellipse INS/GNSS embeds a quad constellation, dual frequency, and dual Antenna RTK GNSS receiver to bring centimetric position and higher accuracy orientation in the smallest package, SBG added.
In addition to being compatible with CAN and ROS, the Ellipse Series’ sensors are compatible with SBG’s Qinertia Post-Processing Software, the SBG Systems’ in-house INS/GNSS post-processing software. Qinertia allows users to replay, analyze, improve their trajectories and access RTK corrections worldwide to bring their project to the centimetric accuracy.
SBG Systems designs and manufactures MEMS-based inertial motion sensing solutions. According to SBG, its products are ideal solutions for industrial and research projects such as unmanned vehicle control, antenna tracking, camera stabilization and surveying applications.
Vision-RTK enables applications in previously unreachable areas and unlocks new possibilities for autonomous ground robots and drones
At this year’s Intergeo Digital event, taking place Oct. 13-15, Fixposition is debuting the Vision-RTK positioning sensor, a compact centimeter-accurate solution with high reliability and availability in environments that are challenging for traditional GNSS.
Photo: FixPosition
The Vision-RTK’s sensor-fusion algorithm is based on the deep integration of satellite, camera and inertial sensors, and enables unprecedented reliability and availability in diverse and challenging applications, the company stated.
“The highly integrated nature of our Vision-RTK sensor and our deep expertise in computer vision and real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS enabled us to implement completely new approaches in sensor fusion, resulting in previously unseen performance,” said Lukas Meier, CTO and co-founder of Fixposition.
Traditional GNSS sensors suffer from limited reliability in GNSS-challenging and denied areas. On the other hand, standalone computer vision is sensitive to light conditions (such as snow, strong sunlight and rain) and struggles in situations where there is a lack of features such as cornfields and grass. Errors accumulate over time with standalone inertial technology, causing large drifts.
As a result, devices using either sensor are limited in their range of operation and are likely to fail in certain conditions. Fixposition’s solution increases the potential of these sensors with its unique sensor-fusion technology by increasing the trustworthiness of the positioning accuracy and the range of operation in different environments.
The real-time sensor fusion provides centimeter-accurate absolute positioning at any time, in any outdoor environment. This small module integrates two RTK-GNSS receivers and visual inertial navigation, and is suitable for applications where size and accuracy are of paramount importance.
The dual-receiver configuration, together with Fixposition’s advanced algorithms, provides a true-heading output and increased resistance to electromagnetic radiation.
The sensor provides USB and Wi-Fi connectivity and a web interface. It enables straightforward integration in state-of-the-art autopilot control systems for drones and robots. It’s also plug-and-play compatible with platforms such as PX4, ROS and Apollo.
For ground robotics and drones applications, Vision-RTK increases the device uptime and efficiency while enabling new market segments in areas previously inaccessible. For end-device manufacturers, this technology eliminates the need for an in-house development of advanced localization solutions, shortening their sales cycle and reducing costs and investments.
Visit the Fixposition booth and meet the team at Intergeo Digital 2020 to learn more about the Vision-RTK sensor.
Garmin has debuted the GPSMAP 65, 65s and 66sr, three new portable devices with improved technology, precision and connectivity. GPSMAP is the company’s line of premium outdoor navigation units.
The GPSMAP 65, 65s and 66sr offer multiband technology for positioning and tracking anywhere. They are the first Garmin portable devices to receive and use multiple satellite navigation frequencies.
The multi-band technology and expanded GNSS support with addition of the L5 frequency (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS and IRNSS) allows for reduced estimated position error, giving users improved accuracy and awareness of their surroundings.
The new models include TopoActive maps of Europe, smartphone notifications, color screens, battery improvement, compatibility with the Garmin Explore app and more. All three are rugged, dust, shock and water resistant (IPX71 rated).
“We are excited to grow our popular lineup of GPSMAP handhelds and introduce multiple GPS frequencies into the series,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin vice president of global consumer sales. “We’ve expanded our satellite support so you can explore with confidence, no matter where you go or what the conditions are.”
