MobiNav

[Source: Aol defense]

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA: Google will soon make public information about virtually every ship at sea, giving the current location and identity even of American warships. Meanwhile, the company is consulting with the Navy and others about security issues.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Source: Inside GNSS]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a search for an atomic inertial sensor to measure orientation in GPS-denied environments. The Chip-Scale Combinatorial Atomic Navigator (C-SCAN) initiative seeks to create a sensor that integrates small size, low power consumption, high resolution of motion detection, and a fast startup time into a single package.

“When GPS is not available, gyroscopes provide orientation, accelerometers provide position, and oscillators provide timing. The new C-SCAN effort focuses on replacing bulky gyroscopes with a new inertial measurement unit (IMU) that is smaller, less expensive due to foundry fabrication and yields better performance.”

[Source: Broadcom]

The BCM47511 SoC solution is Broadcom’s latest generation of standalone receivers, featuring both integrated GPS and GLONASS. By leveraging the United States NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia’s Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS), Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) and the Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS), users have access to 59 satellites currently in orbit — nearly twice the coverage of GPS alone.

We can check here for more information about Broadcom’s BCM47511

[Source: GPS world]

EGNOS signals are potentially vulnerable, however, to the effects of high solar activity on the ionosphere — the electrically active upper layers of our atmosphere — which can cause signal « scintillations » and time delays.

This new effort will increase system robustness and service availability against severe ionospheric severe effects that began last year and are expected to continue until the peak of the solar cycle expected in 2013–14.

This illustration shows a CME blasting off the Sun’s surface in the direction of Earth.
The left portion is composed of an EIT 304 image superimposed on a LASCO C2 coronagraph.
Two to four days later, the CME cloud is shown striking and beginning to be
mostly deflected around the Earth’s magnetosphere. The blue paths emanating
from the Earth’s poles represent some of its magnetic field lines. The magnetic
cloud of plasma can extend to 30 million miles wide by the time it reaches earth.
These storms, which occur frequently, can disrupt communications and navigational
equipment, damage satellites, and even cause blackouts.

[source GPS World]

With the advancement in low cost inertial micro-electro-mechanical sensors (MEMS) design, it is now possible to integrate some of these sensors with GPS receivers. The concept is simple, but the development of such a complete system requires well-researched design specifications. Moreover, for a product to succeed, the end-user cost should be minimal without any compromise on the accuracy or robustness of the system. (>> more)

source: GPS World

Built around the C++ programming language, GPSTk primarily consists of two pieces, the afore-mentioned core library and the suite of applications. The library includes functions such as GPS time, ephemeris calculations, atmospheric delay models, position solutions, mathematics and an application framework. The applications suite includes basic transformations, observation data collection and conversion, file comparison and validation, data editing, ionosphere modeling, and autonomous and relative positioning.

OpenCellID is an open source project aiming to create a compelete database of CellID worldwide with their locations.

The data is available under the « creative common » license.

Mass market GPS applications have mainly focused on car navigation over the last five years and contributed to the wide-spread use of GPS receivers. A wide range of applications can be foreseen for pedestrians as well: multimodal navigation, local search, and social networking are a few. But the roll out of most accuracy-critical applications like e-tourism has been slowed by the difficulties of GPS-based positioning for pedestrians in urban areas.  more >>

The Boeing Company has been awarded a $153.5 million U.S. Naval Research Laboratory contract to demonstrate High Integrity Global Positioning System (GPS) technology concepts. The contract is expected to run through 2010. more>>

SiGe Semiconductor, Inc. has released the SE4150L GPS radio receiver featuring dual-antenna input capability for developing GPS products. The SE4150L is sampling now to lead customers and will be widely available beginning in July 2008. The device is supplied in a 4×4-millimeter QFN package, and is priced at less than US $1.50 in 10,000 quantities. The companion SE4150L-EK1 evaluation board and user guide can provide on-site applications assistance to customers for the design and integration of a complete GPS system. (>> more)