CRPAs for PNT will instead fall under the less restrictive Export Administration Regulations (EAR) list that’s under the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce, what GNSS/GPS expert Logan Scott describes as a significant change and a huge step in the right direction. Items on the ITAR list include defense articles, services and technical data, while EAR covers dual-use commercial items, what CRPAs for PNT are now considered.

The Department of State announced amendments to the ITAR list last week. The rule, in part, removes items from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) “that no longer warrant inclusion.” According to the amendment, “certain anti-jam antennas no longer provide a critical military advantage, with increasing commercial utilization applicable to civil GPS resiliency.”  By removing CRPAs for PNT, “the Department intends to facilitate civil global navigation system resiliency.”

“The first key is it makes them available,” Scott said of the rule change. “You’re not going to be able to buy them at Walmart or on Amazon, they’ll still be export controlled, but not on the munitions list.” 

Scott described CRPAs as “the single most capable anti-jam technique available for ensuring reception of GNSS signals” that provide “orders of magnitude more capability than any other technique.” CRPAs not only can detect jamming and mitigate it, they can geolocate spoofing and jamming attacks as well. 

CRPAs attack the problem directly, Scott said, creating a very dep null in the direction of the jamming and providing a “40, 50 dbs kind of advantage.” That reduces the jammer’s effective range by a factor of 100. 

“These are the big guns of anti-jam,” Scott said. “As long as GNSS satellites are up, these allow you to continue to operate, so a lot of the nonsense going on in the Middle East and Ukraine will go away.” 

Airlines are going to be the early beneficiaries of this change, Scott said. Before, putting a CRPA on an airplane made the entire airplane an ITAR item that required an export license. That won’t be an issue anymore, though there are other challenges to using CRPAs, such as their size and power consumption.

Autonomous vehicles and UAVs will also benefit, Scott said, with CRPAs allowing them to rely on GPS even in conflict adjacent areas. 

“Any safety of life application can benefit from adaptable phased arrays,” Scott said. “Basically, anyone concerned about being interfered with or spoofed, so any critical infrastructure application can benefit.” 

Cost is another challenge, Scott said, but he expects that to come down “very rapidly.” 

“The key impact this is going to have, is the U.S. will now get into this business,” Scott said. “The barrier to entry before was huge, so adaptive arrays were typically made in places like Canada and Turkey. This will open up the industry and the application to the U.S. industry base, and we know how to do this stuff pretty well.” 

You can find the full rule here. 

The post CRPAs to be Removed from ITAR List, Opening Market for U.S. Manufacturers  appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

GEODNET has democratized RTK and is now the largest provider, with survey, precision agriculture, robotic lawn mowers, industrial robotics, drones and telematics among the applications benefiting from the ever growing network. 

Founder Mike Horton and the GEODNET team will display various technologies leveraging GEODNET RTK corrections at CES 2025, slated for January 7 to 10 in Las Vegas, and will be available to talk to attendees about how GEODNET is changing the game. The booth location is LVCC, North Hall 10571 in the IoT pavilion along with both consumer and enterprise partners. 

What makes GEODNET different 

Low-cost RTK had a bit of a rough start, with reliable performance a barrier to adoption, particularly for enterprise users. At first, companies tried to offer RTK with a single band GNSS receiver. The early products that came out with L1 only, while low cost, had technical difficulties, Horton said. Why? Carrier phase ambiguity resolution, the technical process that makes centimeter level accuracy possible, isn’t very robust if you’re only using a single band receiver.

“People tried to make it work, and it did work in some cases, but it led to a lot of very unreliable experiences,” Horton said. “GEODNET, by contrast, is set up for the triple frequency, quad constellation. We’re taking advantage of all the signals that are out there now, which includes L1, L2, L5 and all the international equivalents.” 

The flakiness RTK was initially known for has now been resolved, Horton said, and “GEODNET has been a huge part of that.” 

The GEODNET network’s base stations track all the satellites and all the signals, Horton said, and companies have developed silicon to support them in a cost effective format. 

“That changes the whole game of RTK,” Horton said, “to make it very resilient and reliable.”

Growing interest on the consumer side

Because of the availability and ubiquity of RTK coverage that GEODNET offers, that coverage is now being integrated more into new consumer products and new consumer experiences, Horton said, whether it’s via apps, robots or custom devices. 

“We’re seeing a big trend toward RTK capabilities being introduced into more and more chipsets and more and more consumer facing products,” Horton said. “The cost has come down really exponentially, and that’s not an exaggeration, from just two or three years ago to where it’s at today. Even mobile handsets are shipping with dual band, L1, L5, four constellation plus GNSS receivers that really have the guts and measurement capability to support high precision applications.” 

GEO-PULSE, introduced in November, is among the consumer facing products GEODNET will feature at CES. The device taps into GEODNET’s RTK network to deliver a level of positioning accuracy that drivers never have been able to achieve before.  

Users can put the Garmin like GPS receiver on the roof of their car. It connects to the network via a mobile app, giving drivers centimeter level accuracy for traditional Google Maps and Apple Maps directions, Horton said. GEODNET is developing a software development kit (SDK), so users can also build new app experiences. GEO-PULSE can replace phone location, so it can be used with traditional apps like Uber as well. And it’s only $149. 

“The benefit of it is better driving directions,” Horton said. “It can navigate through parking garages. It can handle downtown urban environments. It can get you lane level accuracy. It can tell you which door you’re at if you’re making a delivery. It’s really that precise location that enables a better user experience for typical driving missions.” 

Horton sees the device really taking off for rideshare and mobility type services. Navigation errors can cause delivery delays for companies like DoorDash, for example, leading to cancellations and unhappy customers. GEO-PULSE provides precise navigation so drivers get exactly where they need to go, for a smaller investment than a new phone with better navigation capabilities or adding a navigation system to a car. 

“If your income depends on driving every day,” Horton said, “…this is a great solution.”

The device will also make it easier for rideshare drivers to find their customers and for customers to track driver progress, alleviating the stress of wondering where your driver might be—especially as you wait in an airport parking garage where there’s multipath interference. GEO-PULSE has been tested in such environments and offers a “really nice improvement” over what a phone provides, and will also help improve time calculations on when the Uber or Lyft driver will arrive. 

The dual band RTK engine offers 10 centimeter level accuracy in about half a minute, Horton said, with even better accuracy in clear skies. 

“You’re actually getting centimeter level accuracy and that’s really new for customers, to have access to RTK level accuracy for their own personal car,” Horton said. “It’s not a device we would recommend to a surveyor or somebody that’s really trying to get the very best accuracy, but it’s a huge step up from what a phone or in-dash GPS does. It’s at least a factor of 10, if not a factor of 100, better in a lot of cases than what you’re going to see from your phone or car GPS. It’s next level for consumers.”

GEO-PULSE features a built-in GPS repeater capability, Horton said. Signals taken from its antenna go through a low-noise amplifier (LNA) and are repeated into the vehicle. This makes GPS more accurate on every device in the car, another benefit.

Verde.ai will also be at the CES booth, showing off its small consumer lawn mower that relies on GEODNET’s RTK corrections. 

“One of the things that really gets us excited is small robots,” Horton said. “It [the lawn mower] is available for under $1,000 and it connects directly to the GEODNET network. It can map and mow your yard autonomously, all controlled by a simple iOS and Android app.” 

GEODNET is also getting into the digital gaming world, starting with an Animoca Brands partnership. The large Web 3 gaming company is interested in location based gaming, Horton said, where trusted location is paramount. The partnership will advance mixed-reality gaming and immersive experiences. Animoca Brands also invested in GEODNET to support its growth within the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) community. 

RTK for Enterprise Customers

While the consumer space is growing rapidly, GEODNET’s RTK network also has an important place for enterprise users. For example, the company just announced a partnership with Burro, a leader in agricultural robotics. GEODNET’s RTK GPS technology will be integrated into Burro’s robots, designed for autonomous material transport across agricultural environments like nurseries, fields and farms. 

The robots leverage advanced AI, computer vision and LiDAR technology to execute tasks with precision. GEODNET will provide RTK corrections and base stations for greater navigation accuracy and operational efficiency in regions without GPS coverage. Being able to quickly deploy base stations is also a benefit, allowing Burro’s customers to quickly scale. 

“By integrating GEODNET’s RTK technology, we’re not only ensuring precision and reliability for Burro’s robots but also advancing the accessibility of high-performance GPS for the agricultural sector,” Horton said. “This partnership underscores our commitment to enabling transformative applications of GPS technology.”

WISPR, a U.S. based drone manufacturer, also uses GEODNET RTK corrections, and will be at the company’s CES booth in January. The company focuses on drone survey, inspections, photogrammetry and drone LiDAR, among other applications. RTK corrections just make sense for drones, allowing the systems to quickly and accurately collect data while also helping them better understand the environment around them for obstacle avoidance. 

RTK for everyone

GEODNET is now the largest RTK corrections provider, and will only continue to grow as its technology is integrated into both consumer and enterprise solutions. RTK is no longer bespoke; anyone can access centimeter level accuracy via the GEODNET network. 

To learn more about GEODNET, stop by the booth during CES. You’ll find the booth at LVCC, North Hall 10571 in the IoT pavilion. 

The post Leading RTK Corrections Provider GEODNET Highlighting GEO-PULSE, Other Tech at CES 2025  appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Every new level of accuracy reached brings benefits to society, Di Federico said, deriving a “further level of truth.” And it’s only getting better. Over the course of his two decades with Topcon, Di Federico has seen many industry advancements, from RTK to sensor fusion to today’s focus on making GPS more resilient and precise. The strategic acquisitions and partnerships Di Federico has driven positions Topcon to serve as the foundation for that industry shift toward enhanced precision and increased automation.

It’s not lost on Di Federico just how powerful Topcon’s role and influence is in this “incredible transformation,” and what a critical point we’ve come to in the industry. And at the heart of it all, he said, is the “extreme need for a reliable fix.” 

“That is what drives everything,” Di Federico said. “Once you have x, y, z and t in your control, you can rely on that. You can build fabulous things around that. This is essentially what we do. We are making it possible. We are making it reliable. We are making it fast to converge. All these objectives the industry has is attached to that simple x, y, z, t concept to make it always available, always reliable, always safe. Once we do that, the world will really change, and we are part of this.” 

Precision enables us to better understand our surroundings, to see things we haven’t seen before, Di Federico said. For example, Topcon develops antennas to monitor ground movement that show how the ground constantly changes. When doing this kind of work, you realize there’s really no such thing as solid ground. It’s liquid, and always changing. 

“You see the same point goes up and down, it twists, it does all sorts of things with the sun, with the troposphere, with everything,” Di Federico said. “So you see now, because of that level of control on a position in time, you now know something new. What can be done with that information? It really opens up the opportunity for work and for research. That’s the beautiful part of this business.” 

Topcon has a “vision to automate to the best possible degree,” Di Federico said, through 3D machine control on construction sites and in precision agriculture. He sees a future where you simply push a button to 3D print any infrastructure you want, with the solution working exactly as intended and eliminating the need for the plastic “toys” that take a day to build. Inside Unmanned Systems recently sat down with Di Federico to talk about this vision, what it will take to get there and how Topcon is leading the way in the PNT industry’s remarkable transformation. 

ADVANCING PNT 

Topcon’s first goal, Di Federico said, is to “automate the surfacing of the world.” 

Robotics streamlined how cars are manufactured, Di Federico said, leading to increased productivity. But, so far, that has stayed within four walls; the level of automation achieved on those lines has not yet been realized in the outside world for construction and infrastructure projects. 

“It’s our responsibility to bring that same level of efficiency outside,” he said, “and that’s why machine control is the first step. Then you drive to autonomy and eventually make a swarm of autonomous vehicles that can operate without being monitored at all. They can make decisions. You leave them to do the work, and the work is finished when you arrive. That’s the way it should be, and that’s our inspiration.” 

Getting to the point where you push a button like a printer today and the machinery in the field delivers the work, whether on a construction site or a farm, will require adding technology to vehicles as well as in the environment. The vehicles will need to be linked in a “safe and reliable way,” Di Federico said, so there are no accidents. The work will also need to be done in the shortest amount of time possible, consuming the least amount of energy and delivering a precise result. That, Di Federico said, is the end goal of machine control and is what Topcon “lives for through our innovation.”

It all comes back to having x, y, z, t under your control every time, Di Federico said. 

“PNT is at the core of the evolution of society because it can achieve these goals,” he said. “If you make any correlation graph in history, our lives become better every time we get the measurement of something under better control. You measure better time and better position, the world evolves. That’s how important we are.” 

Topcon is “responsible for this” evolution, Di Federico said, and not just in a lab. The team is focused on “doing this for the mass, for the democracy of all the people to change their lives, because now this information is achievable.”

It’s a long journey, but Di Federico estimates we’re about halfway there. Topcon’s latest acquisitions, which include Satel, a leading innovator in wireless technology, partnerships with companies like u-blox to expand into new markets such as automotive and robotics, along with product innovation from Topcon are paving the way, adding the layers of resilience needed to reach that ultimate end goal. 

OVERCOMING EARLY BARRIERS TO ADOPTION 

At the beginning of Di Federico’s career, adoption of machine control was slow, and developing and integrating the technology difficult. 

“It was very complicated to create a system to do decent work in 3D machine control and to make it simple,” he said. “You had to know a lot about GPS, a lot about base stations, a lot about satellites.” 

The person responsible for the technology was typically a machine operator or job supervisor who had limited, if any, experience with GPS, a barrier to adoption early on. Then there was the high cost associated with equipping each vehicle with machine control technology. 

What changed that? The iPhone. The development of this technology led to a great evolution in hardware between 2007 and 2010, with the cost per gigabyte of memory chip going down “absolutely dramatically.” Millions of chips were now being made for a computer, not a radio, and that marked a huge change for machine control as well. 

“The intuition of Apple is the cell phone is not a phone, it’s a computer that has a phone inside,” Di Federico said. “So, the fact you need a computer in your pocket changed everything.” 

The cost per gigabyte was the first significant change, Di Federico said, and the second was intuitive user interfaces. Even with development costs going way down, machine control still came with many moving parts and remained difficult to set up and manage. The touchscreen made things much easier for users, and that helped accelerate adoption. 

“Engineers could see the map, their dozer inside the map. They could see the dozer’s blade as opposed to the map and see if they were on grade or not on grade,” he said. “It was impossible before. We didn’t have fast refresh, we didn’t have a touchscreen. And this isn’t just convenience or beautiful colors. Absolutely not. It’s interfacing with the technology that has become easy.” 

Not long after these significant advancements, Topcon introduced, with Komatsu, the first factory fit control system in 2013. For the first time, a machine control solution was available that made the complex simple, democratizing the technology and focusing on the user experience. 

“Inside the system is still the GPS information, that control loop, there’s Kalman filters, there’s everything, but the operator doesn’t need to know that,” Di Federico said. “All he needs to focus on is the map.”