GPSMAP 66sr
The premium version, GPSMAP 66sr, has a 3-inch color screen readable in all lighting conditions and is compatible with night-vision goggles. In addition, it has been designed to military standards for thermal performance and resistance to shock and water (MIL-STD-810G), and includes a built-in S.O.S. LED flashlight for assistance. To give the user even more confidence, incorporates ABC sensors (3-axis electronic compass), accelerometer and barometric altimeter), allowing users to obtain the most accurate data available at all times.
GPSMAP 66sr also provides global forecasts and weather through the Active Weather feature, updated through wireless connectivity via Bluetooth and ANT +. Via the Wi-Fi connection, users can download satellite maps.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a call for proposals to demonstrate the capabilities of new 5G cellular networks to support positioning and timing applications to complement satellite navigation.
5G will bring higher speed, larger traffic capacity and ultra low-latency (or signal delay) communications. 5G will also usher in a range of new possibilities for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).
ESA is inviting proposals to implement pilot projects to demonstrate the viability of 5G PNT solutions in a number of use cases:
Indoor PNT for Industry 4.0, as needed to support the operations of smart warehouses and factories or smart city applications requiring transition from indoor to outdoor environments.
Outdoor applications where a robust back-up to satellite navigation is essential to meet safety requirements, such as autonomous driving or drone navigation.
Applications where robust time and frequency synchronization is necessary, both in outdoor as well as indoor environments, like smart energy grids or the 5G networks themselves.
5G networks will allow new types of measurements made possible by advanced antennas and by new positioning signals at higher frequencies, at both base stations and the user receivers. 5G networks will also bring enhanced connectivity to improve cloud-based positioning applications and value-added services.
While satellite navigation works optimally in outdoor environments with a wide view of the sky, 5G PNT has the potential to bring PNT to deep urban canyons in high-rise city centers and indoor warehouses, wherever 5G networks are deployed.
The combination of satellite navigation and 5G brings the promise of high performance, secure and resilient PNT services, as well as a seamless application of PNT applications from outdoor to indoor environments and from rural to urban areas, ESA said.
This call for ideas is supported through ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP), working with European industry and academia to develop innovative navigation technology.
Webinar on PNT 5G
To support the call, an information webinar is being held on 21 October, in which the various PNT 5G use cases will be presented by key speakers from each sector. Details of the call and how to apply will also be presented by ESA.
A networking platform has also been established to allow webinar participants and general stakeholders interested in the call to get in touch and discuss possible cooperation. This platform will be kept open during the entire period of the call’s duration.
For more information on the call and the agenda of the webinar visit ESA’s NAVISP website.
To register for the webinar and the networking platform, click here.
The new AsteRx-m3 family features state-of-the-art GPS/GNSS OEM boards optimized for power consumption and ease of integration.
Photo: Septentrio
Septentrio has expanded its GPS/GNSS OEM portfolio with the AsteRx-m3 product family. AsteRx-m3 receivers target various use cases and offer flexibility and affordability with no compromises of performance.
The AsteRx-m3 family features very low power consumption, allowing longer operation times. Its easy-to-integrate design enables short set-up times and faster time-to-market.
“With the AsteRx-m3 product family, Septentrio redefines state-of-the-art GNSS positioning performance,” said Danilo Sabbatini, product manager at Septentrio. “It was a challenge to design a product that delivers multi-frequency and multi-constellation positioning, combined with Septentrio’s renowned GNSS+ technology while optimizing power. The AsteRx-m3 product not only excels in this but does so at a reduced cost.”
All AsteRx-m3 products represent the next generation of technology in the GNSS OEM market, delivering centimeter-level accuracy, availability and reliability in a credit-card sized board, Septentrio said.
The new product family includes three types of GNSS OEM boards.
The AsteRx-m3 Pro rover receiver tracks signals from all available GNSS constellations on three frequencies. Simple and powerful, it operates both in single- and dual-antenna modes.
The AsteRx-m3 ProBase is designed to operate as a reference station for RTK and PPP-RTK networks. It can be used as a base station or for network densification.
The AsteRx-m3 Pro+, a full-feature OEM receiver board flexible enough to fit into any application and to be used either as a rover or a base station in a single- or dual-antenna mode.
