For the automotive industry, Teseo VI chips and modules will be core building blocks of advanced driving systems (ADAS), smart in-vehicle systems, and safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. They have also been designed to improve positioning capabilities in multiple industrial applications including asset trackers, mobile robots for home deliveries, managing machinery and crop monitoring in smart agriculture, timing systems such as base stations, and many more. 

“Our new Teseo VI receivers represent a real breakthrough among positioning engines for several reasons: they are the first to integrate multi-constellation and quad-band signal processing in a single die; they are the first to embed a dual-Arm®-core architecture enabling both very high performance and ASIL-level safety for assisted and autonomous driving applications. Last but not least, they embed ST’s proprietary embedded Non-Volatile-Memory (PCM), thus delivering a very integrated, cost-effective, and reliable platform for new precise-positioning solutions,” said Luca Celant, Digital Audio and Signal Solutions General Manager, STMicroelectronics. “ST’s new satellite-navigation receivers will support exciting, advanced capabilities in automotive ADAS applications and enable many new use cases being implemented by industrial companies.” 

The post STMicroelectronics Releases Satellite Navigation Receiver for Automotive and Industrial Applications appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

With 5G and PRS standards already in place, this validates that NextNav PNT technology solutions can enable a widescale commercial 5G-based PNT solution that provides a resilient terrestrial complement and backup to traditional GPS signals. 

The demonstrations culminated in successful field tests using a prototype network operating on NextNav’s existing spectrum in Palo Alto, California. These tests validated the effectiveness of NextNav’s 5G PRS-based PNT solution, demonstrating precise timing synchronization and robust positioning capabilities, establishing a foundation for widespread commercial deployment.  

“This is a major milestone towards building a terrestrial complement and backup to GPS built on the back of a global standard.” said NextNav Co-Founder and CTO, Arun Raghupathy. “By leveraging a PRS-based network, NextNav is proving that it is able to develop scalable 3D PNT capabilities built with 5G technology using standards compliant PRS signals.”  

NextNav’s technology provides an approach to scaling resilient PNT solutions. The company seeks to build a widescale terrestrial PNT solution working with 5G infrastructure and device providers. By demonstrating that PRS can fulfill this requirement, NextNav moves closer to the vision outlined in its rulemaking petition before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In its petition, NextNav proposed that the FCC reconfigure the Lower 900 MHz band to enable a 5G-based terrestrial 3D PNT as both a complement and backup to GPS while also supporting 5G broadband deployment and use.  

Few challenges are more pressing than integrating greater resiliency into critical terrestrial PNT technologies while simultaneously freeing up more spectrum for 5G broadband. 

The post NextNav Successfully Demonstrates Positioning Reference Signal-Based PNT Technology appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

LEO PNT panel
1.           Dr. Alexander Mitelman (USDOT) (in-person)
2.           Mr. Patrick Shannon (TrustPoint) (remote)
3.           Mr. Bryan Chan (Xona Space) (remote)
4.           Mr. Pietro Giordano (ESA) (remote)
5.           Dr. Daehee Won (KARI) (remote)
6.           Dr. Yoji Takayama (Furuno Electric) (in-person)
7.           Dr. Masaya Murata (JAXA) (in-person)

Lunar PNT panel
1.           Mr. Joel Parker (NASA) (remote)
2.           Dr. Javier Ventura-Traveset (ESA) (remote)
3.           Ms. Cheryl Gramling (NASA) (remote)
4.           Mr. Ricardo Verdeguer Moreno (Spirent) (in-person)
5.           Dr. Jung Min Joo (KARI) (in-person)
6.           Dr. Ashish K Shukla (ISRO) (remote)
7.           Ms. Siliang Yang (DSEL) (remote)
8.           Dr. Masaya Murata (JAXA) (in-person)

These panelists are all representing lunar PNT and LEO PNT fields. For details on in-person and online participation, visit the MGA2025 conference homepage and view the program agenda here.

The post The 15th Multi-GNSS Asia Annual Conference to Feature Lunar PNT and LEO PNT Panels appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

The foundation will use the capital to service the network’s rapidly-growing customer pipeline and support new robotics and physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications and customers. 

Real-time kinematics (RTK) is a navigation technique that enhances positioning data from satellite-based systems—such as GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, or BeiDou—to achieve real-time, centimeter-level accuracy. GEODNET recently became the largest RTK network in the world and now boasts more than 13,500 user-deployed reference stations across 4,377 cities in more than 142 countries. These stations provide precision location services to thousands of robots daily, including autonomous trucks, construction vehicles, agricultural equipment, drones, robotic lawn mowers, robotic marine vehicles, and much more.  

