SBG Systems, a manufacturer of inertial navigation systems (INS), has selected the Septentrio AsteRx4 OEM GNSS receiver to equip its Apogee product line. The announcement was made during Ocean Business 2015, held April 14-16 in Southampton, England.
SBG Systems’ Apogee-D
“We are delighted that SBG Systems — a respected specialist in designing INS/GNSS — endorses our newly released GNSS receiver for its performance,” said, Laurent Le Thuaut, business development manager at Septentrio. “The SBG products are recognized amongst the preferred choice for accurate MEMS-based INS and we are extremely proud that our technology is included in their top of the line.”
Apogee is a new product line of high-accuracy inertial navigation systems based on robust and cost-effective MEMS technology. The INS/GNSS solution combines the latest generation of MEMS sensors and the OEM version of the AsteRx4, a newly introduced high-precision GNSS receiver from Septentrio. The Apogee series is especially suited for applications such as hydrography, mobile mapping and aerial survey where survey-grade positioning measurements are required.
AsteRx4 OEM
The AsteRx4 OEM is a multi-frequency and multi-constellation dual antenna receiver that incorporates the latest innovative GNSS tracking and positioning algorithms from Septentrio. The AsteRx4 is scalable to one centimeter and integrates the entire suite of GNSS+ algorithms proposed by Septentrio to maintain tracking during heavy vibration of machines. This assures position accuracy under difficult ionosphere conditions and mitigates or rejects intentional or unintentional interference with GNSS signals.
“The compact design and the practical and well-designed interface of the AsteRx4 allowed a seamless and an easy integration into our solutions” said Raphaël Siryani, chief marketing & sales officer of SBG Systems. “The AsteRx4 largely contributes to the robust and accurate heading as well as the reduced power consumption of the INS/GNSS Apogee products.”
Both the AsteRx4 OEM receiver and the Apogee INS/GNSS are on display at booth No. W40 (Septentrio) and booth E5c (SBG Systems) at Ocean Business.
The world of indoor location continues to evolve, with a number of variations on when and under what circumstances you might be able to wander around your local mall getting directions to your favorite ice-cream store on your iPhone. Some malls are mapped, some are not, some (most) have Wi-Fi hot-spots and Bluetooth beacons, some may be in areas where outdoor directional beacon are being tested and their signals penetrate indoors. But the thing they have in common is that most seem to lose GPS/GNSS signals once you get a few tens of meters away from the front entrance.
Some companies have managed to make indoor location in your mall work with a combination of GPS, plus all the RF signals that can be received, plus using inertial and/or magnetic sensors in your mobile phone, and sometimes also with detailed indoor map-matching — but no-one seems to do this in a simple, consistent, reproducible way for any store wanting to ensure you arrive at their door, or for a telecommunication industry wishing to standardize how it works for E911 and then field it everywhere.
So I’ve actually been looking for an indoor location outfit who might have found a consistent solution that can work from place to place — by that I mean from mall to mall, city to city, country to country, even continent to continent, and every time after first set-up — and I suspect that I may have now found one.
The team at iPosi in Denver is still working on their solution, but they have run some pretty convincing demonstrations in some very challenging locations, so they may have found an inside edge that could take them many places (sorry, about that pun).
While iPosi’s headquarters are is in Denver, the company also has labs in Boulder and offices in Dallas. It hasn’t been around too long — since 2011 — but it has been busy filing patents for the key technologies that drive their location technology. Of 40 total patents in the pipeline, five have been granted or allowed, 15 are pending, and 20 more are in development. With only six employees, iPosi is a small outfit, but it also gets design assistance from a European design center for other GNSS signal designs.
One of the key GNSS elements the iPosi team has going for them is an in-house developed GPS receiver with a sensitivity of -175 dBm. If you could get any sort of a signal deep inside a building, it’s possible that they might be able to receive it. But, for sure, anything you would receive deep inside would be just multipath – right? There are other pieces to this story however.
The iPosi system design is based on mobile phone “small-cell” installations. The world now has around 100 million multi-floor buildings with an average of eight floors each, and most buildings present some level of attenuation for external mobile phone cell-tower signals — never mind GPS signals. Most of us should be familiar with having to leave meetings to get “bars.” holding the phone up against a window, walking around to catch reflected indoor signals, and eventually having to leave the building and be with a group of other people who are doing the same thing – looking for a clear cell-phone signal to make a call. In the Northern U.S. and Canada in the winter, this can even be hazardous to your health!
So small cells behave as basically indoor “repeaters” of mobile phone signals. iPosi believes that an average of four of these repeaters are needed to broadcast sufficient signal on each average building floor. So iPosi embeds each small cell with one of its high-sensitivity receivers. Once positioned indoors, and over time, the receivers self-locate inside the building. Currently, installation of small cells can be somewhat cumbersome and time consuming, but non-GPS small cells can be located during installation using traditional indoor surveying techniques — such as laser-based measurements. Either that, or no measurements are made at all, and no device location information is associated with a device.
Small-cell setup.
With each small cell equipped with a high-sensitivity receiver — with especially clever algorithms to differentiate and interpret multipath over time — each device goes to work transmitting repeater mobile-phone signals and eventually self-locates. Contained within these signals are each small-cell location, plus a timing message that allows any standards-compliant handset to calculate range to each transmitter and to perform an OTDOA (Observed Time Difference Of Arrival) position fix.
If the small-cell location at install is also fed into the GIS database for the building and, more importantly, for the local area, the E911 “dispatchable address” for that building has GPS-level accuracy. And first responders will also have numerous other small-cell location aids within the building.
Another detail is that the iPosi receiver uses A-GNSS (including ephemeris) data, so it only needs small snapshots of signal to deduce position. This means very low power consumption for positioning at the small cell, which is good because small cells are mostly battery powered.
So, does it work? In FCC E911 demonstrations at the Omni Hotel in San Francisco, iPosi consistently located to within 50 meters horizontally and a few meters vertically.
Masonry, turn-of-20th-century construction
Approximately 15 floors, similar to surrounding
Test site: ninth floor hotel room
Horizontal error = 38 m, Vertical error = 9.5 m
There were several other tests in representative converted apartments, a modern four-story steel and concrete building, and inside a university auditorium. But the one that really caught my attention was the test iPosi ran in the basement of an engineering center.
Engineering center, lower basement 3.5 m below grade.
That’s 3.5 meters below grade! The iPosi receiver measurement system was able to determine that some of the signals were actually received directly from a GPS satellite — unbelievable! That’s through concrete and stone down to 3.5 meters below grade with a simple patch antenna!
Most of your average mall locations are not as location-hazardous as this basement test. Its possible that finding your way to the closest indoor ice-cream store could soon be child’s play, which will be especially helpful for the kids with smartphones.
iPosi is working with some of the key equipment suppliers in the industry. It’s quite likely that some of its evaluation sites could soon evolve into operational indoor location facilities. And iPosi’s argument is that its indoor location solution is truly scalable or can be readily standardized — as the telecom companies apparently would love for all indoor location technology to be — so the iPosi solution can readily transition across borders and countries, and roll out could be greatly simplified.
Tony Murfin
Hard to say if this will be the winning indoor location solution, but in the end the market will decide if it really is a scalable, simple solution, and if it will succeed — right?
The map of Vietnam has been developed in cooperation with DDG Technology JSC, a provider of cartographic solutions for navigation in Vietnam.
The map contains 325,972 kilometers of road graph, 147,255 Points Of Interest (POI) and 86,370 settlements. Coupled with the address search in residential and industrial areas of settlements, the map includes the detailed road network with streets, directions, interchanges, roundabouts and other important road information.
The map contains 10 three-dimensional POI, including St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the VNPT Tower, the Vimeco tower block, Diamond Plaza, Kumho Asiana Plaza, the Petrovietnam Tower and more.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — I had the pleasure of having an early breakfast on this beautiful Colorado morning with Mark Stewart, VP and program manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver for the GPS III program. Mark was very upbeat, a normal state for him actually, and stated that GPS III SV1 was fully integrated — payload, bus and propulsion segments — on April 7, and “all is proceeding according to plan.”
