Industry veteran Mariam Sorond has taken over as the CEO of NextNav.

NextNav Co-Founder Ganesh Pattabiraman has decided to step away from his role as CEO and Board of Directors member to spend more time with his family. Sorond joins NextNav with more than 28 years of technical and strategy experience in the telecommunications industry.

“Mariam’s extensive spectrum expertise and proven track record of evolving telecommunication technology and strategy align perfectly with the ongoing development of NextNav’s broad spectrum portfolio and industry-leading 3D geolocation and GPS resiliency capabilities,” said Gary Parsons, NextNav’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, according to a news release. “In recent years, Mariam led technology efforts at both VMware and CableLabs and was instrumental in architecting DISH’s wireless spectrum and network. Her deep skill set, and vast technical acumen will be invaluable to the team as it drives toward the next phase of its growth.”

Sorond most recently served as chief technology officer, SEBU for VMWare, where she helped to “define and evangelize its technical strategy as well as lead its digital transformation.” As the chief research and development officer at CableLabs, she focused on the future of converged connectivity of broadband cable and mobile networks.

Before joining the cable industry, Sorond served in several senior positions, including chief wireless architect of DISH, where she led the company’s entry into the wireless market. She also was responsible for spectrum technology and strategy, end-to-end technology development, and creating the next generation of network architecture and standards development. She currently serves as a member of the NTIA Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee and the FCC Technological Advisory Council.

“Having devoted my career to advancing and commercializing innovation in technology, I am thrilled to continue this journey at the helm of NextNav,” Sorond said, according to the release. “I am deeply committed to realizing the full value of NextNav’s spectrum asset and next-generation 3D PNT technology to drive growth and deliver long-term shareholder value.”

Pattabiraman “was instrumental” in Sorond’s recruitment, Parsons said, according to the release. He will continue to support the company as a senior advisor.

“Sixteen years ago, we had a vision for the next generation of GPS,” Pattabiraman said, according to the release. “With the roll out and adoption of the Pinnacle service nationwide for E911 and Public Safety, and recent steps by the Federal Government toward enabling resilient PNT in national critical infrastructure, I believe we are not only realizing that vision, but positioning NextNav as a global leader in next generation resilient PNT. With the company on strong foundational footing and a clear growth strategy in place, I feel confident this is the right time to hand over leadership to such an impressive and experienced executive as Mariam, while continuing to support the company’s key strategic initiatives.”

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Dr Mark Marshall takes on role as emerging inertial sensing technologies open new market opportunities.

Dr Mark Marshall has been appointed as Chief Engineer of Silicon Sensing Systems Ltd. Dr Marshall joined Silicon Sensing in 2017 as the lead engineer on numerous inertial programmes. Immediately prior to commencing as Chief Engineer he was the company’s Consultant Engineer and Electronics Discipline Manager. In this role he was responsible for the electronics and mechanical design of the company’s latest generation, tactical grade inertial measurement unit (IMU) – the DMU41.

Dr Marshall comments: “These are remarkable times in inertial sensing with a long held technological status quo now rapidly shifting. A number of recent micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) inertial product launches are truly challenging fibre-optic gyro (FOG) performance for the first time – with products that are much more compact and rugged – and less power consuming. One of these market disrupting products is our DMU41 9 degrees of freedom (DoF) IMU.”

He continues: “But we know there is so much more we can achieve. The generation of products we are developing today will significantly extend these performance gains, increase endurance and extract even more from system size, weight and power consumption. I am looking forward to leading our engineering team as we evolve these new products and bring them to the market.”

Before joining Silicon Sensing Dr Marshall worked as a senior research engineer in the field of laparoscopic electro-surgical instruments. He has a 1st class honours degree in Computer Aided Engineering, an MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Systems and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

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Cheryl Gramling knew early on what she wanted to do in life. Today, she is assistant chief for technology, mission engineering and systems analysis division, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and she’s playing a key role in getting us back to the Moon.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took his one small step onto the surface of the Moon, and with that step, and with his moving words, he was assured a place in history. An estimated 650 million people around the world watched the event live, in homes, in auditoriums and in schoolrooms. It was a towering achievement for the men who stood on the lunar surface, but the lives of many others would also be changed forever.

Cheryl Gramling was a little girl in 1969. On that historic day in July, she was watching television while on vacation with her family in Atlantic City. “I was 8 years old at the time of the Apollo 11 landing,” Gramling told Inside GNSS. “Perhaps it sounds a bit cliché, but it was the Apollo missions that led me to my career. Watching the news broadcasts, particularly Jules Bergman with the Apollo trajectory drawn on the screen, inspired me. I wanted to design those trajectories.”