“GEODNET improves the accuracy, availability, and affordability of precision positioning for today’s intelligent robots. The network provides a 100x improvement in location accuracy compared to GPS alone, and is a perfect companion to on-device sensors, such as Cameras, LiDAR, and IMUs. GEODNET is helping make the dream of intelligent drones and robots a practical reality today,” said Mike Horton, founder, GEODNET. “With this new funding, we will aggressively expand our robotics ecosystem and accelerate support for new intelligent robots, both in consumer and enterprise applications.”

GEODNET customers and partners include large industrial companies, governmental organizations and enterprises, such as Propeller, DroneDeploy, Quectel, USDA, HemisphereGNSS, Septentrio, and others. As new customers have onboarded over the past year, the network’s on-chain annual recurring revenue has grown more than 400% in 2024. 

According to recent studies from GlobalData, the robotics market is poised to expand to over $200B in revenue alone by 2030 as more autonomous robots, drones, and dog- and humanoid-robots come online. Precision location services are essential for training these robots and operating them in the field; GEODNET equips these robots with the data they need to safely and autonomously navigate complex environments with a high degree of precision, both individually and in cooperative swarms. GEODNET is currently prioritizing partners who manufacture robotic dogs and humanoid robots. Interested customers can either contact the foundation or sign up for a free, 30-day trial. 

“GEODNET joined the ranks of other successful DePINs like Helium, IO Net and Hivemapper this year. They all have found product-market fit and are solving large, real-world problems,”  said Kyle Samani, Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital. “We are proud to support GEODNET’s vision to enable the pervasive robotics; the future of robotics and physical AI holds tremendous potential and is poised to revolutionize multiple, multi-billion-dollar industries.” 

​​The GEODNET network consists of reference stations, which receive signals from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Each station is capable of delivering precise RTK correction data to devices within a range of approximately 20-40 kilometers. Any device equipped with a GNSS receiver, such as a car, drone, mobile phone, or tractor, can connect to the GEODNET network.

GEODNET currently supports multiple reference stations, including HYFIX’s MobileCM Triple-Band GNSS Base-Station, a ready-to-use Geodetic Grade GNSS base station. Network contributors can earn GEOD tokens for hosting base stations.

GEOD is live on Solana and the GEODNET Foundation is backed by some of blockchain and DePIN’s most respected investors, including Borderless Capital, Multicoin Capital, ParaFi, DACM, CoinFund, Pantera, VanEck, Animoca Brands, Finality Capital Partners, Tangent, North Island Ventures, Modular Capital, Road Capital, Reflexive Capital, Reverie, IoTeX, JDI, SNZ and Santiago R. Santos.

To get involved or learn more about GEODNET, please visit https://geodnet.com/. 

The post GEODNET Raises $8M to Equip Humanoid Robots With Centimeter-Level Accuracy appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

This award, granted through the Space Technology Advanced Research – Fast-tracking Innovative Software and Hardware (STAR-FISH) program, brings Xona’s total signed contracts to over $20 million to date.

Through this contract, Xona will demonstrate key performance aspects of its PULSAR™ high-performance satellite navigation service on multiple commercial user devices and in a variety of scenarios, including where GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Signals (GNSS) may be challenged or denied. Testing will include demonstrations of jamming and spoofing resilience, multipath effect reduction, and security key distribution. This effort will accelerate the readiness of advanced alt-PNT capabilities in commercial off-the-shelf user equipment to meet DoD user needs with rapid acquisition times.

As part of this contract Xona has partnered with several leading GPS/GNSS user equipment providers with the ability to rapidly manufacture and deploy PULSAR enabled devices. Partners who will be demonstrating performance of their devices with the PULSAR service as part of this contract include QinetiQ, StarNav, and Locus Lock.

“The technology in modern GNSS user equipment is incredibly advanced these days, and capable of very high-performance if you can provide it a high-performance signal,” said Brian Manning, Xona CEO & Co-Founder. “This contract is enabling us to demonstrate not only the advanced capabilities these receivers can achieve with the PULSAR service, but also the utility of combining mass produced hardware with a securely controlled PNT service to support anything from small drones to large DoD systems.”

This multi-year award will feature Xona’s advanced simulation capabilities along with demonstrations using the first PULSAR satellite that is scheduled to launch in June 2025.

The post Xona Secures $4.65M Contract with AFRL to Demonstrate Capabilities of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) GPS Alternative in Commercial User Equipment appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

A terrible thing happened on the night of January 29th in Washington DC, within view of our Nation’s capital. A U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter collided with an American Eagle Regional Jet over the Potomac river, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.

