Raytheon has delivered the Wide Area Augmentation System Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting 6 satellite navigation payload to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to broadcast the WAAS message, which corrects errors in GPS satellite signals, provides expanded coverage, improves accuracy and increases reliability.

The WAAS GEO 6 payload is now operational and fully integrated into the WAAS network, working with two other WAAS satellite payloads already in orbit.

The SES-15 satellite hosting Raytheon’s WAAS GEO 6 payload was launched in 2017 and completed extensive system integration in July 2019.

GEO 6 replaces an older WAAS geostationary satellite that had reached its end-of-service life.

About WAAS. Developed and installed by Raytheon for the FAA, WAAS is a North American satellite-based augmentation system that increases GPS satellite signal accuracy for precision approach at 200 feet altitude to meet strict air navigation performance and safety requirements for all classes of aircraft in all phases of flight.

WAAS contains space and ground equipment that works together to identify GPS satellite corrections.

Operational since 2003, the WAAS network consists of three geostationary satellites and 49 terrestrial-based stations dispersed across the continental U.S., as well as Alaska, Canada, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

“Never has a consistent and precise GPS signal been more critical to ensuring safety of flight,” said Matt Gilligan, vice president of Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services business. “As the airspace increases in complexity, there is absolutely no room for error.”

To learn more about Raytheon’s portfolio of air traffic management solutions, visit here.

MicroSurvey has released MicroSurvey CAD 2020. MicroSurvey CAD is powered by the latest IntelliCAD 9.2 engine, providing users with unencumbered survey drafting and calculation workflows, including COGO, point tools for gridline-based projects, traverse input and adjustment, misclosure reporting, common data collector support, 3D surface representation and computation, corridor design, point cloud management and more.

MicroSurvey CAD is perpetually licensed and is powered by IntelliCAD which is compatible with AutoCAD drawing files. With five available feature levels — Basic, Standard, Premium, Ultimate and Studio — MicroSurvey CAD gives users the choice between several tiers of features to ensure they are getting precisely the tools and price point they need.

Notable improvements in MicroSurvey CAD 2020 include:

• IntelliCAD 9.2 which includes full support for AutoCAD 2018-2020 .dwg files, performance enhancements, new BIM tools, a block editor, start page, drawing cleanup tools, selection cycling, digital signatures, and much more;
• Arc Labels have been drastically improved to utilize ArcAlignedText objects, which can be slid along an arc or polyline arc, in/out from the radius point, flipped upside down, and detected in the Lot Closure routine. Text on Arc also utilizes the ArcAlignedText objects to be editable as a single entity;
• Upgraded CSMap Library includes over 125 new coordinate systems for Africa, Asia, Europe, Australasia, and the USA

Details are available in the MicroSurvey CAD 2020 Release Notes.

As with all of its major software, MicroSurvey offers free trial versions.

CHC Navigation has launched its LT700H RTK Android tablet, designed to increase efficiency and productivity of the mobile field workforce in applications requiring centimeter-to-decimeter positioning accuracy.

Portable, rugged and versatile, the LT700H enables precision GIS data collection, forensic mapping, construction site layout, environmental surveys, landscaping and earthmoving jobs.

Powered by 184-channel high-performance GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou module and a superior tracking GNSS helical antenna, the LT700H provides position availability in demanding environments. Its integrated 4G modem ensures seamless communication from field-to-office and robust connectivity to GNSS real-time kinematic (RTK) networks corrections.

“With the LT700H RTK Tablet, we are offering a professional and accurate GNSS solution to any mobile applications requiring high-portability,” said George Zhao, CEO of CHC Navigation. “The LT700H enables further use of GNSS technology, from single operator to companies with large field crew.”

Combined with CHCNAV Landstar 7 field data-collection software, the LT700H has a vibrant 8-inch IPS sunlight-viewable screen that perfectly displays GIS data tables, vector and raster maps or high-resolution pictures.

The LT700H Google GMS certification guarantees compatibility with any common GIS and mapping Android applications.

News from the European Space Agency

There are more than five billion satnav devices on Earth. Along with smartphones and mobile receivers, this figure includes networks of fixed receiver stations, used to improve accuracy. An ESA-led project will harness these networks to provide an ongoing overview of satnav performance from the global to national and regional scale.

“The general assumption is that Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) services can always be relied on, which is true 99% of the time,” comments Michael Pattinson of Nottingham Scientific Ltd in the UK, developing this new project for ESA.

“That’s fine for the ordinary smartphone user, but for safety-critical applications, in particular, we need to know exactly when systems are not performing optimally, and why.

“Current performance monitoring is often partial, based around individual signal frequencies or constellations, carried out by the service operators themselves. With our new COLOSSUS – Crowd-Sourced Platform for GNSS Anomaly Identification, Isolation and Attribution Analysis – data platform, we’ll be creating the most detailed possible picture of overall performance from the user side, covering all satellite constellations, signal frequencies and receiver types.

“The aim is to immediately identify system failures, faults and other errors on an immediate, autonomous basis. And we’ll do this by harnessing a resource that is already out there: gathering and analysing positioning data from networks of ‘continuously operating receiver stations’, known as CORS for short.”

