GPS World - January 2008 - (Page 8)

EXPERT ADVICE eLoran, Superhero Sidekick! Sally Basker T oday, GPS is the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) superhero. The miracle of our age is that over a period of just two decades or so, GPS has become a massmarket commodity. We have massaged the physics; watched broadband mobile communications become a reality; and seen computers become smaller, faster, and much more capable. The result: GPS chips for a few dollars in mobile phones; GPS in-car navigation systems for a few hundred dollars that protect marital harmony; and new trafﬁc signs to warn the unwary. All of us eagerly await a positive eLoran policy decision in the United States. Marvel Comics tells us that even Spider-Man uses GPS: “while allied with Iron Man, Spider-Man wore a new costume that was equipped with … a shortrange GPS microwave communications system (with a built-in ﬁre, police, and emergency scanner).” But, like the very best superheroes, GPS has its ﬂaws. Spider-Man is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor omnipresent — and he has a terrible work/life balance! is is why he works with other superheroes. Like Spider-Man, GPS provides safety nets for the unwary that we come to rely on, but it isn’t always available. Indeed, there are real concerns about the level of our critical infrastructure’s reliance on its weak signals; signals that my colleague, David Last, describes as perhaps the next jamming or hacking adventure playground for young, spotty youths without a girlfriend! Sidekick. is is why enhanced Loran, eLoran, is GPS’s new best friend and superhero sidekick. It is independent of GPS with dissimilar failure modes and delivers complementary levels of performance to multi-modal users. is time last year, a small and select band of international, fun-loving, radionavigation professionals met at the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center in Washington to agree on the baseline deﬁnition for eLoran. Over a three-day period we masticated, meditated, and mediated, and produced the International Loran Association’s eLoran Deﬁnition Document. Our “elevator speech” encapsulates the deﬁnition and beneﬁts: Enhanced Loran is an internationally-standardized positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service for use by many modes of transport and in other applications. eLoran meets the accuracy, availability, integrity, and continuity performance requirements for aviation non-precision instrument approaches, maritime harbor entrance and approach, land-mobile vehicle navigation, and location-based services, and is a precise source of time and frequency for, say, telecommunications. eLoran is an independent, dissimilar complement to GNSS. It allows GNSS users to retain the safety, security, and economic beneﬁts of GNSS, even when their satellite services are disrupted. So, how’s eLoran going? We have made real progress worldwide during 2007. Authoritative ﬁgures in our GPS in- dustry are now welcoming eLoran as a way of securing our current GPS beneﬁts as demonstrated in recent issues of GPS World. In March 2007, Len Jacobson said that we need eLoran “to extend and defend the global positioning and timing grid based on GPS today and in the future based on GNSS.” In May, Jim Doherty stated that “eLoran should extend and defend GPS into GPS-challenged areas and deter those who would interfere with GPS.” Finally, Bradford Parkinson, the “Father of GPS,” is reported by the U.S. National Space Based PNT Advisory Board as saying, “ e ultimate compliment to GPS is that it is taken for granted . . . A contingency augmentation, like eLoran, is essential and would act as a deterrent to terrorism.” e Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) has set up Special Committee 127 to deal with eLoran standardization. e ﬁrst meeting took place in Orlando, Florida, in October and there are already meetings planned for January, May, and November 2008. Its ﬁrst task is to update the existing signal-in-space standards before moving on to new eLoran data formats. Independent, Redundant. In the maritime world, there is growing recognition of the importance of a backup to GNSS. At its e-Navigation seminar in July, the International Association of Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities concluded that “independent and fully redundant position ﬁxing and timing systems are vital for the implementation of e-navigation” and that eLoran is capable of meeting the PNT requirements. e International Maritime Organization’s Navigation SubCommittee agreed in July that there was “a need to provide an internationally agreed alternative system for complementing the existing satellite navigation, SALLY BASKER is the director of Research and Radionavigation for the General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a member of GPS World’s Editorial Advisory Board. 8 GPS World | January 2008 www.gpsworld.com http://www.gpsworld.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of GPS World - January 2008

GPS - January 2008 Contents Out in Front Expert Advice The Money-Go-Round u-Nav Latest Acquisition Apples to Apples Global SBAS 2008 GPS Receiver Survey Advertisers Index & Company Directory The Manufacturer's Road Year of the Who Working Indoor Up and Down Good, Better, Best Marketplace Classifieds Seen + Heard

GPS World - January 2008

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