Any loss of life is a terrible thing, but this specific accident is very disturbing for me because as a licensed commercial pilot and flight instructor with multi-engine and instrument ratings, and being CEO of an aviation technology company, I know that technology is available that could have prevented this accident.

Why wasn’t it being used? Some of it was…but not ALL of it and not EVERYWHERE. It may be shocking to know that our current approach to regulations and policy is that it usually does not change until something like this happens. In parallel, subtle exceptions to rules creep in from a variety of sources over time. We are left with a largely safe system, but one that has various ‘gaps’. While these ‘gaps’ might be small, when they line up, catastrophic events can occur, like this collision.

Below is a map image that illustrates the path of the American Eagle Regional Jet. This path is consistent with a visual approach to runway 33 at Reagan National Airport. This approach is often used for regional jets because they can use the shorter runway (Runway 33), allowing controllers to more efficiently move traffic on Runway 1 (the primary runway) as well as the ramp areas. uAvionix systems are able to track this data using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). Put simply, ADS-B is a way for an aircraft to share its own position (referred to as Ownship) with air traffic control and other aircraft in the area. It shares this information over a radio signal that broadcasts every 1 sec (referred to as 1 Hertz (Hz). In the USA, all commercial and private aircraft are required by regulation to transmit ADS-B position when in specific classes (areas) of the National Airspace (NAS). The DC airspace is one of those areas, so the airliner was compliant and was transmitting ADS-B, as you can see in the image. Notice the helicopter’s path is not illustrated. That is because the Blackhawk helicopter, being a military aircraft, is not required to broadcast ADS-B (nor is it required to receive ADS-B), and as such, is not picked up by ADS-B receivers.

Also required in this class of airspace is a device known as a transponder. A transponder responds to a radio frequency signal (referred to as an interrogation, usually emitted by a ground based radar) and returns data about the aircraft’s type, callsign and altitude as measured by equipment on the aircraft. This allows air traffic controllers to receive higher quality altitude data about each aircraft than the radar itself can provide (most radars only return bearing and range information). In the case of this accident, both aircraft were equipped with transponders and both transponders were sharing position information. The image below shows the transponder tracks for each aircraft.

In addition to ADS-B and transponders, all transport category aircraft operated under Part 121 of the FAA regulations (14 CFR 121) are also required to have a system called Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) aboard. TCAS uses the transponders on each aircraft to query other aircraft’s transponders to determine if they are on a collision course. If the systems determine they are on a collision course, warnings and commands are issued to the flight crew from the TCAS. These are known as Traffic Advisories (TA) and Resolution Advisories (RA). A TA is for awareness only, but an RA is a command that must be followed by the crew immediately.

So why didn’t the TCAS tell the American Airlines crew to do something? Well, the airport environment is a busy place with aircraft operating very near each other. Further, the final approach segment for a flight crew is a high workload time of flight. Since the TCAS would likely trigger a large number of TA’s and the potential for false RA’s at low altitude, it is suppressed below 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL). Specifically, there are no RA’s issued below 1,000 feet AGL, and all TA’s are muted below 500 feet AGL.  This accident occurred at roughly 300 feet AGL.

The U.S. Army Blackhawk Helicopter is not required to have TCAS aboard, and even if it did, it would have been suppressed just as the American Airlines jet’s was.

This is point #1 – in this type of airspace with this volume and proximity of traffic, why are all aircraft not required to use all available technology to avoid collision?

To address that, we must look at how aircraft are typically separated by pilots and air traffic control.

The last line of defense against mid-air collision is the human eyeball. The regulations (14 CFR 91.113) clearly spell out that it is the pilot’s responsibility to ‘see and avoid’ all other aircraft to avoid a collision.  Most general aviation operations rely on this method to avoid collisions as most of the country is not covered by radar or managed by air traffic control. There are strategic and tactical operations that we use to minimize the chances of a mid-air collision – things like specific traffic patterns, cruising altitudes, right of way rules, radio calls – but at the end of the day, it is a human pilot looking out the window that is the last line of defense.

Air traffic control exists to assist the pilot with that task by deploying a variety of techniques and technologies ranging from calling out the position of other aircraft, to tracking aircraft on radar to issuing heading and altitude commands to pilots to help them navigate away from potential collisions.  Controllers talk to pilots over good ol’ radios.  Simplex radios, to be specific. Simplex means that only one person can broadcast at a time, and if two people key the microphone at the same time, they will cancel each other out (we call this getting ‘stepped on’). To help alleviate that risk, specific frequencies are used in different sectors of airspace, and the community uses a specific syntax, cadence and sequence of communication to minimize ‘two talking at once’. The system works remarkably well.  Additionally, when all the pilots in a specific area are on the same frequency, we can all hear the communications between ATC and the other aircraft, allowing us each to form a mental picture of the aircraft in the airspace (something we call situational awareness, or SA).