It was a profound desire that stuck with young Gramling. As a child, she liked going to summer camp, swimming, and playing tennis, but in school, her favorite subjects were math and physics. “When I was 14 years old,” Gramling said, “a friend of the family explained to me that to design those Apollo trajectories meant I needed to be an aerospace engineer. At the time, I thought engineers were just the fellows who drove trains. I had a lot to learn. But that is what led me to aerospace engineering.”

Gramling was the first in her immediate family to go to college. Her mother, who was s born in England, came to the USA in 1957 and found work as a secretary. Her father, from Baltimore, was an accountant.

First Stage

Gramling attended the University of Maryland at College Park, not far from the nation’s capital, where, aside from her classes, she enjoyed hiking and ice skating. She continued playing tennis and came to appreciate literature. She studied hard and was awarded a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1983. By 1985, she was doing what she’d dreamed of, designing flight trajectories for NASA.

Gramling served as flight dynamics lead for WIND, POLAR and GEOTAIL at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) from June 1985 to November 1991. She designed trajectories for the WIND and GEOTAIL missions, a series of double lunar swingbys, and the highly elliptical POLAR mission, also analyzing navigation strategies for WIND and POLAR. These were collaborative projects involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of Japan. They entailed coordinated, simultaneous investigations of the Sun-Earth space environment over an extended period of time.

It was during her early years at NASA that Gramling first came to grips with GNSS. “In 1986,” she said, “working for NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, I was developing systems for onboard autonomous navigation using signals from NASA tracking, telemetry, and command networks, mostly the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System [TDRSS].”

That GNSS Thing

Gramling said, “I was working with the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer [EUVE] project to fly an ultrastable oscillator and additional hardware in the flight transponder to extract the Doppler from a TDRSS forward link, then process through an Extended Kalman Filter to obtain a navigation solution for the spacecraft.” The system was called the TDRSS Onboard Navigation System (TONS). “The Project Manager, Frank Cepollina, thought it would be awesome to have a ‘Fly-Off’ between TONS and a GPS system,” Gramling said. EUVE was also flying an engineering prototype GPS receiver from Motorola.

The TONS demonstration was very successful and resulted in an operational flight system on the Terra spacecraft, which was launched in December 1999. “The solution from the GPS pseudorange data was compared offline to the TONS solution and the calibrated standard GPS solution was found to be comparable to TONS,” Gramling said. “The distinction in the era after EUVE was that TONS didn’t require separate hardware for the solution—it was part of the comm system, whereas GPS required a separate antenna, RF front end and receiver.”

Gramling remembers this as a pivotal moment, a turning point in her own trajectory. “The advantage of an instantaneous realization of your orbital position from the kinematic GPS solution was evident in the EUVE demonstration,” she said. “Once the community realized that spacecraft needed to estimate the position and the velocity, I think it changed the game in receiver processing, leading to more filtered estimates to solve for the full state.”

The GNSS deal was sealed when, in the early 2000s, Gramling worked on the Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission (MMS). “Our team was analyzing different navigation solutions for the formation of four spacecraft in a tetrahedron with varying interspacecraft distances.” MMS are 3rpm ‘spinners’ in highly elliptical orbits: phase 1 orbit was 1.2x12RE, where RE is one Earth radius, and phase 2 was 1.2 x 25RE. “Both apoapses [orbital high points] were far above the GPS constellation,” Gramling said. “The team at GSFC had been working on both fast-acquisition and weak signal reception techniques for GPS receivers, and navigation simulations showed that use of GPS could provide very accurate navigation solutions for MMS.”

Flying autonomous navigation was not yet widely accepted, but the MMS navigation team made the case to fly GPS and the Goddard Enhanced Onboard Navigation System (GEONS) flight software onboard MMS. “Our case was based on the success of TONS onboard Terra and other LEO missions flying GPS receivers, a planned inflight use of the new receiver design in a LEO environment to qualify it and calibrate it, and analysis that clearly indicated use of GPS for MMS was a mission enabler,” Gramling said.

All of this set the stage quite handsomely for her current work, developing systems for cislunar PNT, both orbital and lunar surface-based. NASA has set the ambitious goal of establishing a sustainable human presence on the Moon. A diverse set of commercial and international partners are currently engaged in this effort, aiming to set in motion a new round of scientific discovery, lunar resource use and economic development on both the Earth and at the Moon. Further, NASA believes lunar development can serve as a critical proving ground for deeper exploration into the solar system. Certainly, space communications and navigation infrastructure will play an integral part in realizing these goals.

NASA’s Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation System is part of an international architecture known as LunaNet, a services network that will enable lunar operations. This encompasses a wide variety of topology implementations, including surface and orbiting provider nodes. Four LunaNet service types are defined: networking services, position, navigation and timing services, detection services and science utilization services. “Lunar Relays will provide the Lunar Augmented Navigation System in the LunaNet framework,” Gramling said, “stemming from the terrestrial GNSS and the TDRSS to deliver a broadcast PNT service capable of providing common and mission-unique data to the lunar environment.”

