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Trimble has launched IonoGuard, designed to reduce ionospheric disruptions in positioning and navigation by minimizing performance impacts caused by scintillation or signal noise.

Referred to as solar activity, ionospheric disturbances peak every 11 years. The next major disruption, Solar Cycle 25, is expected to peak between 2024 and 2026. Ionospheric activity can directly impact the quality of GNSS signals, leading to the degradation of position accuracy. While this type of disturbance has the greatest impact on high precision GNSS users operating around equatorial and high latitude regions, global disruptions are possible during the height of the solar cycle.

IonoGuard leverages Trimble’s high-precision receiver hardware design and signal tracking, offering improved positioning performance in challenging environments. This will minimize the probability of a complete loss of GNSS signals and improve the signals’ accuracy and integrity.

For Trimble’s geospatial, civil construction and OEM GNSS receivers supporting the ProPoint GNSS positioning engine, IonoGuard is a free downloadable firmware update expected to be available in late 2023 for receivers under warranty.

Geo Week 2024 is set for Feb. 11-13 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. This event was created in response to the changing needs of  built world and geospatial professionals, and to acknowledge the current convergence of technology.  

Geo Week’s conference program and tradeshow floor will feature commercial applications of 3D technologies, innovations and case studies in the built environment, advanced airborne and terrestrial remote sensing solutions, smart products for a full project team and more. 

Attendees and exhibitors can register here. The conference schedule can be found here.  

Septentrio has partnered with SparkFun Electronics to broaden market reach and the availability of satellite-based positioning products for integrators in a variety of industrial and emerging sectors. As part of the partnership, SparkFun has released its first product, the mosaic-X5 Triband GNSS RTK Breakout board.  

The mosaic-X5 Triband GNSS RTK Breakout features the mosaic-X5 receiver module from Septentrio.

The mosaic module is a compact GNSS receiver that delivers high-accuracy tri-band positioning with built-in technology that is resilient to signal interference, including jamming and spoofing. The SparkFun breakout board enables users to log data as well as control and monitor the receiver via the web interface, without the need for additional code.  

The mosaic-X5 Triband GNSS RTK Breakout is now available for purchase via the SparkFun website.  

Position Partners has entered an agreement to partner with Teleo, a U.S. based company building autonomous technology for heavy equipment. Under the agreement, Position Partners will offer the full Teleo remote-operated and autonomous solutions across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

Teleo’s system can be modified to any make and model of machine and includes the company’s proprietary software, a remote command center to operate the equipment, and a mesh network to enable two-way communication between the command center and machines.

The system incorporates sensors, including high dynamic range cameras that deliver high-definition visibility and video footage both day and night.

Once Teleo’s technology is integrated, users can control multiple machines, at multiple sites, from a single station.

“With ongoing labour and skills shortages in the construction sector, there is more work to be done than there are people to do it,” Position Partners CEO Martin Nix said.

Position Partners will offer the full Teleo solution to customers and support sales, installation and training in all countries in which the company operates including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Adtran’s OSA 5400 TimeCard has obtained approval from the Open Compute Project (OCP) Time Appliance Project (TAP) for data center timing and synchronization. The plug-in device integrates Adtran’s Oscilloquartz timing technology into any white box server, aiming to solve key challenges in the transition to virtualized environments.

The OSA 5400 TimeCard facilitates smooth and efficient operations for critical and time-sensitive applications. The card’s compact design, scalability and advanced features make it ideal for data center operators looking to adopt open, disaggregated hardware, the company said.

In combination with Adtran’s Ensemble Sync Director, the timecard offers operational teams a comprehensive, unified view of their entire timing infrastructure. Additionally, the OSA 5400 TimeCard has been developed to fully align with the IEEE P3335 standardization. The inclusion of high-performance quartz and rubidium oscillators ensures accurate timing during extended GNSS disturbances.

The OSA 5400 TimeCard can be integrated into available PCIe slots of standard servers or PCs.

TRX Systems has announced it is now shipping the Dismounted Assured Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) System Generation II (DAPS GEN II) solution to the United States Army. The device provides assured PNT to warfighters operating in GPS-denied environments. 

In March, the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors awarded TRX a seven-year, $402 million contract to deliver the DAPS GEN II systems.  

TRX DAPS GEN II is a small, handheld device that features efficient power utilization algorithms that enable a continuous stream of assured PNT data for warfighters and their combat systems. To achieve this, the device fuses inputs from a diverse range of PNT sources including M-code GPS, a secure and higher-powered military GPS capability that is resilient against jamming and other threats, complementary sources of position and time data when GPS is degraded, and inertial sensors supporting integrity and positioning, independent of any satellite source. 