So what happened in DC?  Both aircraft WERE in communication with air traffic control, but they were NOT on the same frequency. Military aircraft use Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radios and civilian aircraft use Very High Frequency (VHF) radios. The helicopter and the airliner could not hear each other, nor could they hear what the controller was saying to the other aircraft. That is to say that the respective crew’s ability to build a mental picture of the airspace and aircraft in it was limited.

Additionally, when the weather conditions are clear, it is routine practice for a controller to call out traffic to a crew, something like “American 2135, traffic 12 o’clock and 4 miles is a United Boeing 737, report that traffic in sight”. If the crew responds saying they see the traffic, the controller can then direct the crew to ‘maintain visual separation’ with that traffic, effectively handing off the accountability for separation to the flight crew. It seems this happened properly on the night of the collision, with the controller calling out the airliner’s position to the helicopter crew and the helicopter crew acknowledging they had the traffic in sight. But there is a wrinkle in this…did the helicopter crew have the SAME aircraft in sight that the controller was calling out? If you look at the geometry of the aircraft just prior to the collision, there were likely TWO airliners within the field of view of the Blackhawk crew – the one they eventually collided with and a different airliner that was on final approach to a different runway at DCA much farther away. IF the Blackhawk crew looked up when the traffic was called and happened to see the more distant aircraft first, they MIGHT have acknowledged the controller that they had the aircraft in sight, but it was the wrong aircraft. This situation is demonstrated in the image below and a 3D model describes the view in this Washington Post article, (Washington Post – 3D Model of DC Plane Crash):

Put simply, if both aircraft were transmitting and receiving ADS-B, they would have likely both been aware of each other’s position in plenty of time to avert a collision. In our opinion, the only reason ADS-B equipage is not mandatory for ALL aircraft is that there have been too many opposing voices in our country, citing reasons like privacy, government overwatch, frequency and system saturation, etc. Those voices have been successful in ‘carving out’ specific exceptions to the rule the FAA enacted in 2020, mandating the use of ADS-B Out in specific classes of airspace for just about all types of aircraft, except military, law enforcement and some other special cases. Outside of those classes of airspace, ADS-B Out (or In) is not required.

In partnership with a Boeing subsidiary called ForeFlight, uAvionix manufactures and sells a device called a Sentry. It is a portable device that contains sensors and receivers that provide a pilot with their position, attitude and receipt of ADS-B data, which contains both weather information and traffic information. It connects wirelessly to Apple and Android devices allowing for traffic and weather data to be shown on a moving map in the cockpit. In the case of the DC mid-air, this device, if it were used on the Blackhawk helicopter, would have alerted the crew to the presence of the airliner (since the airliner was transmitting ADS-B), and potentially could have mitigated this disaster.

So there are a bunch of ‘Yes, IF’s…’ here:

• IF the Blackhawk helicopter had a Sentry and an iPad running ForeFlight, they would have been alerted to the airliner.
• IF the Blackhawk helicopter was broadcasting ADS-B, the airliner would have been alerted.
• IF both aircraft were talking to tower on the same frequency, they would have been more aware of each other’s position.
• IF we did not rely on human eyesight for the safe separation of aircraft…
• IF instead of a set of exceptions to rules, we had mandatory equipage of position reporting technology for ALL aircraft…

I resonate deeply with our company’s ‘why’ of radically innovating to make the skies open and safe for all. We have done the innovation part, and we continue to do so, aligned with this mission. It is sad and frustrating when I know we have the means to avoid these types of tragedies, but special cases and exceptions preclude those technologies from getting deployed. Nevertheless, this event strengthens our resolve to get our capabilities into the field to prevent this type of accident in the future. I firmly believe we not only have the technology to address these challenges, but that we can also assuage the concerns of those who have objections to the technologies in a positive way so that no one ever has to lose a loved one to a mid-air collision ever again.

The post Mitigating Mid-Air Collisions: The Reagan Mid-Air appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

LuGRE was developed in Italy by Qascom on behalf of the Italian Space Agency, in collaboration with NASA and scientific support from the Politecnico di Torino. The receiver is integrated into the commercial lander Blue Ghost 1, which Firefly Aerospace built in the United States as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

The signal acquisition occurred in the L1/E1 and L5/E5 bands throughout the Blue Ghost 1 lander’s journey to the Moon. The most distant GNSS satellite signal received was from the Galileo constellation, at a distance of 67.79 Earth radii, about 432,384 kilometers from the LuGRE receiver.