Finding Love and Starting a Family

As if Gramling’s rise within NASA wasn’t stimulating enough, she managed to find another key source of interest, in the form of her husband. “We met while working at GSFC, although we didn’t work together at the time,” she said. “He is an engineer by education and is currently a program manager at NASA headquarters.”

When the couple started their family, Gramling cut back on her hours but still stayed involved. “My husband and I have three children,” Gramling said. “I was lucky enough to have a boss who supported my husband and my decision for me to work part-time while raising our children. This was before the days of official telework options.”

Gramling’s boss at the time, Jerry Teles, allowed her to work at home and was instrumental in piloting a telework program at NASA/GSFC. “Jerry was my first supervisor, as branch head, and he did not deprecate the importance or relevance of my work assignments,” Gramling said. “Working part time through the mid-years of my career was instrumental in enabling me to stay involved, continue to contribute meaningfully to missions, and then seamlessly return to full time work in 2005.”

Teles was a fierce defender against misogynistic attitudes in the workplace in the 1980s, Gramling said. “He held the bar high and expected his employees to take responsibility and to learn. After the Challenger accident, when the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory launch was delayed, Jerry developed and executed a plan to ensure all his recent early career hires, including me, received on-the-job training in relevant flight dynamics analyses to prepare this junior team for the mission.”

When Gramling showed an interest in advanced trajectory design, Teles introduced her to Dr. Robert Farquhar, under whom she learned multi-body trajectory design for lunar and Sun-Earth Lagrange missions. “Jerry also encouraged me, and others, to lead teams and take responsibility, supported by his mentorship,” Gramling said.

A Well-Rounded Life

Gramling’s three children now range in age from 30 to 25. “Our older son was a liberal arts major, and our daughter and youngest son both majored in engineering,” she said. “Outside of work, I like to bake, garden, hike, bike, walk, do needlework, read, and travel.” A quick glance at her family photos confirms Gramling indeed loves to travel, and she shares that passion with her family.

So, after a nice holiday, it’s back to the grind for Gramling, which may not be such a grind after all: “I have one of the coolest jobs in the world,” she confesses. “Working for NASA is an honor. Working on advancing technology and on navigation and guidance systems to ensure success for complex missions in challenging environments makes you want to go to work every day.”

Like so many top-flight engineers of her generation, Gramling was deeply inspired by NASA’s stunning accomplishment of landing men on the Moon. Within what seemed like just a few short years, she was working for the organization that had put them there. And there, at the Goddard Space Flight Center, she’s still doing her thing. And we can be sure she’s not just sitting at a desk with stars in her eyes. Gramling is not a dreamer, but a real moving force at NASA, as that esteemed and admired institution pushes forward on its return to the moon.

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Helix is pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Beese as Chairman of its Board of Directors.

With over twenty-five years in the computing industry, and having served as a CEO of a technology start-up, Tom Beese currently chairs several early-stage technology businesses, and brings a wealth of experience to the role of chairman at Helix Geospace. He also chairs Esroe, which is another high-growth company addressing the electromagnetic spectrum for both civil and security customers. Additionally, he chairs YellowDog, delivering a breakthrough in cloud computing, and Titania, one of the UK’s leading cyber security software businesses.

In his new Helix Geospace role, Tom will support the leadership team and focus on the company’s strategic matters, overseeing business and setting governance standards.

Commenting on his new role, Tom said, “I work with just a few teams and, exactly as at Helix Geospace, they must be setting out to achieve a step-change in their industry and where, hopefully, I can bring highly relevant experience and expertise to give them an even higher probability of success on their demanding journey. I’m therefore very excited to be joining Helix at this time.”

Oliver Leisten, Helix CEO – CTO, said “It is a great privilege to welcome Tom Beese as Chairman of the Board. It is with happy anticipation that we shall work with Tom: using his fresh thinking, business connections, and wisdom to create a successful company.”

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Rx Networks announced today that Michael Longinotti, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, will retire from the company at the end of 2022, then continue to serve as a board member. John Carley, VP of Sales and Marketing, has been appointed by the Board of Directors to succeed Longinotti as Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2023.

“On behalf of the Board of Directors, the management team and Rx Networks employees, we want to thank Mike for his unfaltering leadership, mentorship, and his commitment to our service delivery quality over his more than fifteen years with the organization,” said John Carley. “As a hands-on, managing leader, Mike has guided the company through the change in ownership and the pandemic while increasing the value of location data.”

