US Space-Based Position, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board

Report on October 2015 Meeting by Matt Higgins, IGNSS President

In October 2015, I attended the most recent meeting of the US Position, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board in Boulder Colorado. The PNT Advisory Board is a Presidential committee that advises the U.S. Government on national and international PNT related issues and is currently convened by NASA.  I am one of the international members of the Board.

The official minutes of the meeting will be made available on the gps.gov website in due course. In the meantime, the agenda & presentations from the October meeting are already available at:
http://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2015-10/

Inside GNSS compiled a summary of the meeting in a story entitled “PNT Advisory Board Hears about GPS Economic Impact, ABC Study, and Space Service Volume.” See:
http://www.insidegnss.com/node/4702

As outlined in that story, this was the first meeting under the new Chair John Stenbit. Inside GNSS have another story about John and the four other new members of the Board at:
http://www.insidegnss.com/node/4528

Of the issues outlined in the Inside GNSS summary of the meeting, I think the work on the Adjacent Band Compatibility (ABC) Assessment by the US Department of Transportation is important for all GNSS users globally and especially for equipment and software developers. Karen Van Dyke’s presentation to the Board is well worth reading for its coverage of the ABC Assessment but also for useful information about the planned closure of many inland stations in the Nationwide DGPS Network. An important point for Australia to note is that the availability of the free-to-air US Space Based Augmentation System, WAAS and standardised SBAS capable chips in many GNSS devices is a key reason why use of the DGPS network has dropped off in recent years. Karen also gave a nice summary of studies into so-called “Complementary PNT”. eLoran continues to be a key technology for Complementary PNT and is of interest in the US as a possible backup to GPS. A major focus is as a backup for precise time transfer in critical infrastructure such as energy and financial networks. (See U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Civil GPS/PNT Update by Karen Van Dyke).

In my opinion, the case for eLoran’s to be a backup for positioning is less strong; especially for precise positioning in agriculture, construction, mining and geospatial applications, where it cannot achieve the accuracy required. Those high precision applications account for more than half of the economic value of GPS documented in the study being overseen by the Board (See Irv Leveson’s update presentation on “The Economic Impact of GPS - Furthering the Analysis”).

The Board was spared me giving my usual report on Australian issues. Instead an update on latest developments in Australia’s National Positioning Infrastructure was presented by Grant Hausler from Geoscience Australia. We continue to be seen as sophisticated PNT users and Grant’s presentation was very well received. His outline of ACMA’s recent changes to the way GNSS spectrum is to be managed in Australia was of particular interest to the Board, given ongoing concerns with spectrum in the US. (See “International Update from Australia” by Grant Hausler)

The Australian presence at the Board was also bolstered by a presentation by Locata on recent testing by the US Naval Observatory’s of Locata’s precise time transfer capability. The USNO did precise time transfer through chains of Locatalites and demonstrated standard deviations of 51 picoseconds when using 2 nodes and rising to 198 picoseconds hopping across 5 nodes for the transfers. It is important to note that if Locata networks were established as a backup for precise time transfer (e.g. for communication or banking networks in urban areas) a by-product would be its value for precise positioning and potentially with indoor coverage. (See: “TimeLoc: A New Ultra-Precise Synchronization Technology” by Nunzio Gambale).

All of the presentations to the Board were very valuable but if I had to single out a few more to recommend to IGNSS members, they would be:

·  “GPS Interference Detection & Geolocation Technology” by Joe Rolli from Harris Corp;

·  “Multi-constellation Air and Sea Navigation Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (ARAIM)” by Per Enge;

·  “Reflections on the Ten Year Anniversary – Lessons Learned” by Tony Russo;

·  “Overcoming Obstacles in Creating a Harmonious Multi-GNSS World” Dave Turner’s summary of issues being tackled by the UN ICG and their relevance for the US Board;

·  “Benefits of Using Multi-GNSS for Mobile/Cellular Platforms” by Greg Turetzky;

·  “European Union Activities on GNSS Spectrum Protection” by Pieter De Smet and including some detailed studies of actual interference event in Europe;

·  “Project Overview of The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System” by Yoshiyuki Murai representing the recently established private sector operator of QZSS, known as QZS System Services Inc. (QSS).

Another feature of this Board meeting was that the Tenth Meeting of the UN International Committee on GNSS (ICG) was held immediately after the Board meeting in Boulder. That enabled a number of the international GNSS providers to also make presentations (some are mentioned above) and help broaden the thinking of the Board beyond its usual GPS focus.

I was able to stay for the first few days of ICG-10 but not for the conclusion, so detailed reporting on that meeting is not included here.  Even so, the ICG-10 Presentations, Joint Statement from the meeting, Summary of the Providers' Forum and Recommendations of the Working Groups are now available on the ICG Information Portal. See:
http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/icg/meetings/ICG-2015.html

The next meeting of the US PNT Advisory Board will be in May or June 2016, in the Washington DC area.

IGNSS 2015 Symposium Best Peer Reviewed Paper Award Winner, Shenghong Li receiving his Award Plaque from IGNSS Board Member Alison Kealy at the IGNSS 2015 Symposium on the Gold Coast in July 2015

LEX Signal Demonstration at IGNSS 2015

Conference delegates attending IGNSS 2015 will be able to participate in a live LEX signal demonstration.

Conference delegates who attended IGNSS2013  participated in the first LEX signal demonstration in Australia.

The LEX signal, being transmitted by the Japanese “Michibiki” satellite allows high accuracy positioning anytime, anywhere in Australia.

Kazuhiro and Yaka from JAXA testing for the first live LEX signal demo at IGNSS 2013

US Space-Based Position, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board

Report by Matt Higgins, IGNSS President

In December 2014, I attended the most recent meeting of the US Position, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board in Washington, D.C.  

The PNT Advisory Board is a Presidential committee that advises the U.S. Government on national and international PNT related issues and is currently convened by NASA.  

I am one of six international members of the Board.

The agenda & presentations from the December meeting are now available at:

http://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2014-12/

The Advisory Board has two working groups, one on “Assured Availability” and another on “Economic Value of PNT”.

The work of the first working group is strongly aligned to the “Protect, Toughen and Augment” concept developed by the Board’s Acting Chair, Brad Parkinson.

Ron Hatch from John Deere, Co-Chairs the “Protect” sub-group and has written a nice summary of the meeting for GPS World, available at:

http://gpsworld.com/pnt-board-report-gps-critical-infrastructure-concern-over-international-signals/

I will not duplicate the details of Ron’s report here but below I have fleshed out a few of the key issues from my perspective.

A feature of Ron’s report is the Board’s discussion of spectrum protection and the joint presentation by Paige Atkins from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and Ron Repasi from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  

This led to a robust discussion about the need to not only protect the spectrum for GPS but to also protect other GNSS, which are not well catered for under present spectrum rules and procedures.

I Co-Chair, with Terry McGurn, the sub-group looking at the “Augment” issue, within the PTA framework.  

Our group also covers international interaction issues.  

As in many countries, the US is interested is how to mitigate potential vulnerabilities affecting GNSS and is therefore interested in non-GNSS technologies such as eLoran and Locata (an Australian invention).

Presentations on the work of each of the sub-groups are also available on the meeting web page.

The meeting also had a number of very good presentations on key PNT application areas.  

A highlight from my perspective was a presentation by Andrew Bach from Juniper Networks on the Role of GPS & Precision Timing in the Financial Services Sector.  

Andrew gave us a feel for the scope of the application by pointing out that the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which provides clearing and settlement services to the financial markets, handles more than $24 quadrillion dollars worth of trading per year.  

He also pointed out that that there are more than 20 such organisation globally or around 300 quadrillion dollars globally!

Competition between stock markets and banks along with new regulations are driving these companies towards needing to improve the precision of their timing of trades and to also move to an absolute time basis.  

The goal is micro-second synchronisation, which can only be delivered globally using GNSS.

Inside GNSS Magazine has since published a summary article that nicely complements Andrew’s Advisory Board Presentation (See: “Financial Networks Shifting to GPS-Stamped Precise Time” – at http://www.insidegnss.com/node/4355)

The next meeting of the US PNT Advisory Board is scheduled for May and I am looking forward to being able to report on any hot issues from that meeting at our IGNSS Conference on the Gold Coast in July.