“SV1 is ready to begin environmental testing at the vehicle level and there are no liens going forward,” Mark said. “There are no current issues or concerns.”
Currently, the schedule calls for SV1, per Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) mandate (read that as Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves) to process through acoustic testing to simulate the acoustics of launch and early orbit maneuvers. Then the complete vehicle will endure a rigorous thermal vacuum testing procedure that should be completed by this summer (2015).
Barring any major anomalies, I am still predicting that SV1 will be through tests by the end of this calendar year. That is not a LMCO prediction as much as it is mine. With that schedule intact, SV1 should be ready for launch by the first quarter of the calendar year 2016. Great news. I will have photos of the mated segments, which make up GPS III SV1, as soon as they are cleared for release. More later.
Hemisphere GNSS is offering a new RTK-enabled Vector V320 GNSS compass. The Vector V320 smart antenna supports multi-frequency GPS, GLONASS, Galileo (future firmware upgrade required) and BeiDou, and Hemisphere GNSS says it’s “the first of its kind.”
Designed for the professional marine and marine survey markets, the Vector V320 is the a multi-frequency, multi-GNSS, all-in-one smart antenna capable of both RTK-level positioning accuracy and better than 0.2-degree heading accuracy in a simple-to-install package.
“The Vector V320 combines our expertise in GNSS and smart antenna design,” said Lyle Geck, senior manager, Product Marketing, at Hemisphere GNSS. “With RTK performance that competes with current industry leaders, extremely accurate accelerometer-aided GNSS heading, and the simplicity of install offered by the smart antenna design, it is an incredible product.”
The Vector V320 is the latest in a line of GPS/GNSS compasses, including the multi-frequency, multi-GNSS Vector VS330 receiver as well as the Vector V102, Vector V103 and Vector V104 compass smart antennas.
“There has been a void in the market. Our customers have been looking for a product that provides RTK accuracy together with precision heading in an easy-to-install package,” said Andy Smith, managing director of Saderet Ltd. “The Vector V320 delivers.”
The Vector V320 GNSS compass is being featured by Hemisphere GNSS at Ocean Business in Southampton, UK, April 14-16, at stand K12.
SimActive Inc., a developer of photogrammetry software, has released Correlator3D version 6.1, now with point cloud generation.
The new feature builds on SimActive’s autocorrelation techniques using the GPU. Point clouds are generated in parallel with digital surface models (DSMs), with virtually no added processing time. As with previous versions, digital terrain models (DTMs) can also be automatically extracted in a matter of seconds.
“Although the DSM remains the de-facto deliverable for all mapping projects, an increase in interest from our UAV users led to the added functionality,” said Louis Simard, CTO of SimActive. “This further solidifies Correlator3D as a one-stop solution.”
One of the Honeywell Global Tracking ESA installations.
Honeywell’s Global Tracking solution has passed the final acceptance test for use on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Galileo search and rescue program by demonstrating dramatically reduced emergency response times, Honeywell said.
Honeywell Global Tracking, part of Honeywell’s Scanning and Mobility business, is working in partnership with the Aerospace & Defense division of Capgemini, the prime contractor for the Galileo search and rescue program, to deliver a high-precision positioning system that is fully compatible with the international standard, which is known as the Cospas-Sarsat standard. Tests using the Honeywell system have proven that the time from beacon transmission to detection and processing has been reduced from several hours to a few minutes — often the difference between life and death in an emergency situation.
The international Cospas-Sarsat program is a satellite-based search and rescue distress alert detection and information distribution system, best known for detecting and locating emergency beacons activated by aircraft, ships and remotely located people in distress. Honeywell’s satellite tracking technology, which detects faint alerts sent by emergency beacons around the world using a combination of Doppler curves, noise reduction, and advanced signal processing, quickly calculates the exact location of the beacon and sends the results to the relevant Mission Control Centers in the region.
“Our Medium Earth Orbit-based search and rescue solution will lead to faster recovery missions and improved international search and rescue operations, and we’re pleased to partner with the European Space Agency to help execute on this important, life-saving system,” said David Sharratt, general manager, Honeywell Global Tracking. “With decades of experience developing this technology, Honeywell Global Tracking is the global leader of search and rescue solutions.”