By offering its next-generation GNSS technology in a diversity of products Septentrio aims to improve customer experience while optimizing prices.
I spent much of the 1980s working for Magnavox Government & Industrial Electronics Company, which held a number of patents on the GPS system and also developed prototype GPS user sets for the military. I, and others at the company, often gave presentations to industry groups talking about the many commercial and consumer applications for which GPS would be used as the cost and size of GPS receivers declined. By the early 2000s, the applications we had envisioned had been far surpassed.
In the early 1990s, I spent several years at Teletrac, now Teletrac Navman, which was beginning to market a vehicle tracking solution based on its own proprietary time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) technology, using in-vehicle devices and metro-area-based receiving/transmitting towers. One day, the co-founder and chairman of the company roamed into my office for an update on sales and marketing progress. I changed the subject and, at some risk to my job, said “Dennis, the future of location technology is GPS. It will not just be used to locate vehicles, but even cellular phones. With teams of talented engineers focused on reducing the size and cost of receivers and adapting them to specific applications, ‘the sky is the limit’.” He didn’t fire me, but spent the rest of our discussion telling me why I was wrong — that GPS receivers would always be too large, too expensive, too susceptible to signal blockage, and other limitations.
Thirty years later, the applications I had envisioned for GPS have been greatly surpassed and are constantly expanding. In recent years, my primary focus has been on researching the growth and trends of the commercial telematics market in the U.S. and abroad. Today, in the U.S. alone, some 16 million GPS devices are being used to monitor fleet vehicles and assets, such as trailers and heavy construction equipment. Even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the market remains stable and is on track to grow for the year.
In the future, GPS will play an essential role in the deployment of autonomous vehicles, with help from other technologies needed to optimize location accuracy and reliability. My hat is off to the founding fathers of GPS who include some of the most brilliant technologists of this era.
The number of GNSS constellations, satellites and signals is constantly growing. The threats to GNSS — from unintentional radio frequency interference (RFI), jamming, spoofing, multipath… and Federal Communications Commission rulings — are increasing, as are the public’s expectations of GNSS accuracy.
All these factors contribute to the need for ever more powerful and advanced simulators that can realistically simulate a wide range of optimal and suboptimal environments. That is why simulators are a rapidly growing sector of the GNSS industry.
At present, the main defense against jamming are continuous radiation pattern antennas (CRPA). Therefore, it is essential that simulators be able to accurately reproduce signals from CRPAs. They are even more useful when they can generate M-code (MNSA) signals, which not all simulators do.
Additionally, the development of autonomous vehicles requires engineers to simulate driving millions of miles, under a variety of environmental and traffic circumstances. To accomplish this in a reasonable amount of time requires them to run simulations faster than in real time, or run many simulations in parallel.
Finally, there is an increasing need to simulate alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals being developed as supplements to and substitutes for GNSS signals in circumstances that make the latter unavailable or unreliable.
These are some of the challenges facing manufacturers of GNSS simulators. What follows are their brief descriptions of the approaches they are taking and the innovations they are introducing.
What is your most recent innovation?
Our latest simulator innovations contain wave-front generation signal technology, which allows you to generate GNSS and interference signals that represent the received signals for each antenna element in a phased array antenna manifold, usually referred to as a controlled radiation pattern antenna (CRPA). Our modular design approach enables users to simulate IMU data commensurate with the wave-front signals for a complete coherent GNSS/IMU simulation that is ideal for stimulating receivers that contain CRPA and IMU capabilities. Our simulators also contain proprietary synchronization technology that allows users to synchronize multiple systems to produce a “wave-front” of GNSS and IMU signals for multiple vehicles, or even an entire fleet.
Photo: CAST Navigation
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
CAST Navigations’ family of GNSS simulators are capable of realistically simulating a wide range of suboptimal conditions—such as jamming/spoofing, multipath, RF interference and satellite constellation perturbations—for virtually any commercial or military environment. Our interference signals or “jammers” can be located at any terrestrial location and can be static or dynamic in nature. A distinguishing feature of CAST Navigations’ simulation systems is that our interference signals are phase-controlled and coherent, allowing for proper phase transmission of each signal type for each receiving antenna element. You can also add an INS capability to any of our systems. These types of systems are perfect for testing GNSS and GNSS/INS types of navigation equipment.
