Dana Goward, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, introducing Brad Parkinson and Matteo Luccio, GPS World EIC. (Image: RNTF)

On December 5, in Houston, Texas, at a gala event to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of GPS hosted by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, Matteo Luccio, Editor-in-Chief of GPS World, interviewed Brad Parkinson.

Here are two excerpts from the interview:

How does GPS today differ from the design that came out of the Lonely Halls meeting 50 years ago this past September?

Well, I’m very proud of what happened because, to my knowledge, there is no fundamental difference. Basically, that fundamental design has held up. … As a matter of fact, I still have one of the old Trimble handhelds, it’s called an EnsignGPS. It was one of those little devices that got shipped to the Iraq War. The other day, I pulled it out, batteries were kind of crummy, I got those squared away and went out, sure enough and navigated. I probably hadn’t pulled it out in at least 20 years. The point of the story is that evidently it still works.

What do you consider the most significant impact of GPS on society?

Well, the most significant impact is also probably the most perilous: kids today just take it for granted. They know where they are.

Watch the full interview below. 

<p>The post Celebrating 50 years of GPS: An evening with the father of GPS first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Matteo Luccio

When Boston Light — an 89 ft-high, white lighthouse on Little Brewster Island in Boston’s outer harbor — opened in September 1716, it was the first one in the Thirteen Colonies. Sally Snowman, who has been its keeper for most of the past two decades, is the last official lighthouse keeper in the United States. Contemplating the horrible trips across the Atlantic on merchants’ galleons, when many gale-tossed passengers despaired of ever setting foot on land again, she recently commented: “Imagine what they felt when they spotted the light.” See Dorothy Wickenden’s article “Last Watch” in the November 6, issue of my favorite magazine, The New Yorker. Of the roughly 850 lighthouses currently in the United States, Wickenden reported, only about half serve as active aids to navigation and the U.S. Coast Guard has automated all of them. “The rest,” Wickenden wrote, “have been made obsolete by GPS.” Yet, she pointed out, even hardheaded ship captains and pilots say that “lighthouses still have a place.”

When Snowman retires at the end of this month, it will mark the end of an era that lasted more than three centuries. This month also marks the 50th anniversary of the approval of Navstar GPS (as it was originally called) by the Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (DSARC) of the U.S. Department of Defense. Three months earlier, at the meeting now remembered as Lonely Halls (see my editorial in the September issue), Brad Parkinson and his team had made the key decisions about the system’s architecture, including the number of satellites, their orbits, and what kinds of signals to use.

In this month’s issue, we revisit how, after initial opposition, the U.S. armed forces adopted GPS; how the civilian/commercial GPS (now GNSS) industry was born; and how surveyors reacted to this disruptive new technology.

To answer the first question, I asked Gaylord Green, who was on Parkinson’s team and later led the GPS Joint Program Office, to write his recollections on the subject. I also interviewed Marty Faga, whose long and distinguished career included four years as both Director, National Reconnaissance Office and Assistant Secretary for Space, U.S. Air Force. Faga passed away on October 19. To answer the second question, I turned to Charlie Trimble, who in 1978 co-founded the company named after him and was its CEO until 1998. To answer the third question, I chose Dave Zilkoski, who earned a master’s degree in geodetic science in 1979, the year after the first GPS satellite was deployed, while working for the National Geodetic Survey, of which he was later the director for about three years. Many readers of this magazine also know Zilkoski as the regular contributor to one of our four digital newsletters, Survey Scene.

This issue’s cover story also focuses, in part, on the 50th anniversary of GPS, as seen by three large players in the aerospace industry: Spirent, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman.

Matteo Luccio | Editor-in-Chief
mluccio@northcoastmedia.net

<p>The post Lighthouses on land and in the sky first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Image: Defense Visual Information Center

As part of our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Global Positioning System, three long-time players in the industry share their “GPS origin story,” recent breakthroughs, and their view on the next 50 years of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). All three began their involvement with GPS between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, before the system was completed. All three are continuously making GPS more resilient and resistant to jamming and spoofing or augmenting it with layered multi-orbit architectures of complementary PNT.

Read the origin stories, recent breakthroughs, and more insights from the following companies:

BAE Systems: Pioneering military GPS technology

Northrop Grumman: Integrating and developing GPS technology

Spirent: From testing GPS to assuring PNT

<p>The post Origin stories: Champions of GPS share beginnings, breakthroughs and what’s next first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Image: BAE Systems

What is BAE Systems’ GPS origin story?

BAE Systems has more than 45 years of military GPS experience. In fact, the first ever GPS signal reception on Earth happened at one of our offices in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on July 19, 1977, when one of our legacy companies received the signal. Since that historic day, BAE Systems’ engineers have introduced more than 50 GPS products, including GPS anti-jam and precision landing systems.

As a pioneer in military GPS technology, BAE Systems has delivered nearly two million GPS devices on more than 280 platforms around the world. We design and produce advanced GPS technology compatible with the next generation M-code signal, improving security and anti-jamming capabilities for critical defense applications.

Can you share any recent innovations from BAE Systems?

BAE Systems innovates a full portfolio of M-code-compatible military GPS solutions to meet warfighters’ needs. Our Strategic Anti-jam Beamforming Receiver — M-code (SABR-M) is the most capable integrated anti-jam (AJ) electronics GPS receiver and the first integrated AJ M-code receiver available for weapons systems. It delivers assured, global position, velocity, altitude and timing, as well as strong protection against GPS signal jamming and spoofing — critical capabilities for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), precision-guided munitions (PGMs), and missiles in threat environments.

This past June, at the Joint Navigation Conference in San Diego, BAE Systems unveiled NavGuide, a next-generation Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (A-PNT) device featuring M-code GPS technology. It is our response to strong defense market demand for a cost-effective, high performance handheld GPS upgrade. NavGuide provides an intuitive user interface and integrates easily into platforms currently using BAE Systems’ Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR).

How is your company preparing for the next 50 years of PNT with GPS and beyond?

BAE Systems is making advancements in our critical navigation capabilities for the warfighter through the Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) Increment 2 program. We are developing a Next-Generation Application Specific Integrated Circuit (NG ASIC) for our small form factor Miniature Serial Interface (MSI) receiver. This will enhance our full portfolio of ground, airborne and weapons M-code assured GPS receivers beyond 2030.

We have invested an enormous amount of time and energy into our facilities and simulator capabilities, especially in our state-of-the-art simulators powered by Spirent Federal signal generation and RF wavefront technology. We want to be prepared to meet the technical demands of an ever-changing threat environment, and we need to be certain our receivers are prepared for the fight the first time, every time. We put our receivers through the paces by running them through thousands of trials on our Spirent simulators to validate and verify our performance under the most demanding scenarios.

<p>The post Pioneering military GPS technology first appeared on GPS World.</p>

A flight test of Northrop Grumman’s airborne navigation solution, embedded GPS/INS modernization, EGI-M (Image: Northrop Grumman)

What was Northrop Grumman’s GPS Origin Story?

Northrop Grumman’s involvement with GPS has its origins during the mid-1980s, when we became an early adopter. We applied our prior decades of technical expertise in defense and commercial navigation solutions to recognize the significance of GPS as an emerging technology to optimize our inertial navigation products. The first GPS receiver was integrated with the LN-33, our main product for military aircraft, in 1987.

Around the same time, our engineers began to develop an indigenous civil GPS receiver to complement our inertial navigator for use in commercial airliners. This resulted in the certification and fielding of the LTN-2001 product, an eight channel C/A Code GPS receiver. This receiver, in concert with our Autonomous Integrity Monitored Extrapolation (AIME) algorithm, provided our customers a first-ever sole means navigation system using GPS/inertial for non-precision approach.

By the early 1990s, advancements in the semiconductor industry facilitated the reduction of the GPS receiver from a 1,000 cu in stand-alone box to a roughly 6-in by 6-in circuit card. This critical milestone allowed GPS to be embedded into an inertial navigation system (INS) without a significant increase in its size or power consumption and thereby the ubiquitous Embedded GPS INS (EGI) was born. Our first inertial navigation system with embedded military GPS capability was the LN-100G in 1991. This standard form factor was produced across the industry with installations on virtually all the front-line tactical aircraft and rotorcraft for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and many of our allies.

Can you share a breakthrough?

Inspired by accomplishments in the survey community, our team conducted early location accuracy experiments to demonstrate a few decimeters of accuracy between our Woodland Hills, California, location and a facility in San Jose, California, about 500 km away. Leveraging this experience and the same signal processing, our teams became a broader solution provider for adjacent mission applications including precise formation flying for in-flight automated refueling, precision approach and landing, and decimeter-level positioning for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) community.

LN-100G. (Image: Northrop Grumman)

In parallel with these developments, Northrop Grumman, in partnership with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), improved the resilience of embedded GPS receivers with a more intimate coupling of INS and GPS. The DARPA GPS Guidance Package (GGP) program demonstrated a Navigation Grade Fiber Optic Gyro (FOG), greatly improved GPS tracking performance under extreme vehicle dynamics, and the ability to track at lower signal-to-noise levels. Our success on this program reinforced our reputation as a GPS integration leader and led to the introduction of Northrop Grumman’s current LN-251 product line, which is broadly used in tactical military aircraft.

In the early 2000s, Northrop Grumman initiated research into the feasibility of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) software-defined radio and started development of what we now call SERGEANT (Software Enabled Reconfigurable GNSS Embedded Architecture for Navigation and Timing). The company used Spirent signal simulators to evaluate proper GPS M-code tracking over a wide range of test cases in a controlled laboratory environment. Together with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Northrop Grumman demonstrated advanced receiver capabilities using SERGEANT starting in 2010. In 2018, AFRL used SERGEANT for the first real-time flight demonstration of a GPS M-code SDR.

How is your company preparing for the next 50 years of PNT with GPS and beyond?

SERGEANT Flight Test SDR. (Image: Northrop Grumman)

Northrop Grumman foresees the world of GNSS being dramatically influenced by the emergence of alternative radio navigation sources as augmentations to traditional GNSS constellations to provide additional robustness and resilience. Our PNT SDR technology is a foundational tool to integrate these emerging radio navigation signals quickly and accelerate deployment to our customers.

Northrop Grumman has led medium-Earth orbit (MEO) and low-Earth orbit (LEO) PNT technology studies through the DARPA Blackjack proliferated LEO (pLEO) program, starting in 2017. Northrop Grumman’s SERGEANT SDR transceiver is currently being integrated for use in emerging pLEO constellations. We anticipate that these capabilities, as well as emerging cooperative radio navigation signals, will become a critical part of the next 50 years of PNT with GPS.

<p>The post Integrating and developing GPS technology first appeared on GPS World.</p>

A Spirent user employs a portable GSS6450 attached to an antenna to record GPS, other GNSS, and complementary signals for resilient PNT testing. (Image: Spirent)

What is Spirent’s GPS origin story?

Spirent’s GPS genesis began on a rooftop in the middle of the night in the early 1980s. Engineers were attempting to acquire the new GPS signals with their receivers, scheduling their lives around the times when satellites would pass overhead, angling antennas off a roof in the dark, and hoping for favorable conditions. Those difficulties inspired an idea: since real-world conditions are never the same twice, simulating the signals in a lab would control variables and provide repeatable and trustworthy results.

That idea grew to be Spirent’s positioning division — a team of experts whose sole focus is to partner with customers to accelerate the deployment of robust PNT technology. In 1985, one of the first groundbreaking simulators provided to a customer generated six GPS L1/L2 signals. Soon after, we developed the world’s first simulator with SA-A/S capability, establishing our reputation for innovation. Today, simulation is for much more than convenience. The further upstream testing starts, the better for R&D and investment decisions. Because of that, we work across the spectrum in close partnership with constellation developers, receiver manufacturers, and OEM application integrators.

Can you share a recent breakthrough?

GPS regional military protection (RMP) is a nascent anti-jamming capability that uses a steerable, narrow-beam M-code signal, allowing U.S. and allied forces to operate much closer to interference without losing connection. Spirent supports RMP, so modernized GPS user equipment (MGUE) can be tested and integrated with RMP long before live-sky signals are available.
Another major breakthrough is in AltNav, a catch-all term that includes non-GNSS sources of RF and other complementary PNT, with recent attention focused on low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellations. Spirent has developed LEO AltNav simulators for both the military and commercial sectors that seamlessly integrate with Spirent’s extensive testbed for GNSS, threat simulation, inertial navigation systems, and additional complementary PNT.

How is your company preparing for the next 50 years of PNT with GPS and beyond?

As a trusted industry test partner, one of Spirent’s guiding principles over the past five decades has been to support PNT developers and early adopters by being first-to-market with new signals and constellations. Enabled by our flexible solutions, our dedication to that tenet will continue across the next five decades.

NAVWAR resilience testing is an area where emerging test needs will continue to demand more from the test environment. Layered PNT positioning engines — including GNSS, secure military signals, CRPA systems, multi-orbit architectures, and sensor fusion — are driving complexity in the test regimes that support them. Spirent’s purpose-built solutions are designed to meet these advancements, with deterministic simulation that delivers definitive validation and accurate test results.

Spirent pioneered the use of software-defined radios for GNSS simulation with the GSS9000, which enabled the same architecture to support new signal types, higher motion rates, user-defined waveforms, and more than double the generated signals. The next generation will extend that flexibility, capacity, and ease of integration to future complementary PNT sources while maintaining system performance across physical and virtual realms.

<p>The post From testing GPS to assuring PNT first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Charlie Trimble provides the 4000A GPS Locator to the Smithsonian Museum. Introduced in 1984, it was the first commercial GPS positioning product. (Image: Smithsonian)

Trimble Navigation, which had started out making Loran receivers, was looking for its next marine project when HP decided to cancel its GPS project. Budget problems in Washington put completion of GPS in doubt. However, encouraging words from Brad Parkinson were enough for Trimble Navigation to buy the canceled project.

The purchase included a stack 14-ft high of unclassified reading material and a breadboard that fit on the table of a mobile home. It was a working GPS receiver that had recorded the mobile home’s position as it was driven around freeways in the San Francisco area. It took 12 months for a team of two engineers and 15 consultants to come up with the seven breakthroughs needed for the block diagram. Trimble was to iterate this block diagram on an 18-month cycle to follow Moore’s Law cost curve to the $100 required for car navigation. It took another year to build six rack-mounted multichannel receivers.

In October 1984, Trimble sold the first receiver for $100,000. Then came the sale of 20 OEM single channel timing receivers. The oil service industry was an important early market. At the time there were only seven GPS satellites in the sky and applications were limited to 3-4 hrs/day of accurate position measurement. Accuracy was a market driver, which led to the development of differential systems. These provided meter accuracies over wide areas. The next and far more difficult step was enabling a 1st order survey — which required accuracies of 1 cm/km.

Meanwhile, next gen GPS was added to Trimble’s marine Loran-C receiver and the company produced aviation receivers for the commercial markets. In January 1986, Trimble licensed its GPS technology for the Japanese car navigation market to Pioneer.
Then came the Shuttle disaster, and a new rocket had to be designed to launch more satellites. With only seven satellites in the sky and an unknowable time for rocket development, GPS use for navigation was off the table. Getting carrier phase 1st order products to work became critical for Trimble’s survival. In May of 1986, Trimble shipped an order of seven survey systems to the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Earthquake monitoring was a niche market add-on. Another “bet your company” deal was a Japanese order of 25 dual frequency systems.