And the system came fully integrated into the machine, which was quite the shift, Di Federico said. That decision from Komatsu leadership “intimately changed the industry,” and everyone else had to align to compete. 

“Before, we were doing aftermarket. You had to go to the dealer after you bought the machine. Now, with this, you buy it from the manufacturer so it’s fully integrated, ingrained with other functions you cannot get aftermarket,” Di Federico said. “This showed to other manufacturers that yes, you can do factory fit, and you will attract much more market share in this way than in the aftermarket solution.” 

Of course, the aftermarket business continues as well; there are plenty of vehicles in the construction and agriculture industries that need updated. Equipment dealers continue to thrive, and “have a great business in machine control” because one large manufacturer decided to take that first big step and embed GPS into a dozer a decade ago. 

GETTING TO THE END GOAL 

While there’s been a lot of progress over the years, there are still steps that must be taken to “print the Earth” with a push of a button. The machines are essentially ready today, Di Federico said, but there are two areas that still need some work. The first? Communication, the motivation behind Topcon’s acquisition of Satel. 

A more modern radio will make it possible to create a network of data on a jobsite that’s uninterruptible no matter what happens. That’s key, Di Federico said, because “it’s the flow of data that generates what we want to achieve.” 

If you look at radio technology from 20 years ago, it’s basically the same as today’s, with the older versions a little bigger and more expensive. They also have the same protocols. That must change, and Topcon plans to lead the way. 

“We are working on the next generation, which has to be uninterruptible and to transfer much more information than it does today, and doesn’t need to rely on cell phone providers or anything,” Di Federico said. “It needs to do it on its own, because we want to be sure that when I push that printer button, it prints.” 

Vehicles must be able to securely communicate with each and to the jobsite management control unit, similarly to how it’s done in the military, Di Federico said. The second step is figuring out how to connect the cloud to the vehicle, dividing what’s in the cloud with what’s on the edge with what’s to be discovered. 

“Every vehicle will know all the other vehicles, the experience of all the other vehicles, and will know what they need to decide with their own ego, which is what they need to do on that jobsite,” Di Federico said. “In that very moment, when we copy this mechanism of our brain into our vehicles, we will have accomplished the goal of, I make a nice drawing, I study it, I like it, I push it, I print it, I get it and it’s done.” 

Topcon is focused on finding that balance between the cloud and the edge, Di Federico said, and is “working on it with the best in class, to completely change the radio environment in which a jobsite operates.”

Topcon calls this mission critical communication, Di Federico said, because without it the machines don’t know what to do next. And preserving that x, y, z, t information is what drives it all. 

“Once these elements are solved from a theoretical standpoint, then it’s easy to drive down what the products are, what the costs are to do that. Then you make a complete change in the industry because it’s an industry that doesn’t need an operator or any vehicle that can react to changes in the schedule, to changes in the parameters,” Di Federico said. “Even if a vehicle is down, the others will take over the job for that vehicle automatically. They will talk to each other and generate the end result, no matter what, with precision. And that’s how PNT is so important.” 

Satel will run independently of Topcon, Di Federico said, and the technology developed will be available to everyone because “we all need to grow together.”

“Today, to design something and print it, you need a lot of work, a lot of things to arrive,” Di Federico said. “Imagine that we can organize this in a much more efficient way because of the technology we’re developing. And that’s the end goal, to expand the industry for everybody to enjoy these new standards of communication. People think the radio is just to transmit corrections. Well no, it’s the core, it’s the nervous system at any jobsite.” 

IMPROVING SAFETY 

Resiliency also needs to evolve, Di Federico said, and is part of the motivation behind Topcon’s partnerships with companies like u-blox. It’s critical to go to a chip level to make sure certain fundamentals of GPS are changed to improve safety. 

“We need to have new protocols to make sure we are much more resilient to attacks,” Di Federico said. “This is another area where we want to invest, are investing, and where we also expect governments to change their protocols and make more mature systems for GPS for civilian use to have certain features that militaries enjoy, like M-Code.” 

You can have all these systems and technologies in place, Di Federico said, but somebody can come along and spoof you, which is “simply not acceptable.” Spoofing and jamming are no longer small risks; they’ve become much bigger concerns. Because of that, cybersecurity needs to “come to the PNT world as quickly as possible.” Di Federico describes this as needing to be a joint effort between industry and government. 

“It should be put in at the chip level,” Di Federico said. “Not as an afterthought but as the essential piece of what we do in terms of the new ASICs. But at the same time, constellations need to update and give us the tools to make this safe. Otherwise, the industry will just slow down because this is a major failure that wasn’t designed for.”

BRINGING THE INDUSTRY TOGETHER

For too many years, the PNT industry has been a niche, with scientists primarily just talking to each other. That’s not how you make improvements to society, and Topcon wants to improve society. To get to that 3D printing goal, you have to collaborate. You have to democratize technology developed and make it available to all. That’s the mission at Topcon.

“If we don’t do it, who else is going to do it? We have to do it right. We have to live this path, “ Di Federico said. “We are committed to that as Topcon, but we are also committed to that as an industry. We are open to talk to anybody who shares the vision to create an alliance to speed up standards of adoption, for example. We can work together as an industry to get this done for humanity, for everyone.” 

The post Topcon: Transforming the World Through Precise Positioning and Automation appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

GPS interference isn’t a new threat, but until recently, it’s mainly been academic and military concerns. Now, it’s becoming a civilian concern as well, with aviation impacted more every day.

There’s a new sense of urgency to combat these threats, with groups like the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Center for Automated Vehicle Research with Multimodal AssurEd Navigation (CARMEN+) leading the charge to develop and adopt complementary PNT (CPNT) technologies to strengthen and augment GNSS. 

CARMEN+, led by Ohio State University (OSU) and Director Zak Kassas, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at OSU, is focused on addressing the PNT and cybersecurity challenges highly automated transportation systems (HAVs) face. Along with OSU, the consortium is made up of the University of California, Irvine; University of Texas at Austin; and North Carolina A&T. Experts in cybersecurity, PNT, automotive and transportation are studying the risks to HAVs, offering solutions and making recommendations for future standards and guidelines for cyber resilient PNT solutions. 

CARMEN+ University Transportation Center (UTC) held its annual symposium on October 23 and 24—kicking off the event on International GNSS Day—to showcase how CARMEN+ is addressing the critical need for CPNT and cyber resiliency. Attendees gathered at the Blackwell Inn and Pfahl Conference Center on OSU’s campus to hear from various keynote speakers, take in lively panel discussions and view student poster presentations. There was also a cake to celebrate ION’s GNSS day, tours of facilities including the ElectroScience Laboratory, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), the Transportation Research Center (TRC) SmartCenter and the OSU Aerospace Research Center. Attendees were also treated to dinner and a tour at the OSU Buckeye’s football stadium, “The Shoe.” 

CARMEN+’s Impact 

Kassas kicked off the symposium with an overview of CARMEN+ and the growing threat of spoofing and jamming. He highlighted the first incident of GPS spoofing impacting civilian aircraft, which happened in September 2023, and how the threat has continued to grow since. He also talked about recent work OSU has completed in collaboration with the Air Force, where researchers demonstrated how terrestrial signals can be used for navigation, particularly cellular. An article about that work, “Protecting the Skies: GNSS-Less Aircraft Navigation with Cellular Signals of Opportunity,” was featured in a recent issue of Inside GNSS. 

Kassas also gave an overview of CARMEN+ and its four main thrusts: identifying existing and emerging cybersecurity threats; analyzing threats and cybersecurity risks; developing cyber resilient mitigation methods; and testing and validating solutions in real-world cyber compromised environments. 

During his talk, Kassas announced CARMEN+ was recently awarded funding for a demonstrator. 

“The aircraft will be a living lab,” Kassas said, “to demonstrate CARMEN+ research for how to navigate without GPS.” 

Balasubramaniam Shanker, chair of electrical computer and engineering at OSU, followed Kassas with an overview of the ElectroScience Lab and the work done there, with CAR Director Giorgio Rizzoni also providing a program overview and update. 

The Future of Transportation 

Karen Van Dyke, director, Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and Spectrum Management in the DOT’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R), provided an update on what the agency is doing to advance CPNT technologies. She talked more about the growing spoofing and jamming threat, setting the stage for why the work CARMEN+ is doing is so important. 

PNT is at the heart of the future of transportation, she said, and imperative to reaching goals like net zero fatalities. Today, there are about 40,000 vehicle deaths a year in the U.S.

DOT is putting together a strategic PNT plan that should be published by the end of the year, Van Dyke told the group, with goals that include building resiliency, addressing PNT cybersecurity and ensuring spectrum availability and protection for PNT. 

DOT embraces the Protect, Toughen and Augment (PTA) principles developed by the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board, but also recognizes it needs to go a step further. Developing CPNT technologies doesn’t do much good if they’re not put into use, making adoption a critical factor. 

Van Dyke also discussed the U.S. Government’s Executive Order 13905 on Strengthening National Resilience Through Responsible Use of PNT Services, the CPNT Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Quote (RFQ), and the contract awards given to nine vendors to further develop and test CPNT technologies. 

“The Executive Order,” she said, “challenged us to be able to withstand any disruption, denial or manipulation to any GNSS service.” 

Van Dyke stressed the importance of live sky spoofing and jamming tests and said she’s excited to have the CARMEN+ demonstrator airplane available for future testing as well. 

DOT released a CPNT action plan last year based on feedback from a roundtable where stakeholders discussed the barriers to adopting CPNT. The plan addresses those barriers and promotes widespread adoption of CPNT technologies, focusing on five areas: developing safety-critical PNT standards for transportation services; developing a PNT vulnerability and performance testing framework on demonstrated and suitable complementary technologies; conducting vulnerability performance assessments; developing PNT performance monitoring capabilities to ensure PNT services provide operational resilience and achieve safety critical standards; and establishing a Federal PNT Services Clearinghouse.

The RFI and RFQ came after that action plan was released, with vendors awarded contracts from the Volpe Center to test their technology at three different test ranges—federal, critical infrastructure and commercial—as part of the plan’s Rapid Phase. In the next phase, additional vendors will be awarded contracts, Van Dyke said. 

Through a partnership with the Department of Defense, DOT is working to create a GNSS Operational Awareness Tool (GOAT) that will determine where interference is occurring in real time. Users will still be asked to report outages, but with the tool, the government will be able to confirm there’s an interference issue in that area or that something else may be causing the disruption.

“The Dallas [airport spoofing incident] really sparked a fire at the U.S. Department of Transportation,” Van Dyke said. “We’ve made good progress in the last two years, but there’s more work to be done.” 

Harold “Stormy” Martin III gave a U.S. Space-based PNT Policy update, going over the age and capabilities of in-orbit GPS satellites, Space Policy Directive 7 and what that entails, the executive order and the U.S. Government’s National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology, which includes PNT. 

Improving Intersection Safety

Chris Atkinson, the DOT’s deputy director for technology, Advanced Research Projects Agency—Infrastructure (ARPA-I), gave an overview of the Intersection Safety Challenge and how combining sensors, including navigation sensors, could help reduce accidents at intersections. Perception, vision, AI and machine learning are among the technologies being explored to protect vulnerable users. Currently, about 27% of roadway fatalities happen at or near intersections, he said.

“We’re deploying low cost sensors, cameras, radars, LiDAR and infrared, to develop a system that can predict the paths of all actors,” Atkinson said, “and then send an alert if there’s a potential conflict.” 

The program is now in stage 1B, data collection. If at least one system emerges as viable (which Atkinson expects will happen) there will be a stage 2 for field testing, with the goal of deploying a solution in five years. The 15 project teams selected to compete tested emerging technologies at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) as part of stage 1B. The highly instrumented intersection offers a realistic, safe environment for testing various scenarios and collecting a large amount of data. 

Safety is the No. 1 priority, Atkinson said, and these emerging technologies add another layer of protection that can be used alongside other safety initiatives, such as improving lane layouts and sight lines. 

Engaging Panel Discussions 

The symposium continued in the afternoon with two panel discussions: one on PNT and cybersecurity and another focused on automotive and transportation. For both panels, CARMEN+ PIs gave two-minute lightning updates on their areas of focus, and then opened it up to the audience for questions. The format led to lively discussions about safety, promising CPNT technology, AI and other topics. 

After the sessions, the group enjoyed cake in honor of ION’s GNSS Day before taking in student poster presentations and then tours of the ElectroScience Lab and CAR facilities. Attendees had the opportunity to talk with researchers about the facilities and the projects they’re working on, as well as learn more about successful CAR student-led projects and how they’ve fared at competitions over the years (the answer is very well). 

Day one ended with attendees enjoying time taking pictures on the field at The Shoe. The symposium concluded the next day after tours of the TRC Smart Center and the OSU Aerospace Research Center. 

Get Involved 

Groups like CARMEN+ are helping to advance the solutions needed to protect GNSS. The research they do has become even more critical as GPS interference events continue to rise and impact civilian applications. To learn more about the group or how you can get involved, visit utc.engineering.osu.edu.

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The technology, with about 10 years of research and investment behind it now, leverages computer vision algorithms and reference datasets to navigate and position effectively—without relying on GPS, cellular or Wi-Fi.  

Skyline Match AI can find initial positions by scanning the terrain and identifying discernible skylines, and has uses in both military and civilian applications where relying on GPS alone may be an issue. 

The technology can get users within 5 meters in urban areas with unobstructed view 95% of the time. It also can be combined with inertial, GNSS and SLAM for more precise results.

“It’s very easy for adversaries to jam, deny and disrupt GPS,” said Singh, CEO of Skyline Nav AI, the startup company behind Skyline Match AI. “This technology is simple but game changing. By taking a picture of what’s around you, you can get your location back.” 

Finding the Right Partners 

Over the years, Skyline Nav AI has developed strategic partnerships and collaborations with various entities, including the US Air Force, NASA, US Army, Draper Labs, MIT, Army Research Lab, Air Force Research Lab, NGA and FedTech. The company also recently announced partnerships with BAE Systems and Kearfott Corporation. 

BAE Systems, Singh said, has integrated Skyline Match AI into night vision cameras. The high-definition, extended view sensors are built with BAE Systems’ longwave infrared camera cores to deliver low-latency images in any condition. The four cameras provide a 360 view for enhanced situational awareness and are compatible with existing vehicle systems. 

“With our capability, the cameras can geo locate themselves,” Singh said. “Imagine there’s a truck operating at night, but if it loses GPS, what do you do? That’s where our capability comes in. As the vehicle drives and the cameras are being used for nighttime operations, our capability in conjunction with the BAE system can now navigate based on what they’re seeing around them.” 

Skyline Nav AI also recently announced a partnership with Kearfott, a navigation, motion and control systems manufacturer. Through the collaboration, the companies will develop position and navigation systems that integrate Kearfott’s inertial sensors with Skyline Nav AI’s computer vision technology. The combined solution can be used across multiple areas, including military, aerospace and commercial markets. 

“Kearfott’s legacy of excellence in inertial navigation, paired with Skyline Nav AI’s cutting-edge visual navigation technology, sets the stage for the development of transformational innovations that will enhance the capabilities of position and navigation systems,” said Kearfott President John Stanfill, according to a press release about the partnership. “This collaboration underscores our commitment to innovation and meeting the evolving demands of our customers.”

Inertial sensors tend to drift over time, Singh said, and Skyline Match AI corrects that. 

“If you lose GPS in a flight operation, the inertial sensor can be off hundreds of meters,” he said. “Our capability can see the terrain and then start correcting.” 

The Applications 

The goal is to provide an alternative to GPS in areas it can’t reach and to augment GPS when it’s failing. Already, the technology has been used for mobile location, drones, land vehicles and fleet navigation, Singh said. 

“There are a lot of applications on both the military and the commercial side,” he said. “Our capability can be in the hands of warfighters on a cell phone or on drone munitions or in aircraft, even if adversaries are jamming and disrupting GPS.”

On the commercial side, they’re “laser focused” on the urban canyon challenge, Singh said, and leveraging the technology for more effective navigation. 

The next step is to expand to autonomous vehicles and AR headsets, likely next year. And as the  2023 NASA Entrepreneurs Challenge winners, which focused on lunar exploration and climate science,  the startup has its sights set on space rovers by 2026. 

“We can compare data from lunar reconnaissance to give you position and navigation and help with precision landings,” Singh said. “We’re excited about taking the capability to the moon in the next few years, but it’s a complicated challenge. We are in discussions with different organizations. My goal is to figure out how we can use our capability to help the U.S. win the space race in the 21^st century.” 

A Trio of Solutions

Skyline Match AI is set up similar to the Shazam music app, Singh said, which can identify music based on a short sample. Skyline Match AI helps users figure out where they are by taking a picture. 

“Companies like BAE have their own PNT platforms,” he said, “but now they can use our capability on their camera and fuse that data with GPS and inertial.” 

The company offers three options: the Skyline Nav AI iOS for commercial use, the Android Tactical Assault Kit for U.S. military use, and the API + SDK for edge autonomy. 

The Tactical Assault Kit combines the iOS app and the API plug, allowing users to take pictures on their phone and to get a location back with no requirement for connectivity. Singh has been working with Erik Blasch, program manager, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Simon Khan, research scientist, Air Force Research Lab, and Ralph Kohler, principal engineer, Air Force Research Lab, to develop Skyline Match AI solutions. 

The Air Force Research Lab opted to help fund this project because of its value in the military domain, Blasch said. It offers a different approach from dead reckoning and other strategies that already exist to back up GPS. 

“Being able to incorporate something from your cell phone is important,” Blasch said, “and the visual imagery will help with landmarks to enhance the navigation. So it’s a synchronized approach.” 

Beyond military uses, he also can see this technology being leveraged in disaster response where localization is needed for someone who was separated from the group, for example, making it possible for users to quickly refine their position. 

Backing up GPS

Blasch expects the technology to be used in conjunction with other solutions to enhance navigation even further. There are many opportunities to fuse this technology with others, providing an even more reliable back up to GPS. 

“Our primary navigation has four main challenges: accuracy, availability, continuity and integrity,” Singh said. “Our mission is to provide an alternative to GPS in areas it can’t reach and to augment GPS where it’s faulty.”

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NavPath RTK corrections are broadcast at high power levels of up to 1 million watts from tall towers, BitPath President John Hane said, using heavy coding and error correction. This high-power transmission network makes it possible to deliver reliable corrections over metropolitan areas with low, stable latency. 

Hane and his team announced NavPath at this year’s ION GNSS+ held in Baltimore, where they generated a lot of interest in the service.     

While RTK corrections offer the most precision and fastest time to fix, the data provided is only good for a small area, Hane said. As you move away from the base stations, the value degrades. And with traditional RTK services that use mobile data plans, a continuous dedicated data session is required for each user. While RTK corrections can be sent via satellites to cover larger areas, it requires many base stations and “a lot of complex math.”

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) and PPP-RTK can transmit SSR data from satellites, which broadcast the same data over larger areas, Hane said, but they’re not as accurate or as fast to acquire as true RTK. 

“If you have RTK available without paying a cellular provider for that data it’s almost always better,” Hane said. “But it’s not available on those terms all the time.” 

In cities, for example, RTK corrections can be blocked by large buildings or trees, he said, as can PPP and PPP-RTK corrections. Because it’s being broadcast, NavPath’s UHF transmissions provide reliable service in dense urban areas. Millions of devices can access the service at once, without network slowdowns or high transmission costs. 

Drones, autonomous vehicles, robots, public safety, construction and agriculture are among the devices and industries that can benefit from NavPath.  

“We can service them all, 24/7, with RTK or any other form of corrections, and all this without 4G,” Hane said. “I worked in the TV and satellite business for years, so I knew this would work. It gives you an incredible transmission system. Cell systems have only a fraction of the power. Everyone can receive corrections and it never slows down.” 

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The simulator is the latest evolution of the company’s GSG simulator series, building on the success of the GSG-8, according to the company. The upgraded simulator offers improvements in capabilities, operability and performance, providing a high-end solution for multi-antenna/vehicle and jamming/spoofing scenarios. 

The GSG-8 Gen2 offers a higher signal capacity, with the ability to generate up to 2,000 signals. It’s well suited for aerospace, defense, and transportation applications, particularly for simulating medium Earth orbit (MEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations simultaneously.

The easy-to-use simulator, which features a user friendly interface, supports advanced simulation scenarios, including NavWar, jamming and spoofing, space-based and LEO PNT. 

Safran also announced the availability of Xona Space Systems’ PULSAR XL on Skydel simulation software. The Skydel GNSS simulation engine has enhanced LEO PNT capabilities, enabling users to accurately simulate satellite constellations in LEO. Developers and engineers can now test and validate their systems for various applications, including autonomous vehicles, drones and space missions.

Xona’s PULSAR is a high-performance satellite navigation and timing system designed to deliver a secure, high-powered signal from the company’s LEO satellites. LEO satellites are closer to the Earth than GNSS, making their signals stronger. This reduces the threat of jamming and spoofing, a growing problem for traditional GNSS. 

“Skydel’s implementation of PULSAR signals is a major milestone for the GNSS community,” said Bryan Chan, co-founder and VP of strategy at Xona, according to a news release. “This new capability empowers receiver manufacturers to showcase Xona PULSAR’s unique LEO PNT value propositions to the end consumer, in applications ranging from heavy industry to the mass market.”

Joshua Morales, CEO of StarNav, was one of the many presenters who gave a talk at the Safran booth during ION GNSS+. Using a simulated Xona PULSAR signal output by a Safran GSG-8 simulator, Morales demonstrated a StarNav receiver achieving a cold start for the PULSAR signal in real time, a first. StarNav develops receivers for emerging PNT constellations and signals of opportunity. 

Morales was able to show 13 satellites being tracked simultaneously, demonstrating a real-time, accurate positioning solution. 

The simulator and receiver enable the industry to prepare for and fine tune this new LEO capability, Morales said, which augments vulnerable GPS. Xona’s high-powered smallsat signals improves PNT resilience and accuracy, operating with an independent navigation and timing system architecture. 

“GPS is being attacked, either intentionally or unintentionally,” Morales said. “This brings on an additional source in a different frequency band to augment PNT.” 

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The team at Hexagon | NovAtel tests equipment in a live sky environment every chance they get.

