Javad Ashjaee (Photo: Javad GNSS)
Javad Ashjaee, founder of JAVAD GNSS, has died in Moscow, Russia. He died on May 30 after a long fight with COVID-19.
The news was first reported by a family member on social media. Ashjaee was born in 1949.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of our founder Javad Ashjaee, a GPS/GNSS pioneer and visionary, on the morning of May 30, 2020, due to COVID-19 in Moscow, Russia,” reports a statement on the JAVAD GNSS website.
The website continues, “Over the course of 37 years, Javad made an incredible and far-reaching impact in the GNSS community. He pioneered the world’s most advanced GNSS technology through a multi-national effort that combined GPS and GLONASS and established more than a quarter century of partnership between Silicon Valley and Moscow. He was always proud of this ‘success story of cooperation.’ Javad was a true industry disrupter long before the term and concept became popular. His whole way of doing business was challenging and disrupting to the status quo.”
Read more about Ashjaee in his own words on the JAVAD GNSS website, where he describes the founding of his company.
“In 1998 I founded JAVAD Positioning Systems (JPS) and introduced Legacy, Odyssey and Regency products, followed by HiPer. It was a 76-channel geodetic receiver. Other companies later copied HiPer. Today, many of GNSS receivers look like it. I sold JPS to Topcon, who changed its name to Topcon Positioning System and is a very successful company.
“In 2007, after my obligations to Topcon ended and according to the provisions of our agreement, I founded JAVAD GNSS and introduced Triumph products. These were 216-channel receivers, integrated with several communication channels. We also introduced their Alpha, Delta, and Sigma versions. We were again the first to offer European Galileo and Japanese QZSS tracking in mass production. Triumph technology has been shown to have the best signal quality and best multipath reduction capabilities against all others tested by the German Aerospace. We also introduced GLONASS inter-channel (group/carrier delay) calibration to 0.2 millimeter which made GLONASS FDMA as good as GPS CDMA. JAVAD GNSS is growing fast and gaining market share.”