After releasing their first MEMS-based oscillators in 2007, the team at SiTime knew there was still work to be done.

Using MEMS was a brand new concept for timing, and back then, clients were telling them the performance just wasn’t there. The team went to work to change that, developing innovative products that rival the more traditional quartz crystal oscillator options the industry has used for years.

SiTime released its latest offering, the Endura Epoch Platform, earlier this month. This ruggedized MEMS oven-controlled oscillator (OCXO), designed to provide the robust and resilient positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services needed for defense applications, was certainly a labor of love, Executive Vice President of Marketing Piyush Sevalia said. Development took years, with the company first defining the solution back in 2011 and design work beginning in 2018. The process involved various cross functional teams working together to get the timing solution to where it is today.

“We had to figure out not just from the customer point of view what they want, what matters now and what will matter in the future, but from the technology point of view as well,” Sevalia said. “How do we get the level of stability needed under all of the different harsh conditions the device will be subjected to?”

A look at the benefits
Developing a MEMS timing solution for the aerospace and defense markets comes with a long list of challenges and performance requirements, Sevalia said. Such environments are difficult to operate in, with extreme temperatures, shock, vibration and electromagnetic interference all issues to contend with. The silicon-based Endura Epoch OCXO was designed to overcome those challenges. It features a small footprint and can be placed anywhere on the board without users having to make adjustments. Very little external force couples on the oscillator, so it has no problem handling vibration and shock, which is critical in these environments.

It is also programable to any frequency between 10 to 220 MHz, with a very short lead time for custom builds. The company hires its own analogue teams who can help solve various analogue clocking problems in-house rather than outsourcing, Sevalia said, and the devices are manufactured leveraging proven semiconductor processes that provide the reliability and quality needed for extreme conditions.

Being able to overcome common challenges natively without adjustments or compromises leads to a faster innovation cycle, Sevalia said.

“Some people compromise on the performance of the system because they can’t get the exact frequency they want. I’ve seen people redesign an entire system because it was putting out too much power into the electromagnetic spectrum,” he said. “You don’t have to do that with this device. That’s a change in the way people are doing their design work and the way they’re going to production with their devices.”

Protecting PNT
Today, defense systems are structured around GPS-based PNT, but GPS signals can be disrupted unintentionally or spoofed or jammed by nefarious actors—which can lead to various problems such as equipment malfunctions and even mission failure. This is where an ultra-stable local clock device like the Endura Epoch Platform becomes critical, serving as an accurate time reference for PNT until the GPS signal returns.

“The DOD has projects ongoing to update GPS capabilities, calling it assured PNT, and in that new systems are being designed with new GPS standards,” Sevalia said. “We expect they will want better vibration resilience and timing accuracy from the part-to-part level and a reliability point of view while still addressing SWAP-C requirements. Applications could be missiles, ground comms, radar, drones.”

The timing device has low power consumption, enhanced acceleration sensitivity, optimal g-sensitivity and long-term aging. The silicon-based MEMS device is consistent, and offers the performance needed in harsh environments where vibration and temperature changes are an issue. During GPS disruption, PNT performance is driven by the time error on the local clock, with its benchmark time error 3µs over 24 hours.

The Endura Epoch Platform is a true source of pride for the SiTime team, as it provides real value for customers, Sevalia said, and helps to solve some of their most difficult problems.

“This product changes the game by delivering a level of performance not seen before,” Sevalia said, noting there is still plenty of room for more MEMS innovation. “We’ve climbed a peak that others thought was impossible 15 years ago when the company first started.”

The post A Labor of Love: SiTime Corporation Introduces its Endura Epoch MEMS OCXOs for Defense and Aerospace Applications After Years of Development appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Earlier this month, Standford University hosted its 17th annual PNT Symposium, with two days filled of presentations from student speakers and invited guests.

Brad Parkinson was among the presenters, with his talk focusing on the important milestone reached in 2023: the 50-year anniversary of gaining approval for full scale GPS demonstration. He covered some of the key moments leading up to that December 1973 approval, including what he described as the “noteworthy failure” and the famous Labor Day weekend meeting at the Pentagon.

Parkinson highlighted the predecessor to GPS, Transit, which lasted more than 30 years. Transit was sponsored by the Navy and developed jointly by DARPA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The engineers working on GPS were able to build on some of the techniques it pioneered, including the ionospheric corrections technique. Parkinson also gave credit to Dr. Richard Kirschner, who led Transit’s development.

Transit, of course, had its challenges and by 1964 the general consensus was there had to be a better way. The U.S. Air Force began a secret system study, which was completed in 1966 and looked across a broad set of ways to navigate from space. It was classified when published and wasn’t declassified until long after GPS was defined, but Parkinson said it set a “real foundation for what we were doing. We picked the hardest of the alternatives that were there.” There were 12.

Numerous talented engineers played a role in getting to that initial approval, and Parkinson gave many of them credit during his talk, including Malcolm Currie, who he describes as the GPS Godfather.

When Parkinson went to the Pentagon in 1973 to make the case for GPS to the Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (DSARC), Currie was at the table of admirals and generals who rejected it. He talked with Parkinson after the meeting and told him the current design was not optimal, but with a redesign, it had a good chance of gaining approval.

To make it happen, about 12 people gathered in the Pentagon over Labor Day weekend with the goal of defining GPS. They confirmed the fundamental concept, which was four satellites in view, but switched to a new modulation scheme. The space hardened clocks and code division multiple access (CDMA) signals that exist in every GNSS today were also added over that weekend, and made possible by “great engineering talent” that included Gaylord Green, Steve Gilbert and Mel Birnbaum.

“Armed with a new proposal I hit the road, and 50 years ago I got approval,” Parkinson said. “I went to the same platform with the same generals and this time, as Dr. Currie had predicted, they said yes.”

They approved $150 million for an 18-month test program that included the four satellites, launch vehicles and other equipment. Between 1973 and 1978 there was a period of very intense activity, with the first satellite launching 44 months after the contract was received. The team had to overcome great opposition and all the challenges that come with pursing a new idea, but what they accomplished led to the system so many rely on today.

U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Robert Wray, 2nd Space Operations Squadron commander, also presented on the second day of the symposium, focusing on where we are today with GPS and its continued importance to both military and civilian users.

The industry remains focused on updating GPS and improving its resiliency, which can be seen in the next generation of satellites, GPS IIIF. These satellites will provide regional military protection (RMP) for a boosted M-code signal, more M-code power and resiliency in disadvantaged areas and a search and rescue (SAR) payload. By the end of this decade, Wray said, they’ll be able to update satellites while they’re still in orbit, pushing modernization forward with the ability for much faster updates.

The first GPS IIIF satellite is set to launch toward the end of 2026, he said, with launches then slated every four months after to “get more satellites on orbit that can provide more capability” rather than just staying ahead of the curve as satellites retire. Because the components work so well, satellites typically have a lifespan of 25 years or more, and usually are put out of commission because of atomic clock failure.