There’s just no replacement for testing in real-world scenarios, said Neil Gerein, vice president of product, aerospace and defense, at Hexagon Autonomy & Positioning division, particularly when it comes to evaluating how navigation solutions fare against spoofing and jamming. That’s why NAVFEST, held at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico for the last 20 years and conducted by the United States Air Force’s 746th Test Squadron (746 TS), has become a must-attend event for the team. 

NAVFEST 24 participants, which ranged from industry leaders like Hexagon to DOD entities to foreign nations, had the opportunity to test their equipment in GPS Electromagnetic Warfare (EW) scenarios as well as observe how other technologies performed, with eight nights of NAVWAR testing over a two week period. The 746 TS creates the testing scenarios and jamming while also providing accurate Time Space Position Information (TPSI) Reference, made possible in part by the Australia-based Locata system that provides critical positioning information in GPS-challenged environments.

“At NAVFEST 24, we tested products in a vehicle environment as well as a dismounted environment, and I got to experience firsthand how our equipment operates in those locations,” executive vice president, aerospace and defense at Hexagon Autonomy & Positioning division Stig Pedersen said, noting the team’s testing vehicle had about 25 different receivers in various configurations. “I now know the direct effect of jamming on our systems, and how we are able to mitigate jamming in real time. That’s very motivating.” 

The threat to GNSS continues to grow, with attacks becoming more and more sophisticated. That’s translated into an increase in demand for robust navigation solutions that are resistant to jamming and spoofing, VectorNav VP, Business Development Jakub Maslikowski said, making the availability of such testing opportunities critical. 

While the team at VectorNav receives plenty of customer feedback on product performance in various scenarios, helping them continuously improve their offerings, they wanted a deeper understanding of how their equipment and other PNT systems they integrate with hold up in contested environments. And that’s exactly what they got from their first NAVFEST experience in May. 

“One of the motivations behind going to NAVFEST was to observe and collect data on how our INS filters react to bad GPS,” Maslikowski said. “How do we handle that GPS data in those environments, to what extent does it impact our filter, and how do we reject bad GPS? With the data collected at NAVFEST, we can improve that system. We can improve our ability to qualify GPS data, characterize it and reject disturbances.” 

NAVFEST provides an opportunity these companies can’t get anywhere else, with the 746 TS working closely with each of them to create scenarios for their unique testing needs, whether in the air or on the ground. After two weeks of testing, participants gain a better understanding of the evolving threat and how to mitigate it. 

Upping the Ante 

Over the years, the testing scenarios NAVFEST throws at participants have become more challenging, Gerein said, reflecting the changing environment warfighters face.

In the beginning, they were just jamming L1, he said, but over the years they’ve added frequencies and higher powered jammers, raising the game. 

“And then we have inertial units,” Gerein said. “You have to use better and better inertials as the jamming effect gets higher and higher. So, we’re really testing the RF environment, throwing more at it. Every year, you can expect to have to run faster and faster to get that gold medal. And that’s just a reflection of the threats GNSS is facing.” 

A Better Understanding 

While simulation in a lab certainly has its place and benefit for testing, NAVFEST takes it to another level. Participants have the opportunity to see how their solutions respond to various jamming attacks in a controlled environment, and leave with a better understanding of what a warfighter might experience when GNSS goes down on the battlefield. 

“White Sands is a desolate, very unfriendly place in terms of the environment. It’s not a place you want to stick around,” Pedersen said. “It’s very similar to the environment a warfighter uses our solutions in, and just having that dimension of testing is interesting. You can do a lot of testing on the bench, but until you’re actually out there in real time seeing the green light or the red light on the box, you don’t really understand it.” 

The equipment also experiences different real world-variables, Maslikowski said, including vibration and temperature change, that you wouldn’t get in a lab. 

“You’ve got to do it in real life,” Locata Co-Founder, President and CEO Nunzio Gambale said. “Simulators only take you so far, then you’re dependent on your inputs and, unfortunately, especially in adversarial situations, your enemy doesn’t conform to your assumptions in the sim.”

The level of granularity and real world exposure live sky testing at events like NAVFEST provides just can’t be replicated, Maslikowski said, and is a critical piece of any product development. 

“That’s always been and will continue to be one of the hallmarks of our approach, the way we calibrate, qualify and define specification for our products,” he said. “They’re not generated from lab environments or through simulation; it’s through real world testing of hundreds and hundreds of units over time, over various dynamic scenarios, temperatures, you name it.” 

And during NAVFEST, participants aren’t just testing performance on an antijam system or receiver; they’re testing everything. 

“It allows you to test the end to end system in the actual environment, so there’s a lot of valuable testing even before they turn the jammers on,” Gerein said. “Do you have the install right? Are the inertials on your test equipment aligned correctly? That full-end testing is really valuable.” 

Testing a Range of Solutions

During NAVFEST, the team at Hexagon tests existing products shipping today for life cycle improvements as well as prototypes, Pedersen said. 

“We test legacy products like the GAJT-410 and GAJT-710, we test our SPAN sensor fusion, and we test our regular GNSS boards,” Pedersen said. “But we also put new prototypes, and later prototypes on the truck. So, throughout the development cycle of our products, we expose them to this testing to verify their performance in an evolving environment but also to develop new algorithms and new ways of mitigating jamming in our new prototypes.”

They get as much data as they possibly can, Pedersen said, and use that data to improve their products year over year. 

They also test solutions customers are using for truth systems, Gerein said, giving the team a chance to improve those systems as well. 

VectorNav also brought various solutions for testing including high-end IMUs, M-Code receivers, antennas, and LEO satellite receivers, Maslikowski said. The team tested these solutions as standalone systems as well as in combination with other products to evaluate how they performed together in GNSS contested environments. 

“We are a solutions provider. Part of what we do is make standalone products, but we also integrate with other PNT technologies, different aiding sources,” he said. “Leveraging those types of products can provide customers with a more resilient PNT solution.” 

Providing the Infrastructure 

Locata is also part of NAVFEST each year, with its specialized off-band pseudolite system serving as the non-GPS-based Positioning and Timing component of the 746 TS’s Ultra High Accurate Reference System. The company synchronizes transmitters to a sub-billionth of a second without atomic clocks, with terrestrially-based LocataLite transceivers transmitting well-synchronized signals to form a positioning network that operates in combination with GPS or totally independent of it. 

Years ago, Locata was developing the technology for ground based transmitters when a researcher presented the work at a U.S. conference. That got the attention of an Air Force engineer, who came out to Australia to learn more about what Locata had cooking. The technology seemed to tick all the boxes for a testing architecture. It could transmit over long ranges, handle aircraft dynamics and deal with errors introduced over long ranges. That meeting led to the first successful Locata network and the initial trial deployment of a smaller, temporary network at White Sands. 

Locata would eventually win the tender and deploy the technology at WSMR around 2016. The technology was tested over an intense two-week period, Gambale said, at different altitudes, speeds, trajectories, and configurations. It was initially tested for aircraft, but it quickly became clear it worked on the ground as well. 

“There were demonstrations where it was getting lane level positioning in many areas across the range,” he said, “even though the network wasn’t designed for that.“

The Locata network now serves as the foundation for NAVFEST testing and is the sole provider of this critical synchronization capability to the Air Force. 

“Our job is to provide them with the finest measurement tool we possibly can,” Gambale said, “and we are continuously developing and improving that capability. Our next generation devices are now in prototype, and they are incredibly more flexible and capable than our current devices. We continue to bring these systems to the industry, with our contributions pushing the boundaries of what is possible with PNT.”