During this time Trimble started to realize GPS was more than a device — that time-stamping events and geo-tagging things made it a valuable information technology component. The real value was in the information. By 2000, the Hong Kong price of the GPS function in quantities of a million devices a month was $1. GPS became ubiquitous and a fundamental component of a thriving information technology market.

GPS started out as a real-time worldwide system for navigation. It is now an indispensable part of modern life. GPS has truly changed our world.

<p>The post GPS: The birth of the commercial GPS industry and how it changed the world first appeared on GPS World.</p>

Image: stock_colors/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

The Global Positioning System (GPS) project started 50 years ago, in 1973. I was fortunate to be part of incorporating GPS into the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) when I worked for the National Geodetic Survey (NGS). GPS was not considered operational until 1993, but NGS started performing GPS surveys in 1983. Geodetic control surveys that formerly took six to 12 months to perform using classical methods could be performed with GPS in a few weeks using fewer personnel and resources. It changed the way NGS and others performed their surveying operations.

While one group in NGS was developing programs to evaluate and compute coordinates using GPS, another NGS group was completing the readjustment of the North American Datum of 1983 [NAD83 (1986)]. The analysis of GPS indicated that some of the latitude and longitude values estimated using GPS did not agree with the published NAD83 coordinates. The classical techniques used a triangulateration process (involving angles and distances) that required several triangles to connect two stations that were not intervisible. GPS, on the other hand, could directly measure the distance between the two stations, resulting in more accurate coordinate differences.

To support surveyors, NGS, working with other federal agencies under the auspices of the Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee (FGCS), developed a GPS test network in the Washington, D.C., area to demonstrate whether a specific manufacturer’s GPS receiver and associated geodetic post-processing software was an accurate relative positioning satellite survey system. This facilitated the use of GPS for incorporating geodetic control in the NSRS. As mentioned above, GPS surveys exposed many inconsistencies between existing NAD83 (1986) control. Organizations such as NGS and state transportation departments that performed control surveys used GPS as soon as equipment met the federal testing requirements because it was more efficient and cost-effective than classical techniques. This led individual states to perform statewide geodetic network projects to upgrade their NAD 83 (1986) coordinates. These surveys were ultimately designated as High Accuracy Reference Networks (HARN).

In the beginning, the attitude of the individual surveyor accepting GPS was one of “trust after verifying.” Many surveyors considered it to be a “black box” that could not be trusted. Surveyors were accustomed to having angles and distances they could write down and check the results. Also, there were some key challenges and limitations of using GPS for surveying in the early days. This included the cost and size of the equipment, the peripheral devices required, the power requirements (including 12v car batteries and generators), “black box” computer processing software, obstructions near monuments, and limited visibility of GPS satellites.

Prior to GPS becoming fully operational, some surveys had to be performed in the middle of the night to have four or more satellites visible during the observing session. This required a significant amount of technical planning, which sometimes required complicated logistics for coordinating observing sessions. Also, at that time, most private surveyors did not perform control projects, so even though GPS may be more accurate, it was not more cost-effective than classical techniques for their typical projects.

Over time, after GPS became operational, more surveyors (and other professionals) embraced using GPS after the cost of receivers decreased, user-friendly processing software became available (e.g., NGS OPUS), Continuously Operating Reference Stations were densified (e.g., NOAA CORS), and statewide Real-Time Networks (RTN) were established (e.g., North Carolina RTN). GPS technology now underpins many sciences, large areas of engineering (such as driverless vehicles and UAVs), navigation, and precision agriculture. GPS (today GNSS) and its applications have changed the way surveyors and geospatial users perform their work, and the world has seen the development of applications that were not ever imagined 50 years ago.

<p>The post They used GPS even before it was fully built: The adoption of GPS by surveyors first appeared on GPS World.</p>