DHS Buys IEC's 3-D Locator

Latest Industry News • January/February 2007 issue

January 31, 2007

Inside GNSS, January/February 2007

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L-3 Interstate Electronics Corporation (IEC), Anaheim, California, has been awarded a preproduction contract for Advanced Three-Dimension Locators by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Advanced Research Project Agency. The contract represents an initial step by DHS to provide a solution for accurately identifying the location of emergency response personnel in disaster or emergency situations.

The new systems locate personnel using integrated GPS Indoor Navigation Technology developed by IEC. Using the locator system, incident commanders are able to see the 3-D position of all personnel in the response team, even if they are within buildings and structures.

Under the contract, IEC will produce more than four dozen units for test and evaluation. Once fully developed, the locators have potential use in thousands of applications for police, fire, and emergency medical personnel.

The new IEC system incorporates patented networking capability that links individual GPS locators worn by first responders into a network that shares GPS satellite and other navigation information. Thus, if one locator is receiving only one satellite signal, it can share information from other locators receiving additional satellite signals enabling a precise location to be determined.

L-3's network-sharing technology communicates between locators via RF (radio frequency) transmissions; personnel location information can be transmitted to the incident command center. The uniqueness of the IEC locators is the ability to reliably determine personnel locations, even when one or more GPS locators cannot receive the four satellite signals that are usually required.