“We have four satellites that are built and ready to launch out of Cape Canaveral, with the next one set to launch in June 2024,” Wray said. “We’re trying to balance how to modernize GPS and take care of the current systems. Now the limiting factor is launch vehicles. Next June will be our 80th launch, a huge milestone. By 2026 we will have launched all of our GPS III satellites.”

Other invited speaker presentations included PNT from the DARPA Perspective, PNT as a Service (PNTaaS) Leveraging Commercial SATCOM, Operational, Global, and Persistent GNSS Disruption Monitoring and PNT Effects on AI Flight Testing.

As always, the meeting started with student presentations. Students from the University of Colorado Boulder, Virginia Tech, Standford University, National Cheng Kung University and Auburn University covered various topics including navigating accurately in cities using vision-sensor aided GNSS, multipath detection using the Normalized Early, Prompt, Late Area (NEPLA) method, radar-based multitarget estimation for a large-scale satellite deployment and adaptive informative path planning with multimodal sensing.

During the meeting, Todd Walter, a Research Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, introduced CARNATIONS, a new research team that will focus on resilient PNT (R-PNT) in multimodal transportation. The consortium of partner institutions that make up CARNATIONS includes Standford University, Illinois Tech, Chicago State University, the University of California-Riverside and Virginia Tech.

“We’ll be conducting research in signal processing and antennas, multi sensor systems, connectivity and transportation,” Walter said. “We’ll define the threats and make sure we have resilient solutions to them.”

Image courtesy of Stanford University.

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Trimble recently partnered with Ukraine’s Kyivstar to install a Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) network, which will provide the country with GNSS correction services down to 2 cm of accuracy. Trimble will supply both hardware and software for the network.

Kyivstar is Ukraine’s largest telecommunications company, while Trimble brings “leading expertise in positioning solutions and services,” said Tomas Dyjas, senior director of worldwide sales for Trimble Advanced Positioning. The combination will result in more optimized productivity, safer operation and improved customer work time in the many industries that can use the network.

CORS will offer high precision GNSS for existing and new customers, with options for less accuracy for applications that don’t require the 2 cm level, Dyjas said. In the short term, most end users will be in the agriculture, geospatial and construction sectors, relying on the network for applications like machine guidance and geodetic survey. The IoT sector and “essentially any type of automated workflow like a vehicle” will benefit from the network as well.

“It’s important for countries to digitize and automate as many workflows in these industries as possible, but it’s especially important given the circumstances in Ukraine,” Dyjas said. “There is a lot of building and construction expected, so having a network that covers the country and helps to automate construction workflows with accurate positioning is of the highest importance.”

A closer look at Trimble’s technology

Trimble software and hardware will be installed on Kyivstar’s communication towers and will include Trimble Alloy reference receivers and Trimble Zephyr model 3 antennas.

Trimble Alloy, with its IP68 rating, is designed for extreme conditions. It provides full constellation GNSS tracking for all existing and future satellites, as well as absolute positioning capabilities. The reference receiver leverages Trimble’s Maxwell 7 technology to protect against spoofing. It also has an on-board spectrum to detect interference/jamming. It features quad core processing, up to an 100hz data logging rate and ultra-low power consumption.

The geodetic antenna, the Trimble Zephyr 3, offers full GNSS constellation support. It also provides low-elevation satellite tracking, minimized multipath, sub-millimeter phase center repeatability and improved signal reception in harsh signal environments. It is weather resistant and features a low profile design.

The Trimble Pivot Platform brings it all together, offering Network-RTK processing of full-constellation GNSS signals. The software manages the GNSS network and provides reliable signal correction at all times. Applying sophisticated atmospheric models reduces systematic errors and makes it possible to generate accurate VRS corrections for various applications. This results in a reliable, efficient workflow for end users.

The Trimble Alloy, Zephyr 3 geodetic antennas and Pivot Platform software that make up Ukraine’s CORS network are all part of Trimble VRS Now and Trimble RTX networks around the world.

“The Trimble software combined with the antenna and reference station provides a seamless workflow,” Dyjas said. “It increases availability and accuracy, and overall the technology is providing corrections services while supporting all the GNSS satellites and signals that are available here today as well as potentially in the future.”

Next steps

Trimble is now focused on establishing the network control center, Dyjas said, where the Trimble software will run. The Kyivstar team is working to deploy the first 41 communication towers. Once that’s completed, which is expected to be by the end of the year, the system will be open to end users. The second phase, with a completion date in 2024, will consist of 150 more towers. The service will then be expanded to a wider customer base with increased coverage in the country.

The CORS network will be a subscription based service, with subscriptions available through Ukraine’s Kyivstar. Trimble’s local geospatial distributor KMC Ltd. will provide maintenance and support to Kyivstar.

The biggest challenge to installing the network, Dyjas said, will be to monitor the work and “act with safety and security as the highest priority given the uncertainty and circumstances in the country.”

“We understand how important it is to invest in Ukraine’s economy right now, which is why we continue to launch technological solutions that will help businesses work even more efficiently,” Kyivstar New Business Development Director Illya Polshakov said, according to a news release about the partnership. “I am sure that the RTK correction signal service will facilitate the work of our customers from various industries.”

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Racelogic has made updates to its LabSat simulator and SatGen software, announcing both at ION GNSS+ in Denver earlier this month.

The SatGen software now features an improved dynamics engine and can simulate space scenarios, Technical Sales Engineer Elijah Owens said. Other enhancements include improved route drawing with road, pedestrian, rail and straight-line routing, as well as route drawing and static point using Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap or AMAP. The new user interface offers more intuitive navigation and better control.

The software makes it possible to create a GNSS RF I&Q or IF data file based on a user-generated trajectory that can be replayed on a LabSat simulator. Users can customize scenarios to create just about any kind of test anywhere in the world. This allows users to test receivers or devices in locations they can’t get to. It’s also possible to test at a time in the past or the future.

The software is available in single, dual, triple and multi-frequency/multi-constellation versions.

The company also introduced the new LabSat 4 GNSS simulator, which features a 12-bit I&Q quantization and a flexible 10 to 60 MHz bandwidth for optimized channel setups. It has a wider dynamic range, more resolution in the signal, improved data transfer and larger storage capacity than its predecessor, Marketing Manager Jennifer Edis said. It is designed for precision and customization in signal testing.

“You can put it in the backyard and record live signals,” she said. “It’s really easy to use, which has always been a LabSat strength. We’ve enhanced the functionality to keep up with how our customers want to use it, and kept it at a competitive price point.”

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In a recent demonstration, a StarNav receiver yielded 20 cm positioning precision from a cold start using simulated Xona PULSAR signals.

StarNav’s receiver tracked up to 13 signals from Xona PULSAR satellites, StarNav CEO Joshua Morales said. The signals were simulated by a Safran simulator. Morales showcased the results at ION GNSS+ in Denver earlier this month.

PULSAR is a next-generation position, navigation and timing (PNT) service provided by a constellation of small low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that are 20 times closer to Earth than existing GPS. They’re also stronger and more resilient to interference.

“With GPS, there’s been an uptick in jamming and spoofing,” Morales said. “PULSAR exists at a different frequency band, so it’s still available when GPS isn’t.”