What’s coming by 2023?
One of the key trends is the ability to generate M-code (MNSA) signals. Jamming and spoofing are becoming more prevalent, not just to the military but also to consumers. Every day, the military, as well as people like you and me, are starting to encounter more instances of interference that can deny GNSS equipment and even phones the ability to track some GNSS satellites or that transmit incorrect GNSS data, causing receivers to display incorrect position solutions. So, our focus is on products and capabilities that enable our customers to simulate those types of environments and help them to mitigate those kinds of events.
Orolia
Lisa Perdue Product Manager
What is your most recent innovation?
At Orolia we continue to evolve our innovative software-defined simulator approach. Our most recent innovation is our advanced spoofing option. We have taken our ability to define multiple jamming transmitters, each with their own trajectory and antenna pattern, and added the ability for the transmitters to send spoofing signals as well. By utilizing our capability to run multiple simulations on a single system, we give the user the ability to control every parameter of the generated spoofing constellation(s). The system automatically calculates the signal time of flight and the propagation loss, making this advanced capability powerful and easy to use.
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
Simulation of threat environments is a critical component of GNSS receiver testing. As awareness of the impact that jamming and spoofing can have on a GNSS-based system rises, so does the need to test. That is why we have implemented advanced jamming and spoofing options into our Skydel simulator’s core engine. Replication of degraded environments with threats ranging from one to hundreds is possible using the same hardware and software used for generating GNSS signals. No third-party hardware or software is required for complete testing against jamming and spoofing because we feel that this capability should be part of the core system, not an afterthought.
Photo: Orolia
What’s coming by 2023?
In the coming years, we expect to see more requirements for simulation of alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) signals. As governments and organizations continue to investigate alternate technologies, it will become necessary to simulate low Earth orbit (LEO) PNT, ground-based transmitters, and other signals being considered.
Another growing trend is the adoption of controlled reception pattern antennas (CRPAs) for their anti-jam capabilities. These anti-jam antenna systems can only be tested by specialized simulation systems, so we can imagine these simulation systems being commercialized for a broader market around 2023.
Racelogic
Julian Thomas Managing Director
What is your most recent innovation?
Recognizing the need of our customers to test their products with a simple solution that uses the latest GNSS signals, we have updated our SatGen software to create accurate simulations using all satellite data currently being transmitted across the various constellations. We have also optimized the performance of SatGen so that a standard desktop PC can be used to simulate these signals in real time. Also, the simulation can now be driven using an external NMEA stream, allowing full remote control of the trajectory.
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
The LabSat 3 Wideband records and replays all available GNSS signals in high fidelity, allowing jamming and spoofing signals to be reproduced accurately on the test bench.
Photo: Racelogic
What’s coming by 2023?
With so many employees now working from home due to COVID-19, the pressing concern for many companies developing GNSS technology is how to provide employees with suitable equipment that is required for them to carry out their jobs efficiently away from the office. Usually these employees would utilize the shared resources of a well-equipped office, with experts on hand to help, but working from home has made access to these devices challenging. Due to LabSat 3’s small size, low cost and ease of use, we have seen a significant increase in sales to companies furnishing their employees with a suitable method of testing their GNSS devices while working from home.
With the advent of a new breed of high-performance, low-cost GNSS receiver, many new applications are being developed in new and exciting sectors, utilizing a level of accuracy previously considered too expensive to be a commercial proposition. The number of GNSS engines will therefore increase rapidly in the marketplace, with a corresponding increase in demand for cost-effective signal simulation for test and development.
Rohde & Schwarz
Markus Irsigler Product Manager Signal Generators, Power Meters
What is your most recent innovation?