The TRX DAPS II system is available for purchase by U.S. government entities. Distribution to U.S. allies is restricted to approved cases in the Foreign Military Sales Program. 

The United Kingdom’s Minister for Science, Research, Innovation announced in Parliament today a 10 point “policy framework” for advancing positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).

The announcement addressed improvements to both PNT technology and policy. 

Six technology efforts were listed:  

• “National Timing Centre: develop a proposal for a National Timing Centre (NTC) to provide resilient, terrestrial, sovereign, and high-quality timing for the UK (UTC(NPL)), including sovereign components and optical clocks.” This project has been underway for some time and is being executed by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. The announcement said another £14 million had been identified and was being allocated to the project. 
• “MOD Time: develop a proposal for ‘MOD Time’ creating deeper resilience through a system of last resort and use NTC provided timing to support MOD.”  
• “eLORAN: develop a proposal for a resilient, terrestrial, and sovereign Enhanced Long-Range Navigation (eLORAN) system to provide backup position and navigation.” In May, the UK’s spectrum office, Ofcom, sought interest from industry in obtaining eLoran broadcast licenses. The U.S. Department of Transportation issued a similar request for information this month.  
• “UK SBAS: develop a proposal for a UK Precise Point Positioning Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS-PPP) to replace the UK’s use of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), monitor GNSS and enable GNSS-dependent high accuracy position for autonomous and precision uses.” Since Brexit, the UK has not been a part of the EU’s Galileo enterprise. This SBAS decision comes after the UK government researched and rejected the idea of establishing its own GNSS. 
• “Next Generation PNT: deploy existing R&D funding into a UK Quantum Navigator and investigate possible options for a UK sovereign regional satellite system.” Britain has made development of quantum capabilities, including PNT, a particular national focus. 

• “Infrastructure Resilience: rollout resilient GNSS receiver chips, develop holdover clocks, and consider options for legislation on CNI sectors to require minimum resilient PNT.” The U.S. Executive Order 13905 points in a similar direction as this idea for legislation, which is a good segway to the announcement’s policy provisions. 

Four organizational and policy initiatives included in today’s statement in Parliament: 

• “National PNT Office: establish a National PNT Office in the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology to improve resilience and drive growth with responsibility for PNT policy, coordination, and delivery.” Last year the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation reported a cross-government office had been established by the UK that included representation from the Ministry of Defence. That office was within the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS). Since then, BEIS has been split into two departments, one of which is Science, Innovation, and Technology.  
• “PNT Crisis Plan: retain and update a cross-government PNT crisis plan to be activated if GNSS-provided PNT is lost and identify and implement short term mitigations.” Similar plans exist in the United States. The absence of an interference detection and monitoring system, though, has helped stymie U.S. government efforts to respond quickly and effectively. 
• “PNT Skills: explore options for centers for doctoral training in timing and PNT and review PNT skills, education, and training for longterm sovereign PNT capability.” A similar need has been identified by the U.S. President’s National Space-based PNT Advisory Board. 

• “Growth Policy: develop a PNT growth policy, including R&D programs, standards and testing, to drive innovation for PNT based productivity.” The U.S. PNT R&D Plan is a similar effort. 

Also mentioned in the statement to parliament are two new PNT documents published today by the UK Space Agency. The first is a summary of technical concepts developed under the Space Based PNT Programme. The second is an updated report on the economic impact to the UK of a disruption to GNSS.  

Both documents should be available in the House of Commons Library shortly. 

Just as I was beginning to write this article, war broke out between Israel and terrorist forces in Gaza. It would seem that the rockets used by Gaza were aimed rather than carrying on-board guidance, while Israeli airforce bomb/rocket attacks have been carried out with some degree of precision. Nevertheless, jamming in Israel may still be relevant to the ongoing conflict and any on-going commercial aircraft activity. However, it seems from the diagram of jamming below, that the Gaza strip is virtually interference free.

One of the things you can be sure of in the Ukraine-Russia war is that one side or the other is jamming the other’s communications and sat-nav guidance systems. An apparent consequence is that there is likely some “spill-over” to adjacent areas. For Israel, however, it looks like it’s more directed jamming rather than incidental.