Longinotti was instrumental in facilitating the Beijing BDStar Navigation Co., Ltd. (“BDStar”) acquisition of Rx Networks, regarded as a significant breakthrough in BDStar’s global expansion, providing a wealth of opportunities for Rx Networks. The Board is sincerely grateful to Mike for his dedication to the company and looks forward to his continued service as a board member. John Carley’s appointment is the culmination of a comprehensive succession planning process managed entirely by the Board.

“With a highly experienced leadership team, a deep product roadmap and many promising new partnerships, Rx Networks is poised for success through this transition,” said Mike Longinotti. “For the past twelve years, John has led the engineering teams and the sales and marketing team with drive and personable expertise. With his multidisciplinary approach and winning track record of global partnerships and execution, he is extremely well prepared to lead Rx Networks through its next phase of growth and technological advancement.”

John Carley joined Rx Networks in 2010 as Program Manager. In his more than 12 years with the company he has fulfilled multiple senior leadership roles. Since 2019 he has excelled in the role of VP Sales and Marketing, where he has produced exceptional results, including over 40% sales growth while establishing Rx Networks as a global GNSS industry leader.

Please visit Rx Networks at Intergeo (Essen, Germany) from Oct. 18-20, booth F2.033.

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The Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Satellite Division presented Dr. Boris Pervan with its Johannes Kepler Award September 23, 2022 during the ION GNSS+ Conference held September 19-23, at the Hyatt Regency Denver At Colorado Convention Center.

Dr. Pervan was recognized for his pioneering contributions to high-integrity GNSS-based aviation navigation and his dedication to education

Dr. Boris Pervan has been a pioneer and technical leader in transformative research programs dedicated to ensuring safe aircraft navigation.

In 2007, as GPS Evolutionary Architecture Study (GEAS) panelist for the FAA, Dr. Pervan performed the first feasibility studies that helped define the Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (ARAIM) architecture. He authored ARAIM Integrity Assertions, which set the foundations for ARAIM, and accelerated ARAIM development. A driving force behind the US-EU cooperative effort for dual-frequency, multi-constellation ARAIM, he spearheaded international efforts to rigorously account for ARAIM fault-exposure durations. From 2007 to the present, his group established new airborne and ground-based algorithms to empirically model and monitor ARAIM error sources. These methods are currently coded, verified, and validated by global avionics manufacturers. By 2025, ARAIM will facilitate air traffic management by providing unprecedented levels of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) integrity.

Dr. Pervan is a pioneer of the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS), the US Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS), and was at the forefront of the development of the first LAAS prototype in 1996. As FAA Key Technical Advisor and LAAS Integrity Panelist, his contributions ranged from GBAS proof of concept all the way to Category III certification. From 1996 to 2016, he designed, evaluated, and tested ground monitors protecting aircraft against satellite orbit, clock, code-carrier divergence, reference receiver faults, and ionospheric fronts. His group devised anti-interference and anti-spoofing methods for LAAS-capable receivers coupled with chip-scale atomic clocks and inertial sensors.

From 2001 to 2015, Dr. Pervan was a technical leader on carrier-phase differential GPS applications, including the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS) and Autonomous Airborne Refueling (AAR) for the US Navy and Air Force. He developed carrier-phase-based fault monitors and the first analytical method to quantify safety risks caused by incorrect cycle ambiguity resolution. His work demonstrated that high accuracy and high integrity were simultaneously achievable worldwide using differential GPS.

Dr. Pervan also contributed to the Integrity Beacon Landing System, radar-based Unmanned Air System Sense and Avoid, Iridium-augmented GPS, which have served as foundational implementations for current and future terrestrial radionavigation, collision warning, and mega-constellation-augmented GNSS systems.

As an educator from 1999 to present, Prof. Pervan has supervised 12 MS and 20 PhD students who have been recognized with organizational awards and built successful careers in government, industry, and academia. Additionally, Prof. Pervan has been serving the international PNT community for more than 25 years, including as Editor-in-Chief of NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation from 2006 to 2019. During his tenure, NAVIGATION’s content was expanded and became indexed among top-ranked journals in aerospace engineering.

Dr. Boris Pervan is currently a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago. He holds a BS from Notre Dame (1986), MS from Caltech (1987) and PhD from Stanford University (1996). He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation in 2010.
The Johannes Kepler Award recognizes and honors an individual for sustained and significant contributions to the development of satellite navigation. It is the highest honor bestowed by the ION’s Satellite Division.

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The Institute of Navigation (ION) announced the recipients of the 2022 Fellow membership during the ION International Technical Meeting (ITM) and Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications (PTTI) meeting held January 25- 27, 2022 at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach in Long Beach, California.

Election to Fellow membership recognizes sustained professional accomplishments that have significantly contributed to the advancement of the arts and sciences of Positioning, Navigation and/or Timing (PNT) in the areas of technology, management, practice or teaching and a demonstrated and sustained impact on the PNT community. Fellows have maintained an observable presence in the ION community over the long term, including contributions to ION programs and publications.