This recent operation demonstrated that the receiver could use GNSS signals even near the Moon, where the lander orbited in low lunar orbit at a speed of approximately 1.66 kilometers per second.

Despite the significant distance and high speed, the position was calculated with very high accuracy, with an error margin of about 1.5 kilometers for position and about 2 meters per second for velocity. Signals were successfully acquired from four GPS satellites on the L1 and L5 frequencies and from one Galileo satellite on the E1-E5 frequency bands during a one-hour time window.

It also demonstrates the power of using multiple GNSS constellations together, such as GPS and Galileo, to perform navigation. After lunar landing, LuGRE will operate for 14 days and attempt to break another record – first reception of GNSS signals on the lunar surface.

The post LuGRE Successfully Tracks GNSS Signals in Lunar Orbit appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

This is the first step toward a potential in-orbit demonstrator for optical time synchronisation and ranging (OpSTAR) that will be proposed at the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in November 2025, to validate intersatellite optical links before future use in operational satellite navigation systems.

Optical links, which transmit data using laser beams instead of radio signals, are already well established in the field of satellite communications. To be used in navigation, they still require technological advancements and in-orbit validation of the end-to-end system concept.

ESA aims to develop and test optical technology for time synchronisation and ranging. To that end, the agency has signed a contract with a consortium led by German OHB System as prime industry to conduct a concept definition study (Phase A/B1 study) and technology predevelopments. The European consortium involves 33 companies from across ESA Member states.

After this study, the next step would be to develop and test the technology in-orbit in order to validate novel system concepts and explore new architectures. The results will assess the readiness of optical technology and provide essential inputs for decision-makers with regards to incorporating it into future operational systems.

Javier Benedicto, ESA Director of Navigation: “We are thrilled to kick off this project now, as we gear up to the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in November, a crucial milestone in demonstrating the benefits of new technologies and shaping the future of navigation in Europe.”

José Ángel Ávila Rodríguez, Head of Future Programmes at ESA Navigation: “In addition to laying the foundation for a future in-orbit demonstration, OpSTAR will contribute to define an international interoperability standard for optical timing and ranging in PNT. By involving the main industry players at this early stage, we empower European industry to keep leading global PNT and benefit from potential implementation in future operational systems that use this technology.”

The use of laser beams has the potential to provide additional resilience and robustness at system level, reducing reliance on space atomic clocks and ground segment. Optical links are also immune to jamming and spoofing by nature.

Thanks to the high data transfer rates, intersatellite optical links also have the potential to enable new, more robust architectures, supporting a multi-layer system of systems approach to navigation, in line with the vision of the ESA’s LEO-PNT programme.

In addition, the superior precision offered by optical systems is expected to improve the performance of current navigation systems by an order of magnitude—reaching millimetre-level spatial accuracy and picosecond-level timing, ultimately enabling better services to benefit billions of users around the world.

The post ESA Developing Optical Technology for Navigation appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

As part of the program, Zephr.xyz’s dual-use “networked GNSS” technology – which turns ordinary mobile phones into a high-fidelity GNSS receiver network – will undergo rigorous field testing in Ukraine and multiple U.S. military exercises before integration with the Department of Defense’s Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Team Awareness Kit (TAK).

“We are excited to work with AFRL to equip warfighters and civilian agencies with real-time signal detection capabilities for jamming and spoofing while also determining the locations of these emitters so that countermeasures can be taken,” said Sean Gorman, PhD, CEO of Zephr.xyz. “With GNSS interference becoming a persistent threat in modern conflicts, having a scalable, mobile-based solution that delivers rapid, high-fidelity detection and geolocation is a game-changer. This technology will enable frontline forces to maintain situational awareness in contested environments and provide a critical tool for defending both military and civilian infrastructure against electronic warfare threats.”

A Critical Challenge in an Increasingly Contested World

As geopolitical conflicts intensify, GNSS interference poses a severe risk to battlefield situational awareness, force protection and national security. It also threatens civilian infrastructure, with the potential to disrupt commercial aviation, maritime navigation, medevac operations and financial systems.