The signals support centimeter level positioning, Morales said, and have various security measures built into them to mitigate interference.

When Morales first launched StarNav, the ideal was to manufacture multi-frequency receivers to offer a more robust PNT solution. Morales sees value in adding the PULSAR signals to the receiver box, and opted to partner with Xona early on. The signals bring additional reliability, security and safety to various industries that rely on PNT, including autonomous systems, agriculture and critical infrastructure.

The team has conducted one 90-second test with the Xona PULSAR signals so far, and plans to complete additional tests as more Xona test satellites are released.

“The receiver is ready to go. You just turn it on and it produces positioning results,” Morales said. “We’re very excited for the satellites to come out and start transmitting.”

StarNav receivers are being tested in other areas as well. In March, for example, the U.S. Air Force tested StarNav’s GPS L5 and E5a receiver on a T-38C jet at Edwards Air Force base, and the U.S. Army tested the receivers at undisclosed locations in 2022. More test flights are slated for later this year.

Xona is working with various partners to get its PULSAR service up and running, including Syntony, Spirent and Hexagon | NovAtel. In June, Hexagon | NovAtel demonstrated that its OEM7 GNSS receivers can track a Spirent Communications simulated signal that’s identical to the PULSAR signal broadcast by Xona’s LEO satellites.

Xona is preparing for its first production satellite launches, which are ramping up in 2024.

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Last week, PNT leaders, researchers and students gathered at the Hyatt Regency Denver for ION GNSS+, where they had the opportunity to sit in on technical sessions, chat with exhibitors about the latest technologies transforming the field and network with their peers.

It’s been 50 years since the GPS project began, with pioneers developing what has become the robust, remarkable system so many people rely on today. During the ION GNSS+ Plenary Session, Satellite Division Chair Sandy Kennedy, who is the VP of innovation at Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division, recognized this milestone and those early pioneers, including Brad Parkinson, who was in the audience.

Plenary Chair Dorota Grejner-Brzezinska went on to introduce the presenters, which included Brian “Bam” McClendon, who leads ArGeo at Niantic. In his presentation, “Where Pokémon GO: Building a Dynamic 3D AR Map of the World,” he discussed 2016’s Pokémon GO craze and the mapping story behind it.

McClendon gave background on the 2005 Google Maps launch, and the problems with the map data that came from GPS and Street View. The challenges faced led to the Ground Truth Project, where the goal was to build better quality maps that didn’t solely rely on satellite and aerial imagery. Today, data collected is sent to a machine learning algorithm that provides a precise geographic location, vastly improving accuracy.

In 2014, a Google engineer had the idea to start Pokémon GO in Google Maps as an April Fool’s joke, McClendon said, and it “turned out to be the most popular April Fool’s joke of all time.” Niantic asked players to send in video scans of the areas around Poké Spots, which has led to millions of videos that can be used for mapping that’s precise to the centimeter level.

“The goal is to have as much information around where people play games as possible,” he said. “The mapping solution is crowd sourced and constantly refreshed.”

Collecting geometries at scale allows for high-quality augmented reality game play, McClendon said, improving the quality of the reconstruction as well as the visual position. True world position is an absolute must or the experience doesn’t work.

Shared AR is another application, he said, making it possible for multiple players to see the same thing at the same time. The company is also working on taking geometric meshes and allowing players to co-locate, meaning multiple people can have a shared experience even from different locations.

“Building maps at scale is very hard,” McClendon said. “At Google, we spent a lot of time working on precision. The goal is to allow all devices to have the same experience at the same time.”

John Raquet followed up McClendon’s presentation with “UAV vs. Natural Autonomous Vehicles (NAVs)—Are We Closing the Gap?” Raquet, the director of the Dayton Business Unit of Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S), compared where we are with UAV development to birds using various specifications, including range per unit weight, number in formation and cross domain performance.

Though UAVs are making progress, Raquet was able to find a superior bird in almost every category.

“There’s still a sizable gap between the capabilities of UAVs and NAVs that won’t be closed any time soon,” he said. “But NAVs can be a source of inspiration. It’s proof of existence. If something else can do it, we know it’s possible.”

The conference continued with technical sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Presenters covered a variety of hot-button topics, including alternative technologies for GNSS-denied environments, advanced processing of terrestrial signals of opportunity, high precision and high integrity navigation, and lunar positioning, navigation and timing, to name a few.

On Wednesday and Thursday, attendees had the opportunity to visit the exhibit hall and talk with vendors about the latest technologies and advancements. Exhibitors included CAST Navigation, GPS Networking, GPS Source, Hexagon | NovAtel, Ideal Aerosmith, LabSat, NavtechGPS, Safran-Electronics and Defense, SBG Systems, Silicon Sensing, Spirent Communications, Syntony, Trimble, Tualcom and Xona Space Systems.

During the conference, NextNav highlighted Pinnacle, which delivers precise, floor-level vertical positioning for 911 calls and other applications, and TerraPoiNT, a resilient position, navigation, and timing (PNT) system that supplements and enhances GPS. The two combined create 3D PNT that can be deployed around cities with a strong signal and high-precision, Co-Founder and CEO Ganesh Pattabiraman said.

The company demonstrated a new dedicated system at the conference that Pattabiraman said is the answer for scaling high-precision applications like autonomous vehicles and drones, as well as electrical grids, timing centers, infrastructure and public safety. It’s a solution that can be quickly and easily integrated in both urban and more rural areas, providing a resilient, precise alternative solution that can be scaled without having to put a transmitter “in every nook and cranny.”

“Many customers were using us for vertical and WiFi and GPS, which are both vulnerable, for horizontal. So there’s a gap,” Pattabiraman said. “To address this, we needed a solution that’s more scalable.”

Earlier this year, NextNav tested its assured PNT TerraPoiNT system with LTE and 5G signals, demonstrating the solution is a viable alternative to conventional GPS and GNSS. With these initial tests, TerraPoiNT delivered accurate 3D positioning and timing information after being integrated with existing cellular signals.

Anello, another exhibitor, talked with customers about its SiPhOG-X3 IMU that’s set to be released at the end of the year or early next. The unit leverages three SiPhOG (Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope) units, with each containing its own independent 6-axis redundant IMU sensor. It can operate in GNSS-denied environments and has garnered a lot of interest in areas like drone cargo delivery and other aerial applications, Senior Systems Engineer Kirstin Schauble said.

LabSat announced updates to its LabSat simulator and SatGen software at the conference. SatGen now has an improved dynamics engine and can simulate space scenarios, Technical Sales Engineer Elijah Owens said. Other features include improved route drawing with road, pedestrian, rail and straight-line routing, as well as route drawing and static point using Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMap or AMAP. A new user interface offers users intuitive navigation and control.

The new LabSat 4 GNSS simulator was also unveiled, featuring 12-bit I&Q quantization and a flexible 10 to 60 MHz bandwidth. It has a wider dynamic range, more resolution in the signal, improved data transfer and larger storage capacity than its predecessor, Marketing Manager Jennifer Edis said.

StarNav announced PNT results for its receiver using Xona LEO Pulsar signals during a recent test. The 20 cm positioning accuracy results were produced using Safran’s simulator. This is the first test with StarNav receivers, with more planned as additional Xona test satellites are deployed.