We further improved multi-frequency, multi-constellation simulation capabilities in our high-end segment. The GNSS high-end simulator R&S SMW200A provides signals for all GNSS frequency bands on a single RF output. A second internal RF path can be used for advanced interferer simulation, testing the receiver’s resilience to spoofing or to address dual-antenna scenarios. This keeps setups simple and compact. When more than two RF paths are required, two or more R&S SMW200A can be operated together in a master/slave configuration. Such setups are required for multi-antenna receiver test applications where the signals’ relative carrier phases are analyzed, like CRPA or attitude determination tests. Our new RF ports alignment software automates alignment of the GNSS signals and guarantees correct amplitude, time and phase relations at the RF inputs of the device under test. We also increased the maximum channel count to more than 600 channels to improve testing of multi-constellation, multi-frequency receivers against multipath, jamming and spoofing.
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
Besides our recent innovations, Rohde & Schwarz plans to provide new interference simulation capabilities within the GNSS simulator. This new feature will allow the user to replay recorded jammer signals as well as user-defined waveforms. The R&S Pulse Sequencer software helps with the definition of most complex interferer scenarios.
Photo: Rohde & Schwarz
What’s coming by 2023?
Developments in the field of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) aiming for fully autonomous vehicles raise new challenges for reliable PNT solutions. Simulation of interference and jamming scenarios will hence become important in the automotive market. Antenna arrays have proven suitable to counteract RF interference (RFI) by incorporating spatial-processing techniques and might therefore find greater entry into the automotive market. Test solutions must address requirements for simulating all kinds of intentional and unintentional RFI for multi-constellation, multi-frequency and multi-antenna receivers. Apart from simulating GNSS and interference sources, test solutions for autonomous driving will require several other techniques and signals to be applied or simulated, such as RTK/PPP or outputs from other vehicle sensors to perform sensor fusion.
Spirent Federal Systems
Jeff Martin Vice President, Sales
What is your most recent innovation?
Launched in 2018, SimMNSA became the first MNSA simulator to achieve GPS Directorate security approval. The software enables users to simulate true MNSA M-code with real-time code and message generation, removing the constraints imposed by simulator data sets (SDS). SimMNSA v2.0 does even more. It is able to broadcast nominal M-code conditions and recreate SDS-defined events. It incorporates an advanced editor to edit military navigation (MNAV) content, allows users to craft and define scenarios, and much more.
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
Spirent offers numerous capabilities for emulating GNSS signals in the presence of interference and spoofing attacks. Our solutions provide accurate, repeatable and quantifiable signals, enabling customers to conduct accurate tests with trusted results. We can test against internally generated interference enabling multiple “fields” of jammers with various interference types; hundreds of interference signals using external IQ blended with simulator-generated GNSS, and Blue Force Electronic Attack jamming waveforms for testing MGUE devices operating in GPS-denied environments. Spoofing capabilities include signal, navigation data and cyber-level attacks via manipulation of up to 12 copies of each primary GNSS constellation, each fully editable; intuitive spoof attack generation via Spirent’s SimSAFE software option — which also allows live sky synchronization/spoofing, and more.
Photo: Spirent
What’s coming by 2023?
Threats to reliable and accurate GNSS navigation and timing are developing rapidly. Fortunately, innovative solutions for resilient PNT are in development and will continue to challenge the industry for years to come. The ability to simulate these threats and the mitigation techniques to overcome them is changing the landscape for the simulator industry. It’s more important than ever to have up-to-date test tools. Robust signals along with frequency and constellation diversity will continue to drive the market in addition to GNSS backup systems, or AltNav. The FCC has certainly presented the GNSS industry with an immense challenge.
Syntony GNSS
Sylvain Daubas Simulator Activity Manager
What is your most recent innovation?
Yesterday, GPS systems had to “work.” Today, they must work fine. This is the difference, and all equipment vendors have realized this. It is no longer acceptable to have 200 meters or more of error in an urban environment. Because of the extreme complexity of the electromagnetic situation in the GNSS spectrum, making a reliable and precise location system requires more and more powerful and advanced simulators. This is why the GNSS simulator market is booming.
Among the many new features implemented in Syntony’s GNSS simulator this year, two stand out.
First, 1000-Hz hardware-in-the-loop now allows an accurate simulation for high-dynamic receivers (up to more than 100 Gs!), with zero artifact and zero-effective latency. This is the ultimate in trajectory management.