Current methods for detecting jamming, spoofing and the sources of these attacks are often ineffective. Zephr.xyz’s field research in active conflict zones in Ukraine and Israel has demonstrated that many GNSS interference detection and localization techniques – while widely cited in the literature – fail in real-world battlefield conditions. For instance, Russia’s high-powered wideband jammers in Ukraine have made time-difference-of-arrival (TDoA) techniques difficult to implement. By jamming all frequency bands, they not only disrupt timing information for TDoA but can also saturate nearby receivers. Even outside combat zones, lower-grade adversary tactics can overwhelm conventional monitoring systems due to insufficient sensor coverage and technical limitations. These shortcomings lead to low-fidelity results and significant gaps in the “areas of effect.”

Delivering a Battlefield-Ready Solution

Zephr.xyz is addressing these challenges with a customized solution for real-time detection, classification and localization of signals of interest (SoI) and signals of opportunity (SoOPs). Since early 2024, the company has conducted extensive field testing and research in Ukraine and Israel to analyze evolving GNSS interference tactics.

Its advanced software suite leverages widely distributed mobile devices to create a decentralized sensor network. By collecting raw GNSS measurements – such as carrier-to-noise ratio – Zephr.xyz can identify key indicators of electronic attacks. These insights are processed in a mobile client-server environment, enabling real-time detection and classification, a capability that is critical for military operations. Additionally, Zephr.xyz’s technology can geolocate the source of an attack using sophisticated signal processing techniques.

Beyond detection, Zephr.xyz has the ability to enhance positioning accuracy on TAK devices, providing critical support for various operational scenarios. By deploying a cooperative positioning system that integrates GNSS measurements from multiple devices with Position, Velocity, Attitude and Timing (PVAT) data, Zephr.xyz strengthens both resilience and accuracy in contested environments.

Zephr.xyz’s detection and classification capabilities will be available as an SDK, allowing mobile applications like TAK to alert users and enhance positioning accuracy in electronic warfare scenarios.

The post Zephr.xyz Awarded $1.7M Air Force Research Laboratory Contract for GNSS Jamming Detection Technology appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

“We have far too many fatalities and injuries in traffic, and that’s something we cannot tolerate,” Robert Bosch Director of Autonomous Driving Christian Scharnhorst said during his keynote address. Scharnhorst cited global figures of 1.35 million fatalities per year, which is 3,700 per day, and 50 million injuries. “I’m totally convinced that automated mobility can provide a safer traffic environment.”

That said, the European Union (EU) automotive industry has not been as successful as hoped in its transition toward the mobility of the future. “It’s not a secret,” Scharnhorst said, “at Robert Bosch, as with our competitors and other automotive players, we are laying people off. On a daily basis, we are losing talent and important capabilities needed to materialize automated mobility.”

If the trend continues, doors will be open for competitors in other regions. In Asia, for example, competitors are eager and able to take the lead in automated driving (AD), but also in electric vehicles (EVs), artificial intelligence (AI) and the software defined vehicle (SDV).

“We are in a fierce competition, “Scharnhorst said. “Many EU startups have disappeared and many others are struggling to survive. The EU-based AD-ecosystem is under the highest ever financial pressure, and here, in Brussels, some have been hesitant to acknowledge that.”

After an especially difficult period, Scharnhorst said, signs out of the European capital are slowly turning more positive: “For years it has been a kind of game for certain politicians to cultivate mistrust against the automotive industry, and there may have been reasons for not trusting some automotive managers, a few of whom actually infringed law.”

In the latter half of the 2010s, executives at a large European auto maker were found to have committed fraud as they tried to deceive emissions regulators in the United States. The case made headlines across the globe and was a major embarrassment for the EU.

“That cannot be an argument to ban automotive in general,” Scharnhorst said, “to cultivate a mistrust of everybody in the sector. I believe there are some elements of hope that the key message is finally getting through, that without automotive in Europe we have a real problem. We can and we should sharpen the narrative for automated mobility, and we have the Draghi and Heitor reports that give us valuable arguments to set a new course.”

On Paper

Published in September 2024, the so-called Draghi Report (‘The Future of European Competitiveness—A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe”), penned by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank and Prime Minister of Italy, lays out a comprehensive strategy to address Europe’s competitiveness challenges. At issue is Europe’s economic viability in the face of global competition, specifically with respect to the U.S. and China.

The Heitor report, led by Manuel Heitor, former Portuguese science minister, also appeared in the fall of 2024. It recommends changes in the European Union’s current Framework Program for Research and Innovation (FP10, 2028-2035). The report criticizes the EU’s approach to research funding, arguing most of its support goes toward incremental advances rather than paradigm-shifting initiatives.