“In the beginning, we built a multi-frequency receiver to provide a more robust PNT solution over just GPS,” StarNav CEO Joshua Morales said. “We see value in adding Xona into our receiver box as it gives additional positioning precision and added safety.”

Xona recently launched a privately funded PNT mission progressing from concept to on-orbit in less than 12 months. Since then, Xona has validated the capability of its technology on-orbit and built out a growing ecosystem of GNSS receiver and simulator partners with companies that include StarNav as well as Hexagon | NovAtel, Septentrio, Spirent, Safran and Syntony.

FocalPoint also made an announcement at the show. It has added new functionality to its Supercorrelation technology, S-GNSS, that makes it easy for chipset companies to integrate.

Attendees also had a chance to attend social events, including the Rocky Mountain Jam sponsored by GPS Networking and Inside GNSS. Held at The Black Buzzard at Oskar Blues, talented musicians from the GNSS community entertained a packed house of their peers.

Next year’s ION GNSS+ technical conference will move to Baltimore, taking over the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor. You don’t want to miss it, so mark your calendars for Septer 16 to 20.

The post ION GNSS+ 2023 Brings PNT Community Together in Denver appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

The new blockchain-based, decentralized CORS reference network provides low-cost access to triple-frequency full-constellation correction signals for centimeter accuracy, while also allowing users to earn financial rewards for contributing qualified CORS data back to GEODNET. 

When Mike Horton introduced GEODNET at the ION GNSS+ conference in 2021, he recognized it was a bit of a radical idea that may be met with skepticism—but he also knew it provided a solution to a common frustration, and that’s access to low-cost GNSS corrections with centimeter level accuracy. 

While there are low-cost and even free corrections providers out there, they either don’t have the station density required for true Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) corrections or the stations aren’t modernized and can’t provide it, he said. GEODNET, with a blockchain-based decentralized network of high-precision multi-band GNSS base stations, offers a different, affordable approach that anyone can access.

Horton got the idea to create this dense geospatial network after seeing another similar successful blockchain project, and it’s an idea that’s mostly been met with enthusiasm in the industry. Since the initial launch in 2022, the network of Web3 GNSS base stations has grown to more than 3,000 globally, becoming a reliable solution for RTK applications. The goal is to have between 50,000 and 100,000 base stations by 2026. A technical introduction to GEODNET was published in the Journal of Navigation Winter 2023 issue.

The key, Horton said, is the fact GEODNET is decentralized. Station owners set up a Satellite Mining station and are rewarded in the project’s native Polygon token, GEOD. When new stations join the blockchain, they prove their location using a published algorithm. And the people who set them up are rewarded with tokens.

“It’s a good use of blockchain in the real world,” said Horton, who is the GEODNET project manager. “It’s not just people trading pictures back and forth, which is what a lot of people do with cryptocurrency. This is a way to efficiently and fairly finance an infrastructure that couldn’t be built in other ways.”

The token trades every day, Horton said, and offers an incentive for people to set up stations no matter where they live. As data from the network is paid for and used by end-users, this “burns up” mined tokens. Tokens are purchased back with cash and sent to a one-way safe on the blockchain. This buyback and burn mechanism is at the core of how the network functions economically.

“We provide open access to data throughout the world for all applications that use corrections networks,” Horton said. “People set up stations at their home or office and then are rewarded for having that station online, depending on how good the quality is. It lets people participate in the network, setting up stations and then earning tokens they can sell on the crypto exchanges.”

How it Works

Anyone who wants to be part of the network can set up a station, use the network or build on top of the network, Horton said. It’s “a very open, flexible system,” with users trading tokens earned to access the data they need for their applications.

And because it’s all bound together by blockchain, there isn’t a company in control behind the scenes. It’s a true community approach, Horton said, with everything connected through a protocol that all systems adhere to. Users can add stations to areas that don’t have any or much coverage or tap into existing stations in their area with a subscription.

“The token is how people exchange value in the ecosystem, and that’s the part that’s radical,” Horton said. “But it’s a way to create independent operations and allow businesses to make use of GEODNET data by also contributing. It’s like a cycle. The more people put up stations, the more successful the network becomes, and the more people then want to put time and energy into the ecosystem.”

It is important to keep in mind GEODNET is not really a company, Horton said, but a community. The non-profit GEODNET Foundation manages the open network protocol and promotes service use within the traditional GNSS and IoT industry. It “works to align the interest of the community of miners with the community of customers, with the goal of constantly improving the utility and value of the GEOD token.”

The Need for Accuracy

Of course, the data provided from the GEODNET stations must be high-quality, Horton said, and it is. There are two tiers of stations: the backbone stations with greater than 99% reliability and the more affordable stations with a target of 98% reliability. And because there are so many stations, with the number continually growing, there’s also redundancy.

The signals are monitored for accuracy and spoofing, Horton said, and each device has a unique ID so it’s easy to spot if someone sets up a station and tries to put fake GPS data into the network.

“Normally, if you set up a receiver you know it’s good,” Horton said. “Here, you have to trust others and need proof the stations are valid. We put a unique crypto chip in every station that identifies which device data is coming from.”

A Strong Start in Romania 

The GEODNET location service offers centimeter location accuracy for many different applications including drones, robotic vehicles, agriculture, augmented reality, and IoT/mobile devices.

Some of the first base stations were set up in Romania, Horton said, and there are now more than 200 of them online. Agriculture is one of the main industries benefiting from the service there.

Before GEODNET, users in Romania mostly used one network, the Romanian position determination system (ROMPOS). ROMPOS is owned by the government and only has about 50 stations, said Marius Negreanu, one of the owners of Romania based distributor EuGeo. There are also a few stations set up by smaller companies, but they don’t have the density GEODNET provides. Some use these more expensive services as backups to ROMPOS, resulting in a more complicated solution.

Negreanu likes that GEODNET offers subscriptions to users anywhere in the world, and that you can use the same subscription no matter where you are.

Negreanu sells affordable autonomous tractor kits to farmers, he said, and is using the kits as a bridge to promote the network. An antenna that links to the closest GEODNET station is part of the kit that turns a manual tractor autonomous. This is something more farmers in Romania are becoming open to, as they realize the centimeter precision such kits provide lead to a larger harvest and less field consumption.

Negreanu recently worked with a client originally using a kit without a good GNSS network, so the accuracy was off. Turns out that client was using a virtual station some 100 kilometers away. Connecting the kit to GEODNET solved their positioning problems.

Negreanu has a list of potential large customers that he’ll reach out to as the network develops. And Negreanu expects it to continue to grow. The business model is similar to other projects he’s been involved with (he’s part of a community in Romania that invests in crypto projects) but unlike the others, GEODNET is the first he thinks will “evolve into something bigger, something of real use, not just a project where miners cash out and forget about it.”

“It has a lot of potential,” he said. “It’s one of the most economical stations we’ve found. It’s simple and it doesn’t have a lot of extra fees like the other stations.”

