Russian Launches Another GLONASS-M Satellite

Russia launched another GLONASS-M satellite on Friday (April 26, 2013) on a Soyuz 2-1b rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

IGS Launches Real-Time Service for High-Precision GNSS

The International GNSS Service (IGS), a worldwide federation of agencies involved in high-precision GNSS) applications, has announced the launch of its Real-Time Service (RTS).

The RTS is a global scale GNSS orbit and clock correction service that enables real-time precise point positioning (PPP) and related applications requiring access to IGS low latency products. The RTS is offered in beta as a GPS-only service for the development and testing of applications.

Furuno to Launch New Multi-GNSS Receiver Chips, Modules This Summer

Furuno Electric Company has announced that new multi-GNSS receiver chips eRideOPUS 6 and eRideOPUS 7 — with active anti-jamming, multipath mitigation, and dead reckoning interfaces — will be available to the market beginning August 2013.

The eRideOPUS 7 receiver chip can process GPS and GLONASS signals (with a combined antenna), satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) transmissions, Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), and — with a software update —Galileo signals. The eRideOPUS 6 is not GLONASS-capable.

Letters: Get a Start on GNSS Interoperability Now

“The GNSS Quartet” (January-February 2013, Inside GNSS, aptly named and coauthored by Glen Gibbons, Dee Ann Divis, and Peter Gutierrez) is reminiscent of Dr. Brad Parkinson’s observation about “interchangeability” at his ION GNSS 2011 plenary session. With interoperability taken to its logical level of completion, a position solution should be readily obtainable from four satellites, each belonging to a different constellation.

GNSS Hotspots

1. LATE LAUNCHES
Cape Canaveral and Plesetsk
√ [updated April 1] After three delays, a single GLONASS-M satellite will go up from Plesetsk space center on April 26. The United States will send up SVN66, the fourth GPSIIF satellite— on an Atlas V launcher for the first time—during the early evening of May 15. It had been delayed from March.

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.

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.

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.