The PNT Boom

The navigation world is booming with new ideas at the moment to meet some of the greatest positioning challenges of our times. To realize demanding applications — such as reliable pedestrian navigation, lane identification, and robustness against interference, jamming and spoofing — we need to bring these different ideas together.

East Meets West: Hemisphere GNSS's New Era

Although not on the scale or at the strategic level of China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s takeover of Canada’s Nexen Inc., the recent acquisition of the Precise Products business of Hemisphere GPS by Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd. marks a notable achievement in the GNSS world — the acquisition of a North American manufacturer with core GNSS receiver intellectual property by a Chinese enterprise.

Spectracom Announces BeiDou Upgrade Plans for Its Simulators

Spectracom has announced the upgrade capability of its GNSS simulators to China’s BeiDou system.

The Spectracom GSG Series 5 and Series 6 GNSS simulators, released last year, are designed to be field upgradeable to simulate current and future GNSS constellations.

The recent release of the Beidou ICD specification has enabled Spectracom to ensure that its GSG Series 5 and Series 6 equipment will be able to simulate these satellites with a simple field-upgradeable firmware update.

Hemisphere GPS Sells Non-Agricultural Operations to Chinese Company

[Updated February 4, 2013] Hemisphere GPS Inc. moved closer to a final exit from the OEM GNSS space yesterday (January 31, 2013) by signing a definitive agreement to sell the business assets associated with its non-agricultural operations to the Canadian subsidiary of Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co. Ltd., which will operate under the name  The cash sale price was $14.96 million.

Markets and Multi-Frequency GNSS

Q: What will limit the spread of multi-frequency GNSS receivers into the mass market?

A: To set the scene, we need to define our terms of reference. By multi-frequency we mean receivers that operate with navigation signals in more than just the standard upper L-band from about 1560–1610 MHz where we find GPS L1, Galileo E1, Compass B1, and GLONASS L1. The obvious additional frequency is the lower L-band, from about 1170 to 1300 MHz, where again the same four constellations have signals.

The GNSS Merry Go Round

The whole GNSS world should have a warm spot in its heart for centripetal forces.

After all, a centripetal force — in this case, gravity — is what keeps planets in rotation around our Sun and satellites, around the Earth.

Centrifugal force, of course, is what throws us off a merry-go-round or carousel. Centripetal force is what keeps us on board.

For those on a merry-go-round, the centripetal force is not gravity, but rather the tensile strength of our arms pulling us toward the center of rotation, at right angles to the motion of our seats.

No Time Like the Present for Europe in Asia

Galileo promoters have always tended to try to link the program to new jobs and economic growth, arguing that once Europe’s global satnav system is up and running, new services will be possible and opportunities for EU companies will abound.

Such arguments needed to be made, to bolster the chronically tenuous political support Galileo has garnered from the European Union (EU) powers-that-be and the chronic lack of faith among just about everybody in Europe’s ability to actually make the system fly.

The GNSS Quartet

The world’s four GNSS programs aren’t exactly a classical quartet, weaving Mozart stanzas in disciplined execution.

They are more like a new jazz combo, riffing off one another while still trying to get in the groove.

Whatever image the metaphor evokes, if the world’s GNSS programs want to hit that high note of interoperability (to which they all say they aspire), the operators of GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, and Galileo must learn to harmonize better.

NovAtel Announces New BeiDou Capability for Its GNSS Products

NovAtel has announced support for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System on its OEM6 family and selected OEMStar GNSS receivers.

The long-anticipated BeiDou Interface Control Document (ICD) release is a
significant milestone that facilitates global acceptance of the Chinese
GNSS system into the growing range of satellite-based positioning
applications, the company says.