Finding More Uses

Lonestar Tracking, a GPS tracking company, never had a need for high-precision GPS until they began working with refinery clients who required better accuracy, Co-Founder and CTO Thomas Remmert said. To meet that need, they began taking off the shelf consumer grade tracking devices and improving them by adding different GNSS satellites to the external antennas. But they still weren’t able to achieve the necessary accuracy.

Remmert met Horton during a webinar they both spoke on, and after hearing about GEODNET, he realized RTK might be the solution. The team went to work to develop a low cost, consumer grade hardware tracking solution with a subscription based service for corrections. That went well at first, but it became clear these clients would rather not rely on public infrastructure and instead wanted access to base stations located on their property.

GEODNET provides an affordable solution to do exactly that, Remmert said.

“We set up a test unit to get an idea of performance and see if it’s going to be reliable and it has been,” he said. “We ended up taking his electronics and putting them in a ruggedized outdoor enclosure that we can deploy at these facilities. That gives us correction data that is sourced right there, at the location it’s being used.”

High precision GPS is typically associated with a high price tag, Remmert said, so the fact he’s able to tap into GEODNET for less was a big reason to go for the subscription based service.

“As the network grows, it’s easy for us to look at a map and say OK, we have a customer here, here’s a station we can subscribe to for an affordable rate,” he said. “It’s very easy to figure out if we need to deploy a station for a customer or if we can subscribe to a different one. I really like the model. It gives us options.”

Lonestar has one customer using GEODNET at a refinery in Louisiana for asset tracking, Remmert said. A second customer, a Colorado ski resort, has a pilot program to see if Lonestar’s tracking devices, mounted on snow groomers, and GEODNET corrections can be used to accurately measure snow depth.

The groomers travel through the mountains in the evening taking measurements. Position and location are displayed in the groomer and also transmitted back down the mountain to the operations center. Data can be imported directly into the ski resort’s operations software to provide equipment location as well as snow depth, which tells them where they need to deliver snow.

“This is not new technology for ski resorts, but the differentiator is the price,” Remmert said. “They can go out and buy 10,000 plus RTK units for grooming equipment, which is fine, but where we come in is we’re able to offer similar equipment at a fraction of the cost and that pushes the same amount of updates over the air as the equipment is moving across the mountain.”

Providing Corrections for Drones

Creating a decentralized GNSS corrections network solves a lot of core issues for ROCK Robotic customers, including asset use. So when CEO Harrison Knoll heard about GEODNET, he knew he wanted to be involved.

ROCK uses GEODNET as part of its LiDAR drone scanning solution, with customers ranging from land surveyors to drone survey providers to utilities. The company launched ROCK Base earlier this year, a miner that’s pre-qualified to earn GEOD tokens.

ROCK Base, a triple-band multi-constellation RTK/GNSS base station, gives customers access to the GEODNET base-station network to geo-reference ROCK Robotic’s 3D data products to millimeter-absolute position accuracy. And it does so without the cost and aggravation that comes with setting up ground control points. The solution will support applications in civil surveying, high-definition mapping and digital twin creation. Knoll is in the process of reaching out to current customers, such as DOTS and municipalities, to get them set up on the RTK network.

ROCK Base tracks all major signals transmitted from GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, QZSS, and the IRNSS navigation satellite constellations. It includes a survey-grade antennae, cables and the antennae-mounting equipment needed to set up a permanent Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS).

Users can now achieve centimeter level geolocation for photos collected via drone, and that’s becoming a big use case.

The service gives users more control, Knoll said. They can put base stations right outside their office and get really accurate data, and don’t have to worry about government agencies or large corporations getting involved.

“Drone operators won’t ever need a base station again,” he said. “They can get RTK and PPK accurate data anywhere in the world just by stepping outside. They won’t need to lug around a second GNSS receiver; they can run it all through the network in real time or calculate in post processing. It’s big for drone surveyors and map makers.”

Alexandre Cottier, who recently started his own drone company, Tiercot Drone Cottier, in Switzerland, decided it was best to have his own RTK network as subscriptions in his country aren’t cheap. He bought GEODNET’s dual band miner at first, but ended up moving to the triple band upgrade card, which gave him access to NTRIP information. He now uses the service for various missions, including 3D mapping and search and rescue.

Cottier mounted his antenna to his car with a 4G modem, with everything set up on a battery to ensure power. He’s connected to the antenna with his drone and with this setup has an RTK connection wherever he goes for a job. Cottier is also a farmer and plans to perform tests with a tractor and harvester for agricultural applications, as “high precision positioning is coming fast into agriculture.”

Like the others, Cottier expects the network to continue to grow and make a huge impact on those who need high precision GNSS.

“Making an international RTK provider is the most ambitious concept I know,” he said. “It cuts all governmental process and local RTK providers who are asking so much for the connectivity to a network.”

Moving Forward 

The plan in the coming months is to more broadly introduce the service, Horton said. Setting up the stations is fairly easy (there are videos to walk new users through it) and mining is also very straightforward. By filling out a form on the website you can get access to the data; they’re not charging for it yet other than a few key customers who are using it in bulk. And as the service rolls out, the team will continue to work on adding more stations around the world to make it even more robust.

Anyone can access the data, Horton said, and while there is a charge, you don’t have to get permission to use the data to build your own custom services. Most companies won’t let you use their station data, but that’s another difference with GEODNET. It’s completely open and available.

This new idea has a lot of potential, with early users expecting big things, especially with the need for RTK in emerging industries like self-driving vehicles and autonomous drones. 

“If the license isn’t too expensive, it can become the main RTK provider in the world,” Cottier said. “The community is growing really fast and the mentality of the GEODNET teams seems great for a big evolution in the near future.” 

The post GEODNET Takes A Different Approach to GNSS Corrections for Drones, Other Applications appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

When Mike Horton introduced GEODNET at the ION GNSS+ conference in 2021, he recognized it was a bit of a radical idea that may be met with skepticism—but he also knew it provided a solution to a common frustration, and that’s access to low-cost GNSS corrections with centimeter level accuracy.

While there are low-cost and even free corrections providers out there, they either don’t have the station density required for true Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) corrections or the stations aren’t modernized and can’t provide it, he said. GEODNET, with a blockchain-based decentralized network of high-precision multi-band GNSS base stations, offers a different, affordable approach that anyone can access.

Horton got the idea to create this dense geospatial network after seeing another similar successful blockchain project, and it’s an idea that’s mostly been met with enthusiasm in the industry. Since the official launch in 2022, the network of Web3 GNSS base stations has grown to more than 3,000 globally, becoming a reliable solution for RTK applications. The goal is to have between 50,000 and 100,000 base stations by 2026. A technical introduction to GEODNET was published in the Journal of Navigation Winter 2023 issue.

The key, Horton said, is the fact GEODNET is decentralized. Station owners set up a Satellite Mining station and are rewarded in the project’s native Polygon token, GEOD. When new stations join the blockchain, they prove their location using a published algorithm. And the people who set them up are rewarded with tokens.

“It’s a good use of blockchain in the real world,” said Horton, who is the GEODNET project manager. “It’s not just people trading pictures back and forth, which is what a lot of people do with cryptocurrency. This is a way to efficiently and fairly finance an infrastructure that couldn’t be built in other ways.”