Dr. Dennis M. Akos was elected for fundamental contributions to the design, development, and commercialization of GNSS software-defined radio technology.

Charles A. Schue, III was elected for distinguished and sustained technical and strategic contributions, leadership, and guidance in resilient PNT solutions.

Dr. Charles K. Toth was elected for significant contributions to the development and implementation of multi-sensor integrated navigation systems, and for demonstrated excellence as an academic mentor and professional leader.



Dr. Dennis M. Akos is the developer of the GNSS software-defined radio (SDR). The radio front-end developments, performed in cooperation AFRL, resulted in the first direct RF sampling front-end designs for GPS and GPS/GLONASS receivers. On the software front, his efforts resulted in the world’s first complete SDR for GPS, implementing all the algorithms required within the receiver from the signal acquisition, code/carrier tracking, data decoding, and the position/ time solution.

During his time as a faculty member at the Luleå University of Technology, Dr. Akos focused on the optimization of existing GPS signal processing algorithms, moving the post-processing of the samples into a real-time implementation. With the transition to real-time processing, Dr. Akos co-founded NordNav Technologies, developing GNSS software-defined receivers. This technology advanced the GPS software radio in the commercial sector. NordNav partnered with CSR to provide a cost-effective solution for the mobile market with the reuse of a 2.4-GHz Bluetooth radio for L1-band GNSS signal processing.

Dr. Akos reworked the GPS SDR implementation into a userfriendly implementation, resulting in the 2007 textbook, A Software-Defined GPS and Galileo Receiver. This provided an open-source implementation of the GPS software-defined receiver algorithms for all as well as a valuable research and educational tool.

Dr. Akos’ research within the field of GNSS software radio has been influential in the efforts of the GPS Laboratory at Stanford University in its mission to integrate GNSS technology within the National Aerospace System on behalf of the FAA. His insight into the internals of GNSS receivers, resulting from his in-depth GPS/GNSS SDR research, continues to be an enabler for safe and effective use of GNSS in aviation.

Dr. Akos is currently a faculty member with the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Ohio University. 

Dr. Charles K. Toth is the key architect of the concept, development, and implementation of the first mobile mapping system (MMS), one of the first civilian applications of GPS. This revolutionary technology became the frontrunner of acquiring street data for visualization to support location-based services, with thousands of vehicles equipped with the latest sensors-acquired data 24/7 for the internet-based giants. For the past 25 years, he has been one of the three international leaders organizing the International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology (MMT).

In late 1990s, Dr. Toth led the OSU team in the Airborne Integrated Mapping System (AIMS), which delivered the first-in-the-world fully digital directly georeferenced highaccuracy airborne mapping system prototype based on the tight integration of GPS and the inertial navigation unit (IMU). This technology was first used commercially during the 9/11 Ground Zero emergency mapping operations. Subsequently, Dr. Toth led significant research efforts on direct georeferencing of remote sensing platforms, introducing GPS/IMU-based sensor orientation into the mapping community, and is generally credited with coining the terms direct georeferencing and indirect georeferencing.

Dr. Toth was one of the principal architects behind the design and prototyping the NGA-sponsored novel multi-sensor and AI-based personal navigator (PN) for emergency crews and dismounted soldiers. The originality of this contribution stemmed from using artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic to model human locomotion to facilitate navigation when other sensors failed, all by implementing a knowledge-based system.

Dr. Toth is a research professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering at The Ohio State University. He is recognized for establishing professional partnerships between ION and ISPRS, FIG, and IAG. He received an MSc and PhD in Electrical Engineering as well as a PhD in Geo-Information Sciences from the Technical University of Budapest in Hungary.

Mr. Charles “Chuck” A. Schue, III is a pioneer in the design, implementation, or support of nearly every Loran-C, Loran-D, and eLoran system since 1975. Through one of his companies, UrsaNav, he offers continent-wide, ground-wave technology that is reliable and scalable, and available when GPS/GNSS is not. The technology is fully interoperable with, yet completely independent of, GPS/GNSS, and offers sky-free PNT directly to users, or as an enabler of other technologies. He is the author/ co-author of over 62 published papers, countless presentations, and several book chapters on low-frequency, Loran-C, enhanced Loran, and resilient PNT. He holds, or is named in, nine patents. An internationally recognized expert in radio navigation systems, Mr. Schue is a founding member of the UK Resilient PNT Group, two RTCM committees, and the SAE International’s Systems Management Council PNT Standards Committee, which issued the Transmitted Enhanced Loran Signal Standard, and two data channel modulation standards. Other achievements include participating in the provision of timing for the terrestrial infrastructure monitoring and controlling the first joint U.S.- Soviet space mission: the Apollo-Soyuz space docking; developing gait algorithms for the first-ever joint U.S.-Japanese effort in autonomous underwater robotics: the hexapod underwater walking robot, Aquarobot(tm); miniaturizing and marketing the first Thermal Diffusion Blood Flow monitor for neurosurgery; and developing a prototype Pulsating Electromagnetic Field Generator to study improving bone growth and knitting for space travel.

Mr. Schue, a US Coast Guard retiree, is a seasoned entrepreneur who is a founder, owner, and/or director for nine companies in the U.S. and Canada. As co-founder of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, he helped establish resilient PNT as an international priority. He has been a member of ION Council and a director of the International Loran Association, is a Fellow of the RIN, and a Senior Member of IEEE and ASQ. He holds master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management, and Business Administration.

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FocalPoint Positioning, founded in 2015, is, as they say, very happening. Its Supercorrelation is a chipset-level software product for mobiles, wearables and vehicles that is changing the positioning game in urban environments. Interesting and energetic, FocalPoint founder Ramsey Faragher came out of the defense industry and has a risen rapidly in the GNSS firmament.

Founder, President and chief technical officer of FocalPoint Positioning, Ramsey Faragher is passionate about what he does and fully awake to the positive and far-reaching impact of positioning and timing technologies. Like many people of his generation, advanced space systems—at least those of the imagination—played a role during his formative years. “I’m from a quite small family, one brother and two male cousins, all older than me, so I had a rough-and-tumble and very Star Wars-themed childhood,” Faragher said.

To what extent Skywalker & Co., or for that matter Darth Vader, determined his destiny is probably better left for another discussion.

“I grew up in suburbia, outside Liverpool in the Northwest of England,” Faragher said. “My dad is from the Isle of Man, and that explains my name. You see, it’s an old tradition on the Isle of Man that if you move away, you name your children after places there. Ramsey is the town that my dad grew up in, and so here I am, Ramsey!”

His mother grew up in Liverpool, and his parents met when his father was a student at Liverpool University. “My dad was an engineer for Plessey, the electronics firm,” he said, “and my mum helped to run my uncle’s family business selling hi-fi equipment.”

Though he grew up decidedly Liverpudlian, Faragher went off to study at Cambridge University and has now lived most of his life in that august institution’s city and environs. He has therefore, by now, lost all traces of that funny Scouse accent made famous by some of his hometown’s other celebrated sons. “I neither sound like Paul McCartney, unfortunately, nor Wayne Rooney, thankfully,” Faragher said. [Rooney is an English professional football manager and former player.]

“I was very active when I was a kid: sport, musical instruments, learning to fly with the Air Cadets. I carried on juggling all three of these interests into my university days, along with academia. My older brother, Paul, is a chemist, so we are quite a sciencey family.” Business also runs in the blood, although it took Ramsey a while to realize it. “My uncle and my godfather both ran their own businesses,” he said, “but I never thought for a moment growing up that I would eventually do the same.”

Faragher said he considers himself lucky, incredibly so, and he surely is: “I have very supportive and caring parents. They always encouraged me to excel in whatever I turned my hand to.” And that, as it does, made all the difference in the world.

In 2004, Faragher graduated from University of Cambridge, Churchill College, Natural Sciences, specializing in experimental and theoretical physics, M.Sci and B.A. (Hons), First Class Honors. He then turned his hand to a doctorate. His destiny had begun to take shape.

Faragher Meets GNSS

“In 2004,” Faragher recalled, “I started my Ph.D. on the ‘Effects of Multipath Interference on Radio Positioning Systems.’ I was using the 2G cellular signal as my main research focus, as my Ph.D. was sponsored by Cambridge Positioning Systems, who developed cellular positioning technologies. I was of course using GPS as my reference to compare performance against—just lonely old L1 C/A via a 12-channel SirfStar III chip.”

The goal was to try to develop improvements in the error models used by Cambridge Positioning Systems. “I was able to experimentally verify a theoretical model I developed to estimate the expected error distributions in different signal environments.” Faragher helped to assess the stability of various mobile phone timing networks to aid in an assisted GPS technology called E-GPS, a patent portfolio now owned by Qualcomm.

“I also had fun determining experimentally just how stable and reproducible multipath interference could be indoors using atomic clocks and seismograph pen plotters to move antennas overnight across a room at a snail’s pace.”

By 2007, Faragher had earned his Ph.D. in physics, but this wasn’t the only critical outcome of his final years as a student. “Alexandra and I met at Cambridge University,” he said. “It was at another college, Homerton College, where I had been invited as a visitor by my Ph.D. officemate. As it happened, I was late for dinner, and on arriving I couldn’t see my friend anywhere.