Second, signal computing capacity has made a significant leap forward due to hardware and software optimizations. Constellator can now simultaneously generate up to 660 L1 C/A-equivalent signals. And this level of performance can be unlocked remotely, without a hardware update.
Photo: Syntony GNSS
What is your approach to jamming and spoofing?
Simulating a GNSS environment with a set of jamming or spoofing signal sources today is the standard. But what about a simulation of an extremely complex urban scene with 50 or 100 jamming/spoofing sources? The only reasonable solution to implement this would be a massive parallel software-defined radio (SDR)-based simulator solution. This is what Syntony can and will do, thanks to its full software GNSS simulator architecture, which can be distributed on a server farm.
What’s coming by 2023?
A revolution is arriving: the possibility of generating a full GNSS simulation including many hundreds of satellites and signals, in real time and in pure software. This is now possible, and Syntony has demonstrated it with the Constellator. This will change the simulation world. First of all, Moore’s law will bring significant improvements to this domain year after year. More importantly, new systems and services will be possible: massive parallel scenario simulation including jamming and spoofing, floating simulator licenses, software as a service, etc. In this trend, playback machines will be needed, and obviously a strong internet connection will be necessary to download hundreds of gigabytes of I/Q files overnight.
Feature image: Samuel King Jr./United States Air Force
Walmart is teaming up with drone delivery company Zipline to launch a drone delivery operation in the United States. According to Walmart, this first-of-its-kind drone delivery service will make on-demand deliveries of select health and wellness products with the potential to expand to general merchandise.
Trial deliveries will take place near Walmart’s headquarters in Northwest Arkansas. The trials will use Zipline’s proprietary technology.
Zipline will operate from a Walmart store and can service a 50-mile radius, Walmart said. The company’s launch-and-release system allows for quick on-demand deliveries in under an hour, and it also eliminates carbon emissions, Walmart added.
Zipline began operating in 2016 in Rwanda, primarily focusing on the on-demand delivery of medical supplies. According to Zipline, it has safely delivered more than 200,000 critical medical products to thousands of health facilities serving more than 20 million people across multiple countries.
The operation will likely begin in early 2021, Walmart said.
GNSS has had a major impact on many different industries and market segments, but I believe that the incorporation of GNSS into cell phones has impacted more people around the world than any other. It’s almost hard to remember back in the last millennium when the idea of putting a GPS receiver into a cell phone was first contemplated. Back then, we were just starting the transformation from 1G phones (analog) to 2G phones (digital), and the whole idea of 911 for mobile phones was a huge hurdle facing the entire industry. Three small startups (SiRF, SnapTrack and Global Locate) were all founded with the seemingly impossible dream of putting GPS into every cell phone to provide location information for E911 and other commercial applications. Back in those days, we were trying to convince operators and the FCC that GPS could provide location accuracy better than the 150-meters 67% of the time that the cellular industry was leaning toward with other technologies.
Can you hear me now? A sampling of early cell phones. (Photo: yktr/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images)
Fortunately for everyone, we were able to convince the industry that GNSS was an answer that should be considered. Today, we see billions of phones around the world with embedded GNSS. Those early phones from Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson and RIM (Blackberry) were truly marvels of engineering development to tightly couple GPS and cellular. Interestingly, none of those phone makers — nor any of those three pioneering companies — exist today, having been subsumed into larger entities due to their success in solving this incredibly complex problem. Those early GPS L1 C/A-only phones have added GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS and BDS, and we are now starting to see support for L5 showing up in smartphones. This has all led to improved availability and accuracy — now not only can we locate E911 calls to the correct civic address for emergency responders, but commercial applications rely on <10-meter accuracy for driving directions, ride sharing and social media applications. Every time I think there is nothing new to do, something always comes along. I’m excited to see what’s next.
The United States Army has awarded Collins Aerospace a Phase III contract to build the second generation of its Mounted Assured Position Navigation and Timing System (MAPS).
The MAPS program adds anti-jamming capability for soldiers in GPS-contested environments. In 2019, MAPS Gen I units were installed on Stryker vehicles of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Germany.
Phase 3 of the MAPS Gen II program “begins combat platform integration in preparation for low-rate initial production,” according to an Oct. 7 Army press release.