Hexagon equipment also has been part of the ground reference at WSMR for years, an important component of testing. 

“We have had a big footprint at test ranges for decades,” Gerein said. “Anytime you’re doing any testing in GNSS, you need to compare it to a truth trajectory because otherwise you don’t know what did or didn’t work. So that’s where our truth system comes into play. That was our first foray into these test situations, long before we had antijam equipment.”

A Unique Opportunity 

Without the cooperation of the Air Force, there’d be no way to gather the kind of data and resulting knowledge participants gain each year from NAVFEST, Maslikowski said. Everyone who tests at NAVFEST fully understands the spoofing/jamming environments and how systems responded to specific conditions and technologies, a unique and highly valuable opportunity. 

And this is critical as spoofing and jamming becomes more prevalent—on both the military and civilian side. 

“You’re seeing this in all sorts of different locations around the world, and not necessarily in NAVWAR scenarios,” Maslikowski said. “There’s all sorts of systems and aircraft being impacted by this. This is no longer a strictly defense issue and problem, it’s commercial as well. So, the value add of being able to provide robustness to these types of scenarios is not limited to customers operating in war zones. This is very much becoming more and more relevant to the commercial sector as well.” 

Both Hexagon and VectorNav will continue to focus on this type of testing for the foreseeable future, with antijam capabilities now an essential part of product roadmaps and development. Pedersen even described it as “the single most important input into our software.”

“Antijam saves people’s lives,” Gerein said. “Jamming isn’t going away. If certain conflicts settle down in the world, it’s not like people are going to say I’m going to stop jamming. Jamming is here to stay.”

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Many of the exhibitors at ION’s Joint Navigation Conference (JNC) had one thing in common: they spent a lot of time talking with attendees about solutions designed to strengthen PNT by backing up GNSS or thwarting spoofing and jamming attempts. Mitigating the threat of nefarious actors is a top industry concern, and that was evident in many of the solutions displayed at the conference.

This year’s theme, “Robust, Resilient, Assured PNT for Warfighters and Homeland Defense,” says it all. We’re at a critical point, and now is the time to not only develop, but also field technologies that strengthen PNT. You can sense the urgency in the industry, with many exhibitors like Lou Pelosi of CAST Navigation saying this year’s JNC, held in Convington, Kentucky, was one of the busiest in recent memory. Users are looking for solutions that give them that needed resiliency, and manufacturers are answering the call.

Show Launches

About 60 exhibitors attended this year’s conference, with some using the show as an opportunity to unveil new solutions. VIAVI was among them, introducing the altGNSS GEO SecureTime service. Available worldwide, the service aims to deliver improved nanoseconds-accurate UTC timing via L-Band and Ku-Band satellite signals—becoming only the third global independent capability that generates PNT signals locally.

The service is independent of traditional GPS and GNSS and, because it operates on the Ku-Band, it is difficult to jam or spoof. Its Navigation Message Authentication (NMA) uses encryption to detect spoofing in any signals, both cooperative and non-cooperative, received from any source.

“Our service is going to be very, very low cost and potentially rolled into hardware, which means you don’t have to maintain monthly licensing or fee tracking,” said Said Jackson, VIAVI’s general manager and vice president. “You buy a piece of equipment from us, you plug it in and it just works. It can be bought as a physical product as well as a module to integrate into a system. It’s also signal agnostic, an important feature.” 

BAE Systems introduced NavStorm-M, a gun-hardened integrated anti-jamming and GPS receiver with M-Code capability that can be leveraged for artillery, missiles and unmanned systems.

With this launch, BAE Systems has updated nearly all of its GPS receivers with M-Code capability, giving warfighters access to equipment that is more resistant to spoofing and jamming. 

“When customers are ready for a tech refresh or new build, we have M-Code,” said Justin R. Wymore Sr., customer requirement manager, weapons PNT, navigation and sensor systems. “The user equipment is available. Now, it’s just a matter of integrating and fielding it.” 

New Ways to Detect and Mitigate Jamming 

UHU Technologies highlighted its Northstar and UHU1000 solutions at JNC, generating a lot of interest from attendees. Northstar detects spoofing and jamming in a matter of seconds, Senior Design Engineer Eric Hughes said, leveraging advanced multi-element digital signal processing to spatially identify and separate real GPS signals from fake ones. It calculates the angle of arrival (AOA), making it possible to determine if the signal is from a valid satellite or a spoofer. AOA is the only signal feature that can’t be spoofed. 

Through this technology, the AOA is compared to the known satellite location for the signal. The box then spatially nulls any spoofers or jammers.

The UHU1000 has the same features but takes it a step further, both detecting and mitigating threats, Hughes said. 

“Traditional anti-jam systems suppress at above the noise,” he said. “If a signal is faked below the noise, they can’t see it. We can look below the noise and see the spoofing and suppress it using advanced bellow the noise nulling.” 

The solution has two radio frequency (RF) outputs, Hughes said, with traditional anti-jam and the company’s anti-spoofing technology. It has seven inputs and works with both SAASM and M-Code.

PSIONIC also takes a different approach to RF and jamming mitigation, with its new laser-based sensor, SurePath. The sensor features a proprietary navigation filter that uses real-time velocity vectors to correct IMU sensor errors, enabling it to provide information in one platform that typically requires multiple. And, according to the company, the undetectable velocimeter can’t be spoofed or jammed. 

SurePath takes multiple line-of-sight measurements to determine the vehicle’s surface relative velocity vector. Measurements are made from the vehicle against the surface’s reference frame, with surface relative velocity measured in real time.

“It measures velocity directly in the Doppler Effect,” Senior Staff Scientist Jeff Monaco said, “so you know not just how fast it’s going but in what direction. Other solutions just give the speed measurement. This provides the velocity vector.”

Chelton displayed various anti-jam solutions at the meeting, including the DACU4c. This high-performing system integrates a four-channel controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA) with advanced, miniaturized GNSS anti-jam processing electronics. It integrates easily and is suitable for retrofitting. 

“We’re taking the existing building blocks and putting it all in one package,” said Andew Cowan, chief engineer, avionics. “All the bits are proven and mature technology, but this is the first time it’s been put into a single package.” 

The company also highlighted its M-Code compliant 20-8000 eight-element conformal CRPA that’s designed to fit seamlessly into the skin of an aircraft, as well as the more compact four element conformal CRPA, the 20-7550. The customizable antenna is M-Code compatible, operates across GPS L1 and L2 bands and is designed to work in demanding environments.

AEVEX Aerospace highlighted its Geo-APNT, a fully integrated GPS-aided inertial navigation solution that offers users the assured position, navigation and timing their use cases require, even when GPS isn’t available. 

Geo-APNT features in-motion dynamic alignment and is available with M-Code/SAASM or commercial GPS receivers. It also supports a variety of inertial measurement units (IMUs) based on user need, including MEMS, fiber optic gyroscopes (FOG), ring laser gyroscopes (RLG) and navigation grade IMUs, said Mark Glover, retired U.S. Navy Capt. and senior director of business development for assured positioning, navigation and timing. An anti-jam antenna can be integrated into the box for added protection. 

“This is our most complex box,” Glover said, “because of the number of integrated sensors.” 

Companies continue to collect data to enhance current and future solutions designed for GNSS contested environments. VectorNav Technologies, for example, announced its participation in the USAF’s NAVFEST 2024 Test Event. The event was hosted by the 746th Test Squadron at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, and held at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). 