There are many hundreds of these CORS stations across the globe. By performing positioning continuously at a fixed site in the landscape, they can be used as a standard, serving to identify and subtract measurement errors to boost positioning accuracy on a localised basis.

Many CORS networks have been established for scientific uses, such as the worldwide International GNSS Station (IGS) network, used as a standard geographical reference and to measure shifts in the solid Earth, oceans and ice.

Others have been set up by national mapping agencies, such as the Ordnance Survey in the UK. There are also private-sector networks, employed for improving the accuracy of services such as land surveying, air service providers, road charging or driverless cars.

“Each network is different,” adds Michael. “Some make their data freely available, others involve registering or payment. We’re talking to operators to allow us to access their data in exchange for sharing our results, and they’re very interested in accessing such performance metrics.

“With measurements from so many sites, when a failure does occur we’ll be able to pin down its likely source almost immediately. Is it localised interference, or does it have a wider impact? Is it atmospheric disturbance? Is only a single model of GNSS receiver affected, or multiple types? Is it a problem with a single satellite, multiple satellites or even multiple constellations?”

The company is also deploying its own CORS receivers as an additional data source, at the same time as it develops and tests its processing algorithms. The aim is to begin testing the cloud-based COLOSSUS towards the end of 2019 and bring the service online in the first few months of 2020.

“Once the service starts, it will run continuously, just like the CORS stations themselves,” adds Michael. “Our goal is for COLOSSUS to become a key player in GNSS performance monitoring, building up a database of all anomalies that occur and their consequences in terms of constellations, geographical regions and receiver types, to give users, service providers, and regulators an informed sense of how much ‘trust’ to place in these systems.”

This project is supported through ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP, applying ESA’s hard-won expertise from Galileo and Europe’s EGNOS satellite augmentation system to new satellite navigation and — more widely — positioning, navigation and timing challenges.

About the Author: Allison Barwacz

Allison Barwacz is the digital media manager for North Coast Media (NCM). She completed her undergraduate degree at Ohio University where she received a Bachelor of Science in magazine journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. She works across a number of digital platforms, which include creating e-newsletters, writing articles and posting across social media sites. She also creates content for NCM’s Pit & Quarry magazine, Portable Plants magazine and Geospatial Solutions. Her understanding of the ever-changing digital media world allows her to quickly grasp what a target audience desires and create content that is appealing and relevant for any client across any platform.

This month, the University of Texas at Austin became a major research hub for the U.S. Army Futures Command.

Last week the Futures Command broke ground on a $130 million research facility at the Texas A&M University System’s RELLIS Campus in Bryan, Texas. Efforts at both locations will include research on advanced and assured positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems.

The Army Futures Command was established in Austin during the summer of 2018. It has been working to build long-standing partnerships with University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University System, and others in central Texas.

“The Army designated UT Austin as a strategic partner,” said Professor Todd Humphreys, faculty lead for the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas, Austin. “UT will focus on two key areas: assured PNT and robotics.” Humphreys has a background in both.

Humphreys says his organization is eager to begin working with the Army. The main focus of his PNT efforts will be “… leveraging the tens of thousands of communications satellites projected to be in low earth orbit in the next few years for PNT services,” he said. “We are working with a major provider and already have some interesting results we can share.”

A member of Humphreys’s team is expected to discuss this work at a meeting of the National PNT Advisory Board next month.

A secondary focus for Humphreys’s lab will be development of integrated sensing equipment with GNSS, low-earth-orbit PNT, radar, vision, inertial, and communications that can deliver assured PNT for the Army’s mounted platforms.

“Assured PNT is one of the principal platforms we are working on,” said Greg Winfree, agency director of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a state agency and member of the A&M System. Winfree is also a board member for the RNT Foundation. “Our efforts will be complementary and collaborative with UT’s lead role.”

Winfree sees new PNT sources and their intersection with automated vehicle technologies, drones and robotics as an ideal area for his organization’s contributions. “Our core themes include four application areas that the A&M System could credibly bring forward: RF testing and analysis, vehicle communications and connectivity, unmanned aerial systems, and precision agriculture.”

This could generate a number of spinoffs for civilian agriculture. “Precision Agriculture is a key consideration since reliance upon GPS is a core technological underpinning. Texas A&M has the premier agricultural science program in the country.”

He sees specific areas ripe for investigation by A&M as including:

• Creating software defined chips/modules and developing miniaturized antennae for new signal sources
• Addressing the potential for degraded sensitivity posed by antenna miniaturization
• Developing multi-frequency radios and sensors to allow automated vehicles, drones and robotics to seamlessly utilize GPS along with signals from sources such as ELoran, DSRC, C-V2X, and 5G
• Developing AI equipped aerial and underwater drones to test functionality and reliability of signals in challenging environments.

The A&M System has a strong team to bring to bear on such issues, according to Winfree. It includes Dr. Stephen Cambone, associate vice chancellor for research security for the A&M System and the first DoD undersecretary for cybersecurity, and Dr. Byul Hur, assistant professor of engineering technology and industrial distribution and head of the A&M Radio Frequency Test Group.