“Up until now, Cospas-Sarsat has relied on satellites in low and high orbits, but medium orbits with satellites such as Galileo are better for search and rescue purposes; they combine a wide field of view with strong Doppler shift, making it more likely a distress signal is pinpointed promptly and accurately,” said Fermin Alvarez, ground station and fielding engineer with ESA. “Together with Honeywell, we are encouraged to see Galileo performing so strongly, thereby solidifying our ability to support precise and speedy search and rescue efforts.”
Cobham AvComm, formerly the Aeroflex AvComm business unit, has introduced the ATC-5000NG NextGen ATC/DME Test Set.
Designed for engineering development, design validation, manufacturing and return-to-service test applications, the ATC-5000NG is the replacement product for the legacy SDX-2000 and the ATC-1400A/S-1403DL. The software defined radio architecture supports more transponder RTCA DO-181E test capability than the legacy products did and has new capability needed to support the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen test requirements including ADS-B (RTCA DO-260B) and UAT (RTCA DO-282).
ADS-B is the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast for next-generation (NextGen) aircraft navigation. The FAA has mandated that aircraft operating in airspace that now requires a Mode C transponder must be equipped with ADS-B Out by Jan. 1, 2020.
“We are excited to introduce the new ATC-5000NG which offers our customers the most comprehensive test set available in the market today. This will help our customers prepare for new requirements driven by the FAA’s NextGen and Europe’s SESAR projects,” said Ryan Panos, vice president and general manager of Cobham AvComm.
In September 2014, Cobham completed its acquisition of Aeroflex for $1.46 billion.
The Rohde & Schwarz CMW500 is being used to test the ERA-GLONASS system.
The Certification Center Svyaz-Certificate in Russia is now using the R&S CMW500 to certify ERA-GLONASS systems in line with the TR CU 018/2011 technical guideline. The independent Russian test lab is currently the only test lab in Russia accredited to certify these systems. The R&S CMW500 is a wideband radio communication tester.
Equipped with the R&S CMW-KA095 application software, the R&S CMW500 meets all requirements for testing ERA-GLONASS systems and provides reliable, reproducible tests in line with the Russian GOST R 55530 specification, Rohde & Scwarz said. In addition, the R&S CMWrun sequencer software (R&S CMW-KT110) makes the test solution fully automated and user-friendly.
Effective January 1, 2015, all new car models introduced to the Russian market must be equipped with an automatic ERA-GLONASS emergency call system.
DARPA is looking for technology communities that can team to provide expertise and innovation for small sensors, expendable and small unmanned systems, and distributed communications and navigation technology.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is researching a drone that can hibernate on the ocean floor for years at a time before being launched to the surface and into the air.
The “Upward Falling Payload” (UFP) concept centers on developing deployable, unmanned, nonlethal distributed systems that lie on the deep-ocean floor in special containers for years at a time. These deep-sea nodes could be remotely activated when needed and recalled to the surface. As DARPA terms it, they “fall upward.”
The new drones are part of a new focus by the U.S. military to develop and improve technology for emerging threats. “Today, cost and complexity limit the Navy to fewer weapons systems and platforms, causing strain on resources that must operate over vast maritime areas. Unmanned systems and sensors are commonly envisioned to fill coverage gaps and take action at a distance. However, power and logistics to deliver these systems over vast ocean areas limit their utility. The Upward Falling Payload (UFP) program intends to overcome these barriers,” DARPA said on its website.
DARPA’s statement continues: “Nearly 50 percent of the world’s oceans are deeper than 4 km, which provides vast areas for concealment and storage. As a consequence, the cost to retrieve UFP nodes is asymmetric with the likely cost to produce and distribute them to the seafloor. Concealment provided by the sea also provides the opportunity to quickly engage remote assets that may have been dormant and undetected for long periods of time, while its vastness allows simultaneous operation across great distances. Getting close to objects without warning, and instantiating distributed systems without delay, are key attributes of UFP capability.”
The UFP system would have three key subsystems:
The payload, which executes waterborne or airborne applications after being deployed to the surface
The UFP riser, which provides pressure tolerant encapsulation and launch of the payload
The UFP communications, which trigger the UFP riser to launch.
The program would need to demonstrate a system that can:
survive for years under extreme pressure
be triggered reliably from standoff commands
rapidly rise through a water column and deploy its payload.
The drones wouldn’t require fuel, as they would be powered with energy generated by ocean currents. Ocean drones would be difficult to manufacture, however, because researchers would need to figure out how to activate the drone, how to help the drone breach the surface, and make sure the drone is protected in salt water for long periods.
This artist’s concept shows a potential communications application of an upward falling payload. (Credit: DARPA)
Phase 2. The program is completing its first phase and is about to enter its second. During Phase 1, DARPA supported more than 10 study and design efforts to figure out approaches for long-range communications, deep-ocean high-pressure containment, and payload launch. The study teams also addressed a variety of missions for the payloads.
“In this first phase, we really learned about how the pieces come together, and built a community of developers to think differently about unmanned distributed solutions for the maritime domain,” said Andy Coon, DARPA Program Manager for the effort. “The trick is to show how these systems offer lower-cost alternatives to traditional approaches, and that they scale well to large open-ocean areas.”
In the next Phase, DARPA intends to learn from the studies, and develop and demonstrate prototype systems. DARPA is seeking teams to develop UFP nodes that combine expertise in both deep-ocean engineering and advanced payload development.
“We’re also looking for the communications technologies for these nodes. As long as you can command the nodes remotely and quickly, and don’t have to send a ship out to launch it, you’re in good shape. Some Phase 1 approaches were more exotic than others, but we were pleased by the range of challenging options,” said Coon.
In today’s fiscally constrained environment, such a system of pre-positioned, deep-sea nodes could provide a full range of maritime mission sets that are more cost-effective than existing manned or long-range unmanned naval assets.
For Phase 2, DARPA is particularly looking for technology communities that can team to provide expertise and innovation for small sensors, expendable and small unmanned systems, distributed communications and navigation technology, novel long-range underwater communications, and long-endurance mechanical and electrical systems that can survive for years in dormant states.
Galileo 7 and 8 were launched into orbit March 27. (Screenshot of ESA/Arianespace livestream feed.)
Europe’s two newest Galileo satellites — launched March 27 — have carried out maneuvers to take them down to their working positions in orbit. Both satellites are performing well. Galileo 7 and 8 were launched into a circular 23,522 km altitude orbit about 300 km above their final orbit.
Using their onboard thrusters, the two Galileo satellites have performed all their Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOP) maneuvers, reports the European Space Agency (ESA). The maneuvers began as soon as the automatic initialization sequence was completed.
A joint team of ESA and CNES personnel oversaw the LEOP process from the French space agency CNES in Toulouse. On March 28, the team ensured that the two satellites’ solar arrays deployed correctly and oversaw the gradual switch-on of the satellites systems.
Once the two satellites passed inspection, control was passed to Galileo’s Oberpfaffenhofen-based Control Centre (run by SpaceOpal, a joint venture by DLR Gesellschaft für Raumfahrtanwendungen and Telespazio) to prepare for their final In-Orbit Testing (IOT) in two phases: commissioning for the host satellite platforms, and then their navigation and search and rescue payloads. Platform commissioning is now taking place.
The Galileo satellites’ navigation and the search and rescue payloads will be switched on in few weeks and will begin detailed in-orbit testing, overseen from ESA’s Redu centre in Belgium, which is equipped with a 20-meter antenna for high-resolution acquisition of the navigation signals.
The hosting of Galileo’s LEOP team alternates between CNES in Toulouse and ESA’s ESOC control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Early operation of the next pair of Galileo satellites will be masterminded from ESOC — launch is scheduled for September.
The fourth satellite in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, launched on March 28, has arrived at its designated orbital slot.
Based on data supplied by the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center, IRNSS-1D is in an inclined geosynchronous orbit with an inclination of 30.5 degrees and a nodal longitude of 111.7 degrees east, within the allowed limits of the assigned longitude of 111.5 degrees east.
