South Korea Relaunches Its eLoran Program

After a delay to reformulate the system design, South Korea is moving ahead to implement a national enhanced Loran (eLoran) system to provide uninterrupted positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services in the wake of GPS jamming by North Korea.

Galileo Upgrade Will Cause Temporary Decline in Service

Galileo’s operation controllers will temporarily stop updating satellite orbital positions in the system’s navigation messages beginning near the end of this month in order to help implement upgrades in the ground mission segment, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced today (January 19, 2015).

Although the Galileo satellites will continue to transmit navigation signals, the generation and uplink of updated navigation messages will be interrupted during the last week of January for about five weeks.

GNSS Hotspots

1. SLAVE TRADE
Bangkok, Thailand

The Party Crashers

These days getting the United States, Russia, China, and Europe to agree on a common policy seems to be an increasingly rare event.

That’s why the long-standing comity among system operators in the GNSS sphere is particularly notable and welcome. “Interoperable and compatible” is the first principle espoused by the four nations under the aegis of the International Committee on GNSS.

Trimble Launches Timing Portfolio for Mobile Telecom

Trimble has introduced a new portfolio of GNSS-based time and frequency products to address the synchronization needs of the fast-growing 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) small-cell telecom market.

Mobile telecom networks, whether 3G, 4G LTE, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) wireless technologies, or a combination, need high-precision synchronization and syntonization.

DoD Seeks Sources for 50,000 eLoran Receivers

In a nod to the usefulness of international enhanced Loran (eLoran) systems the U.S. Department OF Defense (DoD) in January began a search for companies able to supply some 50,000 eLoran receivers. Meanwhile a multi-agency team continues sketching out the structure of a potential U.S. eLoran system for federal officials weighing a relaunch of the program as a backup to GPS.

RTCA Begins Standards Work on Quartet of New GNSS-Related Aviation Devices

The group that sets standards for aircraft navigation receivers is planning work on four new types of devices including the first multi-signal and multi-constellation aviation receivers and a more cost effective navigation system to help planes traverse GPS-impaired areas.

From Data Schemes to Supersonic Codes

A decade has passed since the first GNSS system-level authentication protocols were proposed, and yet the current ongoing discussion is still, “Do we really need GNSS signal authentication?” Indeed, the current argument is whether we need authentication at the system level (the satellite broadcast service) or whether user-based authentication (anti-spoofing) is sufficient for a number of application requirements.

FCC Raises Questions about U.S. Access to Non-GPS GNSS

No reality show contestant ever neared the finish line without the producers serving up another challenge. And so it is for would-be multi-GNSS users in the United States.

After dodging budget cuts, thwarting other teams’ attempts to grab critical frequencies, and dealing with jamming and technical problems, members of the U.S. GNSS community were thrown another curve late last year when they learned that signals from GLONASS and other international constellations must be authorized for use in the United States.

Frank van Diggelen: Riding the GNSS Wave

SIDEBAR: Frank van Diggelen’s Compass Points

“It all traces back to my parents,” says Frank van Diggelen. “My father, Tromp van Diggelen, was a surfer. He taught me to surf and swim, in that order, when I was five. I was racing sailboats before I was 10, and there’s a lot of navigation there. Even when you’re just on a lake, the racing is all about reading the wind, understanding angles of convergence, velocity-made-good, and so on.”