---

Dana A. Goward is the president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation.

Eos Locate for Collector for ArcGIS enables utilities to map buried assets with submeter or centimeter accuracy

Eos Positioning Systems Inc.  (Eos) has released its underground utility asset-mapping solution: Eos Locate for Collector for ArcGIS.

Eos Locate for Collector combines three core technologies: Eos Arrow GNSS receivers, Esri Collector, and the Vivax-Metrotech vLoc Series of locator devices.

With Eos Locate for Collector, one field worker can collect both GNSS locations and locator data (such as depth below cover) for any buried asset including water, sewer, electric, cable, gas, fiber infrastructure and more. They can do so quickly, accurately and without the need for any additional field or office support.

“We are giving our Arrow GNSS customers a solution today that allows them to combine both locator data and high-accuracy locations in web maps,” Eos CTO Jean-Yves Lauture said. “This greatly simplifies their workflow by allowing one person to do underground locates and GIS mapping simultaneously.”

“This is a big step forward for utility organizations who need to gain better visibility of their infrastructure,” said Doug Morgenthaler, Esri program manager. “With today’s technology, utilities can already see where new assets are being put in the ground. The challenge historically has been figuring out where existing assets are.”

Eos Locate for Collector not only streamlines underground-asset mapping, but also improves office production times. It eliminates the need to manually combine datasets from the locator and GPS devices within ArcGIS.

“Seeing all that information from utility locators and GPS receivers packaged directly into a GIS application is exceptional,” Vivax-Metrotech Eastern Regional Sales Manager Kelvin Cherrington said. “This solution will help utilities create maps of their underground assets with a much more modern and efficient methodology.”

Indiana American Water Early Adoption

Earlier this year, Indiana American Water approached Eos to seek a solution that consolidated their utility-locate workflow with their Arrow and Collector field work.

“We had the manpower to put paint down,” said Todd Chapman, Indiana American Water Senior GIS Analyst. “But we would need to hire another person to map the locations with our Arrow Gold GNSS receivers.”

Chapman estimates Eos Locate for Collector will cut their field time in half as well as enable the creation of extremely accurate buried-infrastructure maps in ArcGIS.

“Previously, we were seeing that our old water mains could be off by up to 20 feet,” Chapman said. “With the new Eos Locate for Collector, we’re seeing that it’s accurate to under an inch.”

The initial release of Eos Locate for Collector runs on Apple’s iOS iPhones and iPads and supports the vLoc Series from Vivax Metrotech. Future releases of Eos Locate for Collector will support additional locator models including the vScan series.

With accurate digital twins of their buried infrastructure, utilities across sectors can expect improvements to safety, damage prevention, field efficiency and regulatory compliance.

“Not only does this mean quicker responses to 811 tickets and fewer liabilities during field digs,” Lauture said. “But it also constitutes a major step forward toward the highly efficient future of 3D asset management and viable augmented-reality workflows.”

Uber Elevate, Uber’s aviation division, unveiled a new food-delivery drone at Forbes’ Under 30 Summit in Detroit on Monday, according to various news reports.

The six-rotor UAV is vertical- and horizontal flight-capable, Uber Elevate head Eric Allison said at the conference. It has a range of 18 miles and an 18-minute flight time, and can carry enough food for two adults.

The drones will land in designated safe-landing zones, where human couriers will pick up the food and bring it to customers’ doors. The company might also land the drones on parked Uber cars (tagged with QR codes), which will carry the meals to their final destinations.

Uber’s Elevate Cloud Systems will track and guide the drone, as well as notify a delivery driver when and where to pick up the food.

The program is expected to roll out next summer in San Diego, where Uber Elevate has been testing urban aerial delivery via the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP).

Canada will be delaying the implementation dates for Phases 1 and 2 of its ADS-B Out Performance Requirements Mandate, according to a report by the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association.

ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast. Deadline for aircraft in the United States to be equipped with ADS-B Out capability is Jan. 1, 2020.

The original deadline for implementation in Canada was set for Feb. 25, 2021, for Phase 1-Class A airspace and Class E airspace above FL600, and Jan. 27, 2022 (Phase 2-Class B airspace).

Because numerous industry operators have stated they will not be able to meet those deadlines, new Phase 1 and 2 implementation dates will be set.

Transport Canada-Civil Aviation (TCCA) has also stated that some regulatory matters must be dealt with before implementation can take place.

There is no word yet on how this might affect the implementation of remaining phases — C, D and E), according to the report. Nav Canada’s performance requirements mandate document states that implementation of the different phases will be a minimum of one year apart.

ADS-B Out. ADS-B Out broadcasts information about an aircraft’s GPS location, altitude, ground speed and other data to ground stations and other aircraft once per second.

Air traffic controllers and aircraft equipped with ADS-B In can immediately receive this information.

Tbe ADS-B offers more precise tracking of aircraft compared to radar technology, which sweeps for position information every 5 to 12 seconds.