“We need to invest in R&D that leads to applications, getting to scaling,” Scharnhorst said, “preserving existing startups and getting big enterprises back into the investment arena. We live in a world that’s changing. We went from a nice globalization, with a task sharing approach, to a more fragmented, geopolitically tense situation, where we once more need to stand our ground. There are critical control points where we have to be independent and rely on ourselves, not on foreign technology.”

Money and Market Matters 

The automotive industry is a big deal for Europe, and it is working hard to maintain its position. Meanwhile, the Union has ambitious plans for future mobility, in particular in urban environments. Underlying the success of all foreseeable solutions, present and future, including every manner of unmanned vehicle, are key technologies, especially PNT. Here, it seems, Europe is also lagging. And then, one has to ask, why?

Shedding light was Gonzalo Martin de Mercado, PNT Competitiveness Manager for the European Space Agency (ESA) Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP). “NAVISP focuses on supporting European industrial R&D,” Martin de Mercado said, “and particularly in PNT. Now, you might wonder why a space agency is doing this. Aren’t we supposed to develop space systems? It’s because we see Europe falling behind the rest of the world in everything that is PNT.

“We have this amazing system, Galileo, that is paid for with European taxpayers’ money. It’s a technical marvel, but the problem comes on the business side. How do you sell something that’s free? Everyone has it in their smartphones, they use it, they don’t pay anything, so how can you sell that?”

The open signal delivered by Galileo is indeed free, but the equipment needed to receive it is not. Martin de Mercado said, “If we think about GNSS chips, the chips you need to use Galileo services, we can say, ‘OK, let’s make some chips and sell them. That’s a way to make this huge investment pay.’”

It’s not a new idea. EUSPA, the European Agency for the Space Program, formerly the GSA, has long provided support for European R&D aimed at capitalizing on Galileo services, including the development of new applications and chipsets.

“Looking into that,” Martin de Mercado said, “we see that the first producer of chips for Galileo in the world is an American company.” The second producer is an American company. The third producer is a Japanese company. The first European producer of chips for PNT is somewhere around number 10, a Swiss company called u-blox. “And this brings us to our point,” Martin de Mercado said. “We all agree that PNT is foundational for our digital technologies and society, but our dependence on non-European PNT chipsets is astonishing.

“And this is why we’re supporting your R&D,” he said, “because we want you to develop new products, to catch the competitiveness in PNT, and we’re also supporting the development of complementary and alternative PNT technologies.”

To be fair, Martin de Mercado said, European players do undertake some very big and important GNSS-related research activities, often successfully, but just as often aimed at developing highest-level solutions for the most demanding applications, which are not easy to carry around in your pocket.

“There is a difference in approach between Europe, the U.S. and Asia,” he said. “They tend to focus on business-to-consumer, while in Europe we tend to focus on business-to-business. Americans will tell you you have to listen to the consumer, because this will allow you to scale.” Martin de Mercado challenged anyone in the audience to call out a Fortune 500 company that does not address the consumer market or work with someone who addresses the consumer market. Everyone looked around but no one said anything.

“In Europe,” he said, “because we don’t have the ability to scale, because we lack the consumer orientation, we tend to address the professional market. We develop super-good and very expensive technologies, and we don’t sell much.”

A secondary issue, he said, remains the fragmentation of the European market. In the U.S., any company can potentially access 350 to 400 million customers immediately. If you start a company in France, you have a potential market of 60 to 65 million people. “We are the European Union,” Martin de Mercado said, “with a single market, yes, but I’m a French company and I want to do business in Germany, I still have to establish a company in Germany, I have to pay taxes in Germany, and there’s more, which you know about. All this costs time and money, putting European companies that want to scale at a disadvantage.”

More Success, More Hurdles

The picture was plain, not for the faint of heart. The Europeans (i.e. all the participants) at the meeting were riveted. Aside from defense and the consumer markets, including things like smartphones, Martin de Mercado said, “the automotive sector is the largest user of PNT technologies, and Europe produces, as of today, more than half the worldwide PNT solutions for automotive. That’s a fantastic achievement, but in 2022, 26 million cars were produced in China, 12 million cars were produced in the U.S. and 7 million cars were produced in Japan, while Germany, the largest European manufacturer, made only 3.5 million, and Spain 3.3 million.

“So we have an ecosystem that produces half the PNT technology for automotive in the world, but the vast majority of cars in the world are produced in China. It’s not hard to imagine those supply chains sooner or later leaving Europe to join that other ecosystem. That’s why we’re here today. We want to hear what you’re going to do about this.”

The call was registered, deep breaths were taken. Well considered responses, we believe, will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, attention turned to the skies, where that key enabling technology continues its triumphant rise.

No Mobility Without PNT

Cécile Deprez, researcher next generation GNSS at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), briefed attendees on plans for future Galileo satellites. “Today, our satellites communicate with a network of ground stations, but they don’t communicate with each other. It is very expensive to run and maintain those ground facilities, so our solution is to introduce satellite-to-satellite communications.”

On that subject, Rafael Lucas Rodriguez, head of NAVISP Program Office at ESA, said “Satellite-to-satellite communication is something we need to add to the next generation. These links could be radio frequency [RF]-based, like other systems are doing, or they could be optical, which is more advanced. A constellation is like a mesh, and with inter-satellite links you can really keep control of that mesh. The measurement of distances, for example, from satellite to satellite, can be more precise, because you don’t have to go through the atmosphere, which can always introduce errors.”

“In the immediate future we are likely to use RF links,” Deprez said, “but certainly in the third generation of Galileo, a bit farther on, we will introduce optical technologies, where we get high data rates, 50 to 100Mb per second of data communication, and we can also get very precise ranging between the satellites, at the millimeter or sub-millimeter level, plus the possibility of transferring time information at the picosecond level.”

One of the biggest challenges for satellite positioning is clock synchronization. The ability to synchronize satellite clocks directly, in space, will represent a huge advance. “We can greatly improve orbit estimation and reduce dependence on the ground segment,” Deprez said, “so we won’t need as many expensive-to-maintain ground stations. Ultimately, the robustness of the system will increase, with improved precision, PPP convergence time and other benefits.”

DLR is leading a number of Galileo projects, including the upcoming OpSTAR, working in close cooperation with ESA and partners to test Galileo satellite ranging, data dissemination and time synchronization, via satellite-to-satellite optical link.

Driving Toward Automation

Back on Earth, Aria Etemad of Volkswagen Group Research and Innovation talked about an important ongoing project led by his company. The Hi-Drive project, co-funded by the European Union, is the largest European effort in automatic driving, where the objective is robust and reliable AD. “Today’s automated driving is interrupted when you go from A to B,” Etemad said, “by fog, by accidents, by road works, you name it. There are GNSS occlusions, complex traffic situations, merging and exiting.”

Hi-Drive wants to defragment and extend AD operations, while advancing interoperability across countries and brands. The project introduces the concept of “enablers” aimed at closing gaps where AD is typically interrupted. “These enablers could be things like vehicle communication with cybersecurity,” Etemad said,” or high-precision positioning and localization, vehicle AI and machine learning.”

Other enablers include a geo-referenced cloud-based positioning service, forecasting GNSS signal quality in challenging environments such as urban canyons, tunnels and parking garages. The project is leveraging sensor fusion for localization, including simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) geometry identification, seamless positioning for low-speed maneuvers in close quarters, and object detection in urban environments.

“We’ve put a big team together, working in four thematic areas, to come up with 12 technical solutions and 63 implementations and tests,” Etemad said. In a recent demonstration, one Hi-Drive-equipped vehicle navigated the eight-kilometer-long Rennsteig Tunnel, the longest tunnel in Germany, operating in AD mode at about 80km per hour and without, of course, a GNSS signal.

“At automation level three, L3, the driver is still in charge and is responsible for everything that is happening,” Etemad said. “We are just now introducing levels 3 and 4. Daimler has introduced L3 for traffic jams and VW has announced we will pick up the robotaxi in Hamburg, a full-automation L4 service.”

Robotaxi services, initially without passengers, have been testing in Hamburg since 2021. Volkswagen Group is planning to operate the service through its mobility subsidiary MOIA, using fully electric ID.Buzz vans.

“For L4, we are using tons of sensors in our vehicles, to understand the environment, and this is expensive, so it’s not something you can produce for mass market. We need to reduce the complexity, and we think one solution would be to get information from outside the vehicle, and this is what we’re moving toward.”

Worth It

We return to where we started, the cost in lives of traditional driving. “Over 90% of traffic accidents are caused by human errors or behavior,” Etemad said. “But we also know that humans drive safely for millions of kilometers for every accident that occurs. That’s the level of reliability we’ll need to achieve with our automated systems.”

ESA’s Lucas Rodriguez believes it can happen, and he will have the last word here: “Yes, we need automated driving, because the future of urban mobility is mixed modality, with vulnerable users like pedestrians, bicycles and so on, all sharing the infrastructure with cars and larger vehicles. I know all about that because I live in Holland. Automated mobility will certainly improve safety there.”

The post Europe Navigating Urban Mobility Challenges appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.