“Everyone was getting seated at those long tables in the dining hall, so I walked over to an attractive girl and asked if I could join her. I have no idea what anyone else at that table is up to today, but the attractive girl now has her hands full with a pair of four-year-old twins. My four-year-old twins. That is, our four-year-old twins.” More on that wrinkle later. Meanwhile, Faragher was ready to take on the world.

Getting to work

From 2007 to 2013, Faragher worked at the defense multinational BAE Systems. “I’ve been fortunate to work on some incredible projects, especially during my time in the defense sector,” he said. “It was somewhat of a golden age for me. I arrived with knowledge and experience in the area of opportunistic radio positioning, just as the UK defense sector was starting to get concerned with the risks of GPS jamming and spoofing and the need for alternative positioning solutions.”

Faragher was immediately given the opportunity to develop an alternative system for the Wildcat program, the UK’s first fully autonomous, unmanned ground vehicle. “I developed two independent systems,” he said, one of which exploited SLAM [simultaneous localization and mapping] in order to build up its own database of cellular transmitters. “I was working in BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre, which acted as a hub of scientific experts that all of the main business units could tap into for help.”

Having exceeded expectations in his very first project for the company, Faragher was asked to get involved in many of the other GNSS-denied positioning projects across the whole company. Within an 18-month window he worked on the navigation system of the Astute nuclear submarine and the Mantis Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and was part of the original design team for the Seeker navigation system on the ExoMars Martian rover.

“I went on to lead teams that developed indoor positioning systems for soldiers, collision avoidance systems for military vehicles in zero visibility, a system enabling small UAVs to auto-land without GPS, and a system for docking autonomous marine surface vessels with larger surface vessels,” he said.

Unfortunately, BAE Systems decided to close the Advanced Technology Centre and, in 2013, Faragher accepted an invitation to return to Cambridge University as a senior postdoctoral researcher. It was a homecoming of sorts, and he quickly secured projects with Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) and Google to investigate Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) indoor positioning accuracy, and developed the first real-time SLAM indoor positioning system for a smartphone.

“It was during that time that I also started to think about making changes deeper within smartphones,” Faragher said,” and making use of sensor fusion and new signal processing techniques right down inside the chipsets. I finally made the decision to leave the University and start up FocalPoint Positioning, where I developed Supercorrelation.”

2015 to Present

Supercorrelation encompasses new signal processing methods for the correlation stage of a GNSS receiver that enable many seconds of coherent integration while the receiver system is undergoing dynamic motions. These innovative methods can be implemented in low-cost, consumer-grade receivers such as those found in smartphones.

“Supercorrelation combines signal processing, machine learning and sensor fusion, and we have a huge amount of confidence in the abilities of our stellar team of experts with a wide range of backgrounds,” Faragher said. The result is a chipset-level software product for mobiles, wearables and vehicles that is ten times more accurate than previous solutions in urban canyons, that features ten times higher integrity and delivers a three-to-ten-times sensitivity boost indoors. It is designed for the modern system-on-a-chip silicon architecture used by all consumer GNSS receivers. That means it requires no extra hardware or infrastructure and fits into existing architecture as a software upgrade.

“Taking Focal Point Positioning from an idea in my head to licensing deals with huge names in the industry like u-blox has been an incredible experience,” Faragher said. “There was the initial gamble that what we were developing and patenting really was brand new. There is always a risk that another entity is developing the same technology, is just a little bit ahead and is simply yet to publish their patents. Thankfully we really did manage to beat everyone else to this particular punch.”

More recently, some of Faragher’s recommendations have been taken on by various entities, big and small, using BLE measurements for pandemic-related applications.

Combining Family and Career

Faragher is still in touch with the folks up North, “but it’s 200 miles between Cambridge and Liverpool, so we only manage to visit each other a few times a year,” he said.

And then there’s that attractive girl with her hands full. About Alexandra, he says “I have a very supportive and understanding wife! We have four-year-old twins, Loran and Aobh, and a three-month-old, Leah. They are all still quite young, but the twins are already full of personality and opinions. There is a lot of practical engineering going on at the moment, ranging from fixing broken toys, putting shelves back on walls, and making things out of edible objects.”

Faragher said he has managed to combine professional life, home life and parenting, “as best as is possible for a startup founder,” although we are sure he merits a full pardon. “I work every day, but only because I enjoy what I do so much,” he said. “I think I’m not uncommon among start-up founders who work twice as many hours a week as most people – the usual nine-to-five with everyone in my company, then I spend time in the evening with my family, but then I have a second work stint from around 9:00 pm to midnight or later. There’s always some catching up on the weekend too.”

All work means little time for play, and work has been plentiful at FocalPoint for the past few years, but Faragher said he is hoping to soon be able to get back into sport and flying. “I’m also an avid Formula One fan, and a pretty dangerous go-kart racer,” he said. We are confident that he is more careful when designing positioning technologies than when he drives a go-kart.

