GPS World Honors Leaders in GNSS/PNT

On Sept. 19, in conjunction with the ION GNSS+ conference, GPS World hosted its annual Leadership Awards dinner. Five honorees — chosen by a panel of GNSS experts — were recognized for their outstanding recent contribution or achievement in four categories: Satellites, Signals, Services and Products.

---

Satellites Award

Tim Hartman, Chief Engineer, Military Space Programs, Lockheed Martin

Hartman was recognized for serving as the program manager for GPS IIRM and GPS III Space Segments. Tim’s leadership and program dedication helped support the U.S. Air Force’s decision to declare GPS III ready for launch on Oct. 17, 2017.

Sponsor: Lockheed Martin

On Aug. 22, Lockheed Martin Space celebrated the successful launch of the second of up to 32 next-generation GPS III/IIIF satellites that the U.S. Air Force contracted the company to design and build. Lockheed Martin’s commitment to positioning, navigation and timing can be found in the exemplary performance of the 18 Lockheed Martin-built GPS IIR and IIRM satellites that are a proud part of today’s 31-satellite GPS constellation. The company also is proud to support the Air Force with its continued sustainment of the current GPS Operational Control Segment.

---

Signals Award

Ramsey Faragher, Founder and CEO, Focal Point Positioning

Focal Point Positioning’s new supercorrelator approach to indoor and urban GNSS signal processing could revolutionize smartphone-based GNSS. New signal processing methods for the correlation stage of a GNSS receiver enable several seconds of coherent integration while the receiver is undergoing dynamic motions. This improves accuracy and integrity, and provides anti-spoofing and spoofer-localization capabilities — without hardware changes or requiring access to encrypted signals.

Sponsor: L3Harris

L3Harris Technologies is an agile global aerospace and defense technology innovator, delivering end-to-end solutions that meet customers’ mission-critical needs. The company provides advanced defense and commercial technologies across air, land, sea, space and cyber domains. L3Harris has approximately $17 billion in annual revenue and 50,000 employees, with customers in 130 countries.

---

Services Award

Denis Laurichesse, Navigation Systems Department Expert, Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES)

Simon Banville, Senior Geodetic Engineer, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)

Laurichesse and Banville demonstrated instantaneous, centimeter-level, multi-frequency precise point positioning (PPP). Their work shows PPP might become, within a few years, a practical alternative to real-time kinematic (RTK) for a wide range of applications.

Sponsor: Collins Aerospace

Collins Aerospace Systems, a unit of United Technologies Corp., is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Created in 2018 by bringing together UTC Aerospace Systems and Rockwell Collins, Collins Aerospace has the capabilities, comprehensive portfolio and expertise to solve customers’ toughest challenges and meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global market.

---

Products Award

Paul Alves, P.Eng, Ph.D., Technology Manager — Correction Services, NovAtel, part of Hexagon

Alves was recognized for his work on localization of interference sources for GNSS users leveraging the Interference Tool Kit. With the ITK, users can detect and mitigate adversarial jamming of GNSS signals, as well as unintentional interference from external sources.

Sponsor: Spirent Federal

Spirent has more than 30 years of experience delivering the world’s best test equipment. Spirent’s test solutions for GPS and GNSS, critical infrastructure SCADA vulnerabilities, Internet L3-L7 common vulnerabilities and exposures, and mobile vulnerabilities allow the world to communicate and collaborate faster. Spirent Federal Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Spirent Communications and was established to offer the world’s leading simulation equipment to U.S. government customers, armed services, education institutions, and prime contractors. Spirent Federal’s SimMNSA was the first to be granted Security Approval by the Global Positioning System Directorate.

---

PNT Games

After dinner, guests broke into teams to test their personal positioning, navigation and timing skills, precisely determined by their ability to toss rings and throw horseshoes under time pressure. Each team rotated through yard games such as ladder toss, ring toss, corn hole and horseshoes to prove who was the most accurate and resilient. The L3Harris team took home the first-place prize.