MAPS Gen II includes M-code GPS receivers, provided by BAE Systems, along with anti-jamming antennas, sensor fusion and inertial measurement units to deliver assured PNT to soldiers.
MAPS Gen II is part of the Army’s goal to accelerate the development and fielding of modernized soldier capabilities.
“Less than a year after we equipped the first generation of MAPS in Europe we’re already pushing forward with the development of Gen II,” said Willie Nelson, director of the the Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT) Cross-Functional Team (CFT). “This award comes less than a month after our Mounted APNT requirement was approved. The timing could not be better.”
MAPS Gen I includes A and B kits, consisting of cable and mounts to use on a vehicle and a military GPS paired with non-radio frequency technologies.
The Phase III Other Transaction Authority contract covers product maturation and begins combat platform integration, clearing the path to low rate initial production.
Army Stryker ground combat vehicle. (Photo: Karolis Kavolelis / Shutterstock.com)
The MAPS GEN II is comprised of the NavHub-100 PNT Distribution Device, the Multi-Sensor Antenna System (MSAS-100) and an optional speed sensor. The NavHub-100 works in concert with the MSAS-100 to produce a trusted A-PNT solution that can be distributed through serial interface, Victory Ethernet and RF distribution to multiple client systems.
MAPS GEN II supports the U.S. Army PNT Reference Architecture by leveraging modular technologies from across Collins’ A-PNT portfolio and industry. This scalable architecture builds upon the modular open system architecture (MOSA) standards and includes the All Source Positioning and Navigation (ASPN) generic message definition to support plug-and-play sensor integration and the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) to host portable software capabilities.
The MAPS GEN II system not only supports direct replacement of the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) on military platforms, it also provides exceptional A-PNT performance in GPS-contested and GPS-denied environments.
According to a report by InForGrowth, the global GPS tracking devices market was valued at $1,567 million in 2018 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.2% during the forecast period 2026.
Increasing demand for fleet telematics and affordable prices of GPS tracking devices are expected to drive the growth of the GPS tracking devices market.
However, the report says, environmental obstacles and non-standard products are expected to impede the growth of the market in the coming years.
The growth of the GPS tracking devices market is attributed to the increasing demand for fleet telematics in the transportation and logistics sector. Government authorities are making rules and regulations for fleet tracking systems in commercial vehicles for improving the safety of passengers, the report said. In addition, vehicle rental companies are deploying an increased number of GPS tracking devices in their fleets.
Next, technological advancements such as self-driving vehicles and connected car technology mainly rely on GPS-based tracking systems for improving the accuracy and reliability of navigation. According to the report, many developing countries, such as India, are focusing on the advancement of their navigation technology. The adoption of 5G communication technology will also help in the advancement of driverless cars technology, which uses GPS tracking devices for movement and route planning.
Finally, the affordability of GPS tracking devices has encouraged market growth, the report said. This in turn has increased competition between manufacturers to develop updated technology-enabled GPS tracking devices.
YIC is a manufacturing and design company for quartz crystals, crystal oscillators, GPS/GNSS modules, GPS/GNSS receivers and RF antennas. It provides low-power solutions to solve product problems that require frequent charging.
YIC’s new product — the Ultra Low Power GPS/GNSS Module (Model YIC71009EBGG and YIC71513PGMGG) — is designed as an IoT product solution, targeted to improve the operating times of IoT applications such as trackers, wearables and portable devices.
According to its press release, YIC “is dedicated to providing the best solution for GPS devices and sees a tremendous opportunity in the GNSS market to solve power consumption problems.” The recent industry trend of multi-frequency GPS, low-power consumption, and dead reckoning will be advantageous to YIC in terms of high-grade products entering the global market.
Models YIC71009EBGG and YIC71513PGMGG provide:
Ultra-low power consumption – 6mA (Typical).
Multi-constellation – GPS/QZSS + GLONASS.
Small size
About YIC
Founded in 1994 and headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan, YIC is a professional partner in frequency control, GPS/GNSS modules, receivers and RF antennas, advanced low power GPS, and small size solutions.