The token trades every day, Horton said, and offers an incentive for people to set up stations no matter where they live. As data from the network is paid for and used by end-users, this “burns up” mined tokens. Tokens are purchased back with cash and sent to a one-way safe on the blockchain. This buyback and burn mechanism is at the core of how the network functions economically.

“We provide open access to data throughout the world for all applications that use corrections networks,” Horton said. “People set up stations at their home or office and then are rewarded for having that station online, depending on how good the quality is. It lets people participate in the network, setting up stations and then earning tokens they can sell on the crypto exchanges.”

How it Works

Anyone who wants to be part of the network can set up a station, use the network or build on top of the network, Horton said. It’s “a very open, flexible system,” with users trading tokens earned to access the data they need for their applications.

And because it’s all bound together by blockchain, there isn’t a company in control behind the scenes. It’s a true community approach, Horton said, with everything connected through a protocol that all systems adhere to. Users can add stations to areas that don’t have any or much coverage or tap into existing stations in their area with a subscription.

“The token is how people exchange value in the ecosystem, and that’s the part that’s radical,” Horton said. “But it’s a way to create independent operations and allow businesses to make use of GEODNET data by also contributing. It’s like a cycle. The more people put up stations, the more successful the network becomes, and the more people then want to put time and energy into the ecosystem.”

It is important to keep in mind GEODNET is not really a company, Horton said, but a community. The non-profit GEODNET Foundation manages the open network protocol and promotes service use within the traditional GNSS and IoT industry. It “works to align the interest of the community of miners with the community of customers, with the goal of constantly improving the utility and value of the GEOD token.”

The Need for Accuracy

Of course, the data provided from the GEODNET stations must be high-quality, Horton said, and it is. There are two tiers of stations: the backbone stations with greater than 99% reliability and the more affordable stations with a target of 98% reliability. And because there are so many stations, with the number continually growing, there’s also redundancy.

The signals are monitored for accuracy and spoofing, Horton said, and each device has a unique ID so it’s easy to spot if someone sets up a station and tries to put fake GPS data into the network.

“Normally, if you set up a receiver you know it’s good,” Horton said. “Here, you have to trust others and need proof the stations are valid. We put a unique crypto chip in every station that identifies which device data is coming from.”

A Strong Start in Romania

The GEODNET location service offers centimeter location accuracy for many different applications including drones, robotic vehicles, agriculture, augmented reality, and IoT/mobile devices.

Some of the first base stations were set up in Romania, Horton said, and there are now more than 200 of them online. Agriculture is one of the main industries benefiting from the service there.

Before GEODNET, users in Romania mostly used one network, the Romanian position determination system (ROMPOS). ROMPOS is owned by the government and only has about 50 stations, said Marius Negreanu, one of the owners of Romania based distributor EuGeo. There are also a few stations set up by smaller companies, but they don’t have the density GEODNET provides. Some use these more expensive services as backups to ROMPOS, resulting in a more complicated solution.

Negreanu likes that GEODNET offers subscriptions to users anywhere in the world, and that you can use the same subscription no matter where you are.

Negreanu sells affordable autonomous tractor kits to farmers, he said, and is using the kits as a bridge to promote the network. An antenna that links to the closest GEODNET station is part of the kit that turns a manual tractor autonomous. This is something more farmers in Romania are becoming open to, as they realize the centimeter precision such kits provide lead to a larger harvest and less field consumption.

Negreanu recently worked with a client originally using a kit without a good GNSS network, so the accuracy was off. Turns out that client was using a virtual station some 100 kilometers away. Connecting the kit to GEODNET solved their positioning problems.

Negreanu has a list of potential large customers that he’ll reach out to as the network develops. And Negreanu expects it to continue to grow. The business model is similar to other projects he’s been involved with (he’s part of a community in Romania that invests in crypto projects) but unlike the others, GEODNET is the first he thinks will “evolve into something bigger, something of real use, not just a project where miners cash out and forget about it.”

“It has a lot of potential,” he said. “It’s one of the most economical stations we’ve found. It’s simple and it doesn’t have a lot of extra fees like the other stations.”

Finding More Uses

Lonestar Tracking, a GPS tracking company, never had a need for high-precision GPS until they began working with refinery clients who required better accuracy, Co-Founder and CTO Thomas Remmert said. To meet that need, they began taking off the shelf consumer grade tracking devices and improving them by adding different GNSS satellites to the external antennas. But they still weren’t able to achieve the necessary accuracy.

Remmert met Horton during a webinar they both spoke on, and after hearing about GEODNET, he realized RTK might be the solution. The team went to work to develop a low cost, consumer grade hardware tracking solution with a subscription based service for corrections. That went well at first, but it became clear these clients would rather not rely on public infrastructure and instead wanted access to base stations located on their property.

GEODNET provides an affordable solution to do exactly that, Remmert said.

“We set up a test unit to get an idea of performance and see if it’s going to be reliable and it has been,” he said. “We ended up taking his electronics and putting them in a ruggedized outdoor enclosure that we can deploy at these facilities. That gives us correction data that is sourced right there, at the location it’s being used.”

High precision GPS is typically associated with a high price tag, Remmert said, so the fact he’s able to tap into GEODNET for less was a big reason he decided to go for the subscription based service.

“As the network grows, it’s easy for us to look at a map and say ok, we have a customer here, here’s a station we can subscribe to for an affordable rate,” he said. “It’s very easy to figure out if we need to deploy a station for a customer or if we can subscribe to a different one. I really like the model. It gives us options.”

Lonestar has one customer using GEODNET at a refinery in Lousiana for asset tracking, Remmert said. A second customer, a Colorado ski resort, has a pilot program to see if Lonestar’s tracking devices, mounted on snow groomers, and GEODNET corrections can be used to accurately measure snow depth.

The groomers travel through the mountains in the evening taking measurements. Position and location are displayed in the groomer and also transmitted back down the mountain to the operations center. Data can be imported directly into the ski resort’s operations software to provide equipment location as well as snow depth, which tells them where they need to deliver snow.

“This is not new technology for ski resorts, but the differentiator is the price,” Remmert said. “They can go out and buy 10,000 plus RTK units for grooming equipment, which is fine, but where we come in is we’re able to offer similar equipment at a fraction of the cost and that pushes the same amount of updates over the air as the equipment is moving across the mountain.”

Providing Corrections for Drones

Creating a decentralized GNSS corrections network solves a lot of core issues for ROCK Robotic customers, including asset use. So when CEO Harrison Knoll, heard about GEODNET, he knew he wanted to be involved.

ROCK uses GEODNET as part of its LiDAR drone scanning solution, with customers ranging from land surveyors to drone survey providers to utilities. The company launched ROCK BASE earlier this year, a miner that’s pre-qualified to earn GEOD tokens.