During the event, VectorNav evaluated a range of its single and dual-antenna GNSS-Aided INS products, including the VN-210, VN-310, VN-210-S, VN-200, VN-300, VN-210E, and VN-310E in various configurations. The products were also tested in combination with a variety of additional PNT systems. 

The data collected is being analyzed to further refine and enhance VectorNav’s solutions in GNSS-contested environments.

Advanced IMUs

Safran Federal Systems also made a few announcements at JNC, launching two new IMUs that leverage advanced MEMS and core Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG) technology: Iconyx and the Small Tactical IMU (STIM). 

The tactical grade IMUs are designed to bring high performance to unmanned applications and space-based operations. Safran also announced that Geonyx, the company’s HRG based inertial navigation system (INS), now features anti-spoofing M-Code capability.

The HRG Crystal offers a lower size, weight and power (SWaP) capability than traditional options like FOGs and RLGs, said Jon Leombrone, executive vice president of navigation systems. This next generation of gyro technology doesn’t need to increase in size to achieve better performance.

“This technology [HRG] always stays the same size,” Leombrone said. “The SWaP is part of the value proposition.”

Enertia Micro highlighted its HRG technology at the conference. The company’s Birdbath Resonator Gyroscope (BRG) is the result of 20 years of R&D at the University of Michigan, under the support of DARPA, Enertia Micro Vice President of Engineering Jong Kwan Woo said. The company’s two solutions serve as dead reckoning IMUs for autonomous vehicles and drones, with BRG-5 near aviation grade and BRG-10 aviation grade. 

The BRG products provide better accuracy at a lower cost, size and weight than other gyroscopes, Woo said, because of the fused-silica MEMS resonator. 

“There’s lots of interest to test this device; there are a lot of companies and government agencies looking for this,” Woo said. “We can make the device small, so it fits in a lot of applications.” 

Fizoptika Malta highlighted its miniature 3-axis FOGs, which are combined with MEMS accelerometers, and FOG-based inertial measurement units. Managing Director Arthur Tua described the company’s FOGs as “the world’s smallest,” offering the low power customers need. 

“All our products are lower power, which is beneficial when power is at a premium,” Tua said. “And to make it easy for buying, they’re all ITAR free.” 

The company offers various options and performance parameters, Tua said, and can be used in autonomous vehicles and drones as well as for gimbal and camera stabilization. The small cylindrical FOG IMU U123D, for example, offers 1°/h bias stability and 0.05°/√h ARW and low power consumption of 1.5W, while the G181 and G121 three-axis FOGs deliver low noise performance in ultra-compact and lightweight units. 

Fiberpro also displayed its FOGs and three-axis IMUs. The company’s FN 200C box, for example, is a GPS-aided INS that leverages tactical-grade FOG technology. It combines INS with Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS), MRU and a FOG IMU-based AHRS. It can determine position, velocity, vertical and horizontal displacements and absolute orientation on any device it’s mounted on. 

The FI 210 IMU is a high-performance IMU that integrates three FOGs and three accelerometers, while the FG 150 is a single axis FOG for stabilization applications such as antennas, aircraft cameras and armored vehicles. 

The navigation grade units are ITAR free, U.S. Branch Manager Richard Ryu said. They’re also competitively priced and have a shorter lead time than other options. 

A Well-Rounded Conference 

Other exhibitors included CAST with its simulators, such as CAST Navigation Jammers and CAST-CRPA simulation systems, Tualcom, TRX Systems, Honeywell, Inertial Labs, Hexagon | NovAtel, oneNav, ANELLO Photonics, Septentrio, NavtechGPS, Ideal Aerosmith, GPS Networking and Xona Space Systems. Attendees also had the opportunity to network and take in various sessions, with topics including Complementary PNT, inertial navigation technologies, field testing PNT technologies, PNT for uncrewed systems AI/machine learning for PNT and anti-jam and anti-spoofing technologies. 

Next year’s JNC is slated for June 2 to 5 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center, where the focus on mitigating spoofing and jamming threats and backing up GNSS are sure to once again be hot topics.

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His first company, Eclipse Electronic Systems, founded in 1993, wasn’t PNT based. Back then, Sanders focused on building high-performance COTS embedded digital receivers and components. The company also specialized in signals intelligence and communications intelligence (SIGINT/COMINT) receiver hardware. With UHU, he shifted gears—but he brought many past employees with him. Another reason he founded UHU was to give the talented people he’d employed for years meaningful work. And he knew the work he was about to embark on was important. 

“It got the idea of spatial validation of satellites,” he said. “The idea is to measure the direction of every signal we can see and compare those measurements to the almanac. The magic bean is we can validate where the satellites are in the sky and only provide PNT from legitimate satellites.”

The patented technology, Sanders said, is well beyond the R&D stage and ready to be deployed into Programs of Record as well as critical infrastructure. Sanders and team members, including Senior Design Engineer Eric Hughes, highlighted UHU’s Northstar and UHU1000 solutions at ION’s Joint Navigation Conference (JNC) in Kentucky earlier this month, talking to attendees about what makes their tech different and highlighting its effectiveness via footage taken at The Port of Long Beach where Northstar successfully detected and located a jammer. 

The technology 

UHU’s Northstar solution detects spoofing and jamming in a matter of seconds, Hughes said. Based on that initial idea Sanders had in 2011, the solution leverages advanced multi-element digital signal processing to spatially identify and separate real GPS signals from fake ones. It calculates the angle of arrival (AOA), making it possible to determine if the signal is from a valid satellite or a spoofer. 

The AOA—the only signal feature that can’t be spoofed—is compared to the known satellite location for the signal. The box then spatially nulls any spoofers or jammers.

Once a spoofer is identified, the system alerts the user via the network. It provides the AOA to the threat as well as the direction and geolocation. Northstar also can switch nearby GPS timing receivers into holdover to protect timing.

As illustrated in the video displayed at the booth during JNC, Northstar can protect critical infrastructure, including maritime ports, airports, cell towers and power grid substations. 

The UHU1000 has the same features but takes it a step further, both detecting and mitigating threats, Hughes said. 

“Traditional anti-jam systems suppress at above the noise,” he said. “If a signal is faked below the noise, they can’t see it. We can look below the noise and see the spoofing and suppress it using advanced bellow the noise nulling.” 

The solution has two radio frequency (RF) outputs, Hughes said, with traditional anti-jam and the company’s anti-spoofing technology. It has seven inputs and works with both SAASM and M-Code. 

AOA measurements are reported to users via the built-in situational awareness GUI, which provides sky, map, chart and spectral views. Spoofing signals detected are automatically categorized, demodulated and tracked separately from viable signals.

The UHU1000 makes it possible to use GPS even during advanced attacks, automatically determining where the attacker is coming from and nulling the attacker spatially to protect position and time. 

“You could have a box with alt navigation and M-Code spatially protected along with spoofing detection and mitigation,” Hughes said. “It also doubles as a timing receiver and has a GPS disciplined oscillator that’s spatially protected. It’s a very feature rich box.” 

The box could be installed on any vehicle using anti-jam for GPS, Hughes said, including Strykers, tanks and naval ships. 

UHU also offers specialized antenna solutions, Hughes said, ranging from beamforming antennas to blade antennas. The team has delivered more than 100 antennas to DOD customers, some with a turnaround time of as little as four weeks. 

Solving the problem 

The GPS spoofing and jamming threat continues to grow, putting critical infrastructure and warfighters at risk. The potential for future conflicts with adversaries like China make it vital to develop more resilient solutions to backup vulnerable GPS signals, Sanders said. These boxes fill that need. 

“This is a solvable problem, “ Sanders said, “it just takes someone who wants to solve it.” 

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