In this environment of intentional GPS jamming, it’s not surprising that Israel has produced a leading anti-jam technology company, called InfiniDome, in Caesarea (between Haifa and Tel-Aviv). According to co-founder Omer Sharar, the company has been working to defend GPS signals for more than seven years and has also seen the rise of devices to jam the GPS L1 frequency that anyone can buy online for $100.  

 Just as Ukraine is throwing explosive cardboard UAVs with little cost at Russian occupying forces, a few carefully placed low-cost jammers could inflict serious damage on a country’s navigation capabilities. 

 However, a 2019 presentation by Todd Humphreys identified the source of interference and spoofing at that time, a Russian high-power jammer located at a Russian base in Syria. 

Humphreys used instrumentation on the International Space Station (ISS) to gather data on the directed interference but concluded that the jamming in Israel could be a consequence of Russia’s efforts to protect its troops in Syria from UAV attacks. The Russian Khmeimim Air Base is on the Mediterranean coast and attacks are thought to come from rebels within Syria.

With the current GPS jamming out of Syria, most commercial aircraft traffic flying into Ben Gurion International Airport is significantly affected as flights cross from over the coast from the Mediterranean. Longer flight tracks deeper southeast into Israel are necessary, probably relying on VOR and DME ground station waypoints before turning back northwest to capture the instrument landing system (ILS) into the airport. This costs time and fuel and causes aircraft to overfly settlements where noise can be a real problem.

Most readily available jammer electronics only output interference disrupting GPS L1, which is most commonly installed for vehicle tracking and UAV guidance. InfiniDome has successfully protected trucking, UAV operations and others in Israel and around the world with its Infinidome GPSdome-1 and GPSdome-2 anti-jam products.

Two antennas 10 cm to 25 cm apart enable GPSDome-1 algorithms to detect and null out a GPS L1 jammer. GPSDome-2 accommodates up to four antennas and can null up to three directional signals on both GPS L1 and L2 or GPS L1 and GLONASS L1. 

InfiniDome is currently working with an aerospace company to integrate its anti-jam technology with airborne inertial/GPS and qualify the integrated system for use in civil aviation, with the objective of maintaining max 3% drift when fully jammed. This will introduce certified anti-jam technology into civil aviation use — something that will provide some jamming protection, which airlines desperately need going forward. In addition, other high-end UAV manufacturers are potential customers for this new system. 

While the ongoing conflict and the devastating loss of life is forefront as each day of the war passes, these anti-jam solutions may ultimately help solve signal degradation problems. While there is going to be a significant impact on commercial airline travel to and from Israel while hostilities continue, we can maybe see the way to a possible long-term solution for the intense jamming from which the region has suffered for many years. 

GMV has been selected by BMW Group to supply its safe and precise positioning technology, GMV GSharp, for the next generation of BMW Group’s autonomous vehicles.

GSharp is equipped with an onboard positioning engine (PE) software and a GNSS corrections service, allowing vehicles to collect augmentation data and safety-related information for computing an accurate and reliable user position.

Both the correction service and positioning engine are developed following the ISO 26262 and ISO 21448 standards to ensure compliance with safety requirements. The solution also complies with the concept of security-from-design as per ISO 21434, including the necessary counter-measures in the SW and system and in the GNSS related attack detection or anti-spoofing and anti-jamming schemes.

The most demanding automotive project management practices and industry standards for software engineering (A-SPICE CL3) have been applied during its development.

In addition to the software side, GMV’s solution relies on a secure and redundant physical infrastructure. GMV owns and operates a worldwide GNSS station network, which provides the GNSS raw data needed to generate the corrections. These corrections are computed within two physically independent data centers, providing GMV’s solution the required availability levels for automated driving applications.

Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon has developed the Leica BLK2GO PULSE, its first-person laser scanner that combines lidar sensor technology with the original Leica BLK2GO form factor. The technology is set to be released in early 2024.  

The scanner offers users a rapid, simple and intuitive first-person scanning method that can be controlled with a smartphone, and delivers full-color 3D point clouds instantly in the field.

The BLK2GO PULSE was built in collaboration with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation to combine Sony’s advanced time-of-flight (ToF) image sensors with Leica Geosystems’ GrandSLAM technology, resulting in a dual ToF hand–held scanner.

The product is designed for indoor applications such as the creation of 3D digital twins and 2D floor plans. It includes first-person scanning capabilities and instant data availability, allowing users to immediately download, view and share colorized 3D point clouds and images from the field.  Scans can then be uploaded to Reality Cloud Studio, Hexagon’s cloud application for reality capture data visualization, collaboration and storage.