ROCK Base, a triple-band multi-constellation RTK/GNSS base station, gives customers access to the GEODNET base-station network to geo-reference ROCK Robotic’s 3D data products to millimeter-absolute position accuracy. And it does so without the cost and aggravation that comes with setting up ground control points. The solution will support applications in civil surveying, high-definition mapping and digital twin creation. Knoll is in the process of reaching out to current customers, such as DOTS and municipalities, to get them set up on the RTK network.

ROCK Base tracks all major signals transmitted from GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, QZSS, and the IRNSS navigation satellite constellations. It includes a survey-grade antennae, cables and the antennae-mounting equipment needed to set up a permanent Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS).

Users can now achieve centimeter level geolocation for photos collected via drone, and that’s becoming a big use case.

The service gives users more control, Knoll said. They can put base stations right outside their office and get really accurate data, and don’t have to worry about government agencies or large corporations getting involved.

“Drone operators won’t ever need a base station again,” he said. “They can get RTK and PPK accurate data anywhere in the world just by stepping outside. They won’t need to lug around a second GNSS receiver; they can run it all through the network in real time or calculate in post processing. It’s big for drone surveyors and map makers.”

Alexandre Cottier, who recently started his own drone company, Tiercot Drone Cottier, in Switzerland, decided it was best to have his own RTK network as subscriptions in his country aren’t cheap. He bought GEODNET’s dual band miner at first, but ended up moving to the triple band upgrade card, which gave him access to NTRIP information. He now uses the service for various missions, including 3D mapping and search and rescue.

Cottier mounted his antenna to his car with a 4G modem, with everything set up on a battery to ensure power. He’s connected to the antenna with his drone and with this setup has an RTK connection wherever he goes for a job. Cottier is also a farmer and plans to perform tests with a tractor and harvester for agricultural applications, as “high precision positioning is coming fast into agriculture.”

Like the others, Cottier expects the network to continue to grow and make a huge impact on those who need high precision GNSS.

“Making an international RTK provider is the most ambitious concept I know,” he said. “It cuts all governmental process and local RTK providers who are asking so much for the connectivity to a network.”

Moving Forward

The plan in the coming months is to more broadly introduce the service, Horton said. Setting up the stations is fairly easy (there are videos to walk new users through it) and mining is also very straightforward. By filling out a form on the website you can get access to the data; they’re not charging for it yet other than a few key customers who are using it in bulk. And as the service rolls out, the team will continue to work on adding more stations around the world to make it even more robust.

Anyone can access the data, Horton said, and while there is a charge, you don’t have to get permission to use the data to build your own custom services. Most companies won’t let you use their station data, but that’s another difference with GEODNET. It’s completely open and available.

This new idea has a lot of potential, with early users expecting big things, especially with the need for RTK in emerging industries like self-driving vehicles and autonomous drones.

“If the license isn’t too expensive, it can become the main RTK provider in the world,” Cottier said. “The community is growing really fast and the mentality of the GEODNET teams seems great for a big evolution in the near future.”

The post GEODNET: Taking A Community Approach to GNSS Corrections appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

GEODNET is taking a different approach to global Earth observation, building a blockchain-based decentralized network of high-precision multi-band GNSS base stations. Since the company’s official launch in 2022, the team has grown its network of web3 GNSS base stations to more than 3,000 globally, providing a reliable solution for Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) applications.

The GEODNET Foundation recently announced the completion of a private $1.5 million token sale led by Borderless Capital’s EdgeFi Fund, the first web3 investment fund exclusively focused on Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN), according to a news release. The investment round also includes participation from IoTeX, a web3 technology provider and blockchain for Internet of Things, and angel investors.

“We led this investment because the GEODNET community is proving that thoughtfully deployed DePIN networks offer high-value, revenue-generating solutions to real-world problems,” said Álvaro Gracia, Partner at Borderless Capital, according to the release.

The GEODNET location service offers centimeter location accuracy for various applications including drones, robotic vehicles, agriculture, augmented reality, and IoT/mobile devices. Hemisphere GNSS, Quectel Wireless Solutions and Rock Robotic are among those leveraging the stations, which are now online in every continent.

The key to GEODENT, Project Creator Mike Horton said, is it’s decentralized. GEODNET stations owners set up a Satellite Mining station and are rewarded in the project’s native Polygon token, GEOD. New stations join the blockchain and prove their location using a published algorithm. Those who set up the stations are rewarded based on the accuracy data they provide.

“We provide open access to data throughout the world for all applications that use corrections networks,” Horton said of GEODNET. “It’s a community approach. People set up stations at their home or office and then are rewarded for having that station online, depending on how good the quality is. It lets people participate in the network, setting up stations and then earning tokens they can sell on the crypto exchanges.”

The GEODNET Foundation manages the open network protocol and promotes service use within the traditional GNSS and IoT industry. This investment will be used to strengthen the project, with emphasis placed on growing reliable global coverage and a mobile operating-system Software Development Kit.

GEODNET combines AI, IoT and blockchain, making it a “game changer” for mobile applications, Horton said. The $1.5 million investment will “help pave the way to a broad developer ecosystem in both enterprise and consumer applications.”

The post GEODNET Announces $1.5 Million Investment Led by Borderless Capital appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

ION’s JNC brings industry together to solve PNT challenges

Reliable access to PNT is critical for the warfighter, but that’s becoming more difficult as threats like jamming and spoofing continue to grow. 

Manufacturers are focused on developing advanced PNT solutions that provide resilient GNSS, and many such technologies and others were on display during the Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Joint Navigation (JNC) conference in San Diego. Attendees also had the chance to sit in on sessions during the event, with enhancing Dominance and Resilience for Warfighting and Homeland Security PNT this year’s theme. 

The show gives attendees and even exhibitors the chance to see and learn about the latest PNT innovations, with many of the same exhibitors returning year after year. VectorNav is among those companies, and, at this year’s event, showcased its Tactical Series of external IMUs. The solutions can connect to external IMUs, SAASM or M-Code GPS receivers to provide a more robust solution in GPS contested environments. 

“This is always an important event for us,” VectorNav’s Vice President, Business Development Jakub Maslikowski said. “We reconnect and engage with other companies, and learn about the latest developments in PNT technology and explore ways our technologies can benefit each other and ultimately provide benefit to the warfighter.”

A look at the technology on display 

About 60 exhibitors were on hand to talk with attendees about their various solutions during the show, from receivers to antennas to simulators to IMUs. 

Hexagon | NovAtel highlighted its GPS Anti-Jam Technology (GAJT) product line, which the company is continually improving, said Peter Soar, business development manager, military & defense at NovAtel. GAJT integrates easily into new platforms and also can be retrofitted onto existing platforms, providing protection from jamming as well as situational awareness messages when a jammer is detected. 

Hexagon | NovAtel also showcased its OEM7 GNSS receivers during the conference. The company recently demonstrated that its receivers can track a Spirent Communications simulated signal that’s identical to the PULSAR signal broadcast by Xona’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, Soar said, a significant development for alt-PNT. The new mini antennas, blade antennas and the Robust Dual-Antenna Receiver (RoDAR) for anti-jam were among the other products of interest to JNC attendees.  

Jackson Labs, a VIAVI Solutions company, highlighted various products at their booth, including the new T/Rx, a compact, ruggedized system that can sense, capture, replay, alter and train RF signals. Military applications include Signal and Electronic Intelligence collection, electronic protection/support/attack, and interference detection and analysis.

The PNT-600 Series was also on display. The compact boxes can supplement or replace GPS signals based on connectivity to a range of timing sources, including LEO, GNSS, commercial satellite, terrestrial, wireline and atomic clock services. 

The company’s transcoder makes it possible to retrofit any legacy GPS equipment to a more resilient, secured PNT solution, VIAVI Solutions VP or Strategic Development Marvin Rozner said, and M-Code can be added for military applications. 

“We take care of timing,” Jackson Labs’ Giovanni D’Andrea said. “We added anti-jamming and anti-spoofing. When you know something will happen, we take care of the issue. If L1 or L5 is blocked, we look at the other satellites and will move to another one.”

ANELLO Photonics highlighted its Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope (SiPhOG) technology, which uses an on-chip waveguide manufacturing process integrated with a patented silicon photonic integrated circuit. This enables Fiber Optic Gyro performance with a standard silicon manufacturing process, and represents the first new gyro technology in 20 years, CEO Mario Paniccia said.  

The company recently released the ANELLO GNSS INS optical gyro inertial navigation system. The system features ANELLO’s optical gyro technology, which isn’t sensitive to temperature or vibration, and an AI-based sensor fusion engine. It offers high-accuracy positioning and orientation for autonomous land vehicles, agriculture and construction applications. ANELLO plans to launch a three axis version for aircraft like drones later this year.

“We’ve developed technology that allows us to operate in GPS denied environments,” Paniccia said. “Because of its size, weight, power and performance, we can apply the technology to broader applications. We’re now looking at land and air and eventually sea.”

JAVAD GNSS focused on two new products during the show: the TR-2S and the TR-3S. The commercial off the shelf (COTS) OEM GNSS boards, Tom Hunter said, have equivalent DOD classification and feature the company’s patented anti-spoofing and anti-jamming technology. 

GPS Networking displayed its military qualified GPS Splitters. The Mil-Spec antenna distributes GPS/GNSS signals throughout facilities, aircraft and armored vehicles, splitting signals from a single antenna to two, four or eight receivers. 

Boxes from GPS Networking are customizable and rugged, with about 200,000 units being used today—including those sold back in the 1990s. GPS Networking President Steve Waite said many JNC attendees visiting the booth have worked with the company before and are coming back for help with new projects. 

GNSS/INS simulators like those from CAST Navigation make it possible to test in various environments and scenarios, including when jamming is present, allowing defense customers to model behaviors in any condition, said John Clark, CAST Navigation’s vice president of engineering. Different vehicles, antennas, gains and jamming intensities can be used for the simulations, with various environmental factors that could impact signal reception, constellation and satellite availability also coming into play. 

Ideal Aerosmith talked with attendees about its motion simulation test equipment, including rate and position tables, flight motion simulators and centrifuges. The company also offers a lab where customers can perform testing, Business Development Manager Jason Eder said.  

LinQuest highlighted its GPS Interference and Navigation tool, GIANT, a mission level simulation that evaluates how PNT system performance impacts a benign or electronic combat environment. It was first developed 25 years ago, AVP/GM Matt Oliver said, but is constantly updated as PNT technology continues to evolve. GIANT supports the entire life cycle of development from concept to training to operation. 

Oscilloquartz by Adtran supplies optical cesium technology, what Nino De Falcis, senior director of business development, Oscilloquartz, ADVA, describes as the next generation. He highlighted the OSA 3300, a high-performance optical cesium clock, as well as an assured PNT technology that combines the cesium clock and a grand master clock that can accept multiple sources, such as LEO, and validate them in real time and move to whichever is the best. 

“If there’s no timing there is no PNT,” he said. “Timing enables positioning and navigation. We happen to be the T.” 

BAE Systems introduced the NavGuide GPS receiver, an assured-positioning, navigation and timing (A-PNT) device, at the show. It will serve as a field-installable replacement for the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR), providing access to assured M-Code PNT data and addressing the need for warfighters to have access to the anti-jam and anti-spoofing capabilities that M-Code provides. The device is built for vehicular, handheld, gun-laying and sensor applications. 

DAGR is currently used in many different mounted and dismounted platforms, BAE Director of Engineering for Navigation & Sensor Systems Todd Peterson said, so it was important to develop a replacement that’s easy to integrate into current DAGR mounts and accessories. 

NavGuide features a three-inch full-color graphical user interface and is easy to learn how to use. 

Orolia Defense & Security, a Safran Electronics & Defense company, announced that it’s re-branding under a new name, Safran Federal Systems, during the show. This comes after its 2022 acquisition by Safran, a global aerospace and defense company. All that’s changing is the name, Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tyler Hohman said. There will be no change in leadership, and customers will work with the same people they have for years. 

Announcing the rebrand at JNC allowed the team to talk with many customers in person and to address any questions they had. The company also showcased its Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG) Crystal technology that can be integrated with M-Code. 

“You can now integrate a high-end navigation solution using HRG crystals and pair it with our M-Code PNT solutions,” he said. “There aren’t many groups in the market that can offer ultra high-end inertial paired with M-Code capability.”

NavtechGPS exhibited at JNC for the first time, promoting two upcoming courses. The first, Course 346, GPS/GNSS Operation for Engineers and Technical Professionals, can be taken as a full four-day course or a two-day course, Seminar Manager Trevor Boynton said. The shorter course provides an introduction to GPS while the four-day option gets into more technical concepts. The second course, 557, Inertial Systems, Kalman Filtering and GPS/INS Integration, is a five day course that takes a deep dive into these concepts, offering a hands-on component with different Kalman filters. 

SiTime, another first-time JNC exhibitor, is replacing quartz technology with semi-conductor technology in its oscillator chips, CEO Rajesh Vashist said. The company’s Endura COTS Ruggedized MEMS Timing Solutions are engineered for harsh environments and are more rugged as well as more shock, vibration and temperature resistant. 

SWaP was certainly a concern for many attendees, Mayflower Communications CEO Triveni Upadhyay said, especially those looking for anti-jam solutions for small UAS. That’s a focus for Mayflower, with its latest product offering a four channel GPS anti-jam solution with a small SWaP. Chelton, as the only UK-based company at the show, also spent a lot of time talking with attendees about anti-jam options. Chelton leverages its expertise in antennas to provide multi-channel anti-jam, Avionics Business Unit Manager David Collins said. 

NextNav Director of Product Marketing Jay Patel was at the show to talk about TerraPoiNT, a 3D PNT solution that can provide resilient PNT without relying on satellite signals. Other exhibitors included Aevex Aerospace, Acutronic, Microchip Technology, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Psionic, Syntony GNSS, Spirent Federal Systems, L3Harris and Xona Space Systems. 

While the show floor closed on Wednesday afternoon, sessions continued through Thursday, covering a variety of topics such as complementary PNT, IMU applications and simulation. Next year’s JNC is slated for June 3 to 5 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in the greater Cincinnati area. 

The post From the Show Floor: ION’s JNC 2023 appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.