Either way, Faragher is a man who likes to keep moving. “I’m not really the sort of person who sits still and looks out the window wondering what to do,” he said. “When we do manage to get a holiday, I’m normally dragging people off on a hike or to visit some local attraction.

“It’s been a bit of a strange era, with the pandemic, but I’m looking forward to getting back to travelling again, for business or pleasure, and seeing more parts of the world,” Faragher said. “In the meantime, we have been making do with baking cakes and making gingerbread men, and trying to find a bigger house to fit the ever growing family into.”

Don’t fret, Faragher. For you, for your family and for your company, bigger things would appear to be on the horizon. 

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As CEO Jean-Yves Courtois puts it, Orolia is focused on solving the hard problems. To do that, the France-based company, a global provider of resilient positioning, navigation and timing (RPNT) solutions, has become a technology integrator.

In recent years, Orolia has acquired and partnered with companies that offer complementary solutions to its positioning, GNSS simulations and emergency location technologies, with the goal of providing customers with the advanced solutions and support they need for critical aerospace, governmental and high integrity applications.

French defense contractor Safran, one of those partners, recently began the acquisition of Orolia from Eurazeo. The acquisition allows both companies to extend their RPNT solutions globally, with Safran now able to offer products and services in all aspects of PNT, inertial navigation, time and GNSS receivers and simulators. It also gives Safran more access to the U.S. market, where Orolia has a strong position, particularly with the U.S. government.

Safran will continue to develop Orolia, with Courtois leading the team. Orolia will be consolidated within Safran’s Equipment & Defense division upon closing, which should happen mid-year.

“There are plenty of cool things we can do by combining our timing technology and their sensor fusion and inertial technology. It’s really solidified the business case for them,” Courtois said. “With all the things we are bringing together, the critical mass, we are a very credible Resilient PNT leader.”

An emerging market  

Courtois sees Resilient PNT as an emerging market that requires many different capabilities—which is why acquisitions like Spectratime, Spectracom, Talen-x and Skydel over recent years have been key to the company’s growth and success. Such acquisitions added time and frequency synchronization platforms, simulation equipment, Rubidium atomic clocks, and Interference, detection and mitigation (IDM) technologies to the company’s portfolio.

Focusing on offering a mix of capabilities is critical right now, Courtois said. Traditional technologies have their limitations in this world of new, more tangible threats. And it’s clear there’s no silver bullet to address these threats; many different technologies and capabilities, both traditional and new, must work together to outsmart them.

“About five, six years ago we saw this coming before people were even talking about Resilient PNT,” he said, “so we decided to focus on that and become a leader.”

Safran also has made its share of acquisitions, another benefit for Orolia, Courtois said. For example, Safran recently acquired Sensonor AS, adding the company’s MEMS inertial solutions to its portfolio.  

A true integrator

Orolia is technology agnostic, Courtois said. Instead of trying to push one technology, the company serves as an integrator, providing customers with the greatest depth and breadth of upgradeable solutions possible.

“There’s a consensus that the future will be a combination of sensors and signals all over the place. It’s so complex that a customer with a problem to solve can’t really wrap his mind around it,” Courtois said. “We want to make things a little more clear so people can understand what they really have to solve, what they can expect from different solutions and what makes sense today.”

High expectations

Courtois sees great possibilities with this acquisition, and expects significant growth in the coming years. The goal is to move past the No. 1 and No. 2 companies in the market (Safran is now No. 3 in inertial), and that means being better technically, offering solutions with enhanced performance that open up new applications, and providing top-notch support to clients during critical operations.

“The only way to displace the giants is to just be better,” Courtois said. “And being better is primarily technology but it needs to go together with perfect customer support. That’s always been a key differentiator for Orolia.”

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Industry veteran Simon Baksh is joining JAVAD GNSS as Head of Product Development. Baksh trained as a chartered surveyor and first applied his land and hydrographic survey expertise to optimize oil exploration working for Schlumberger internationally.

He has since held increasingly senior product management roles in companies such as Trimble, Altus, Novatel, and Carlson Software. During this time, he was able to work on the introduction of many technologies for land survey, notably RTK GNSS, Inertial Navigation Systems, and wireless communications. His experience extends to business development, acquisitions and partnerships, and product marketing. 

JAVAD GNSS CEO Nedda Ashjaee stated: “We’ve known and respected Simon for quite some time and he brings a wealth of experience and expertise in product development.  We’re excited to have him join us to apply his intimate knowledge and expertise of the industry to our next generation of JAVAD GNSS products.” Baksh is looking forward to the next chapter in his career: “I’m delighted to be joining JAVAD given their wealth of technology innovation and I look forward to building on this to meet current and future market needs.”

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