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The GPS/GNSS newsletter by Navtech Seminars
& GPS Supply,
the GPS professional's resource since 1984. |
| February 12, 2002 |
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Editor-in-Chief:
Carolyn P. McDonald
(send news items to cmcdonald@navtechgps.com)
Technical
Editor: Keith D. McDonald (satconsult@aol.com)
Production
& Design:
F'Lynne Didenko (fdidenko@navtechgps.com)
NOTE:
Welcome to "GPSetc.com
News" published
by Navtech Seminars & GPS Supply
- your source for GPS/GNSS
news!
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newsletters by date, go to our newsletter home
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Included
in this Newsletter:
(click on titles below to jump to news items)
1)
Navtech Receiver Survey Comments
2)
San Diego Classes in 5 Weeks!
3) Product News from Navtech GPS Supply
4)
See
Navtech Seminars' Photo Page!
5)
SVN-56 Scheduled for Launch in March
6)
GPS Constellation Status
7)
Galileo
8) Meeting
Notices
9)
On-site Course Concept - See Our New On-line Slide Show!
10)
GPS Jokes of the Day
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*
Please see the bottom of this page for:
a) How to subscribe to this newsletter
b) How to be removed from our email list
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1)
Navtech Receiver Survey Comments
Navtech GPS Supply Comments on GPS Receivers
January is a good time to review the state of GPS
receiver technology, especially with all the information
available to us in the comprehensive survey issued in January by
GPS World. This survey lists current GPS products and the
manufacturer’s technical specifications. Glen Gibbons and his
staff are to be congratulated for their contribution and service
to the GPS community in producing this excellent compendium. The
comments below are Navtech’s, and are intended to add some
analysis and additional information to that provided by GPS
World.
What’s New in GPS Receivers and Receiver Design?
In the GPS World survey we note that several
manufacturers have released new boards or receivers, and at
least five new companies have entered the GPS arena. Chip sets,
receiver boards and commercial receivers have evolved with
enhanced and ever changing capabilities.
Small GPS boards and chip sets
Market trends have been towards smaller boards
with lower power requirements. This trend facilitates the
widespread inclusion of GPS into cellular phones for E911
compliance, as well as GPS’s use in other portable electronic
devices. For example, the Motorola M12 Oncore board weighs less
than 11 grams, draws 225 mW of power and measures 40 x 10 x 60
mm. Recently, Global Locate came out with two chip sets; each
weighs less than a gram and draws about 1 mW of power on the
average. One of the Global Locate chipsets measures 8 x 8 mm and
the other is 3.5 x 4.5 mm. The trend continues in this
direction.
WAAS and EGNOS Capabilities
An increasing number of chipsets and receivers
are including WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and EGNOS
(European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System) differential
capability, an important factor to many users. An example that
equipment is being made to include SBAS (Satellite Based
Augmentation Systems) is that both Garmin and Magellan have made
WAAS capability a standard feature on all new models of
handheld, panel mount, sensors, and OEM receivers. NavCom
Technology listed six receivers in the survey this year, each
with L1/L2 plus two additional channels for WAAS, four of the
six are listed as new releases in 2002.
New 16-Channel Board
The Ashtech group of Thales Navigation will
shortly announce the production of the DG16 board that uses 12
channels for GPS, plus four additional channels: two for
space-based augmentation systems, (SBAS) and two for RTCM-104
marine radiobeacon reception.
New Companies in the GPS Field
A number of manufacturers are new members of the
GPS receiver and chipset industry:
- Analog Devices
Global Locate
m-blox
Evermore Technology
Valance Semiconductor.
Corporate Acquisitions and Name Changes
A number of changes occurred during the past
year:
- Starlink was bought by Raven Industries
- BAE Systems (and formerly the Canadian Marconi
Corporation) became CMC
- IBM Semiconductor’s GPS line was bought by
RF MicroDevices.
- Mitel is now Zarlink Semiconductor.
- Magellan/Ashtech and Racal NCS were
acquired by Thales Navigation of France.
- DSNP, the old Sercel, is also now Thales.
- Sextant Avionique’s products are now included
with Thales Avionics.
For more detailed information on the GPS receivers, please
refer to the GPS World Receiver Survey, January 2002
issues, or visit http://www.gpsworld.com
We welcome your observations and comments!
(gpsteach@navtechgps.com)
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Navtech's Courses in San Diego,
California March 18-22, 2002
Tentative registrations are welcome! Please give us
your tentative registration by February 18, if possible, so we
can select appropriate meeting rooms at the beautiful Doubletree
Mission Valley Hotel. For detailed course descriptions,
click HERE
and follow the hyperlinks.
Equipment Demo Scheduled:
Franck Boynton, Vice President of Navtech GPS Supply, will be
giving an equipment demonstration Monday night, March 18, 2002.
Some of the equipment to be demonstrated in San Diego will
include:
- CSI DGPS Max which features 300KHz beacon receiver, WAAS
and OmniStar.
- Ashtech ProMark2 L1 cm. level post processing receiver
- Various hand held GPS from Garmin, Magellan and Lowrance
Other equipment will be present and can be shown upon
request.
These include:
- CMC NaviStar
- Rojone Genius 1
- and other receivers
New Reference to be Given with Course Materials:
Beginning this year, all attendees will now receive a copy of
Navtech's CD-ROM of GPS-related references. It includes PDF
format public domain GPS-related technical documents, as well as
an incredible collection of WWW resource links.
Location and Hotel Reservation Information:
Doubletree Mission Valley Hotel
7450 Hazard Center Drive
San Diego, CA 92108
Tel (619) 297-5466
Fax (619) 297-5499
www.doubletree.com
This luxurious hotel has an indoor and outdoor pool, a nice
exercise room, and the feel of a resort. The Doubletree is very
convenient to: Sea World, San Diego Zoo, Spanish Old Town,
Gaslight District, Horton Plaza, Point Loma DGPS station, La
Jolla shops & museums, & Coronado Island. Driving
is easy in this city.
Class registrations have begun rolling in; be
sure to get hotel reservations ASAP! When
you call the Doubletree, be sure to ask for the Navtech Room
Block. After February 25, our room
block expires and rooms will be offered on a space available
basis.
The courses to be presented in San Diego are:
(click the titles to see course outlines)
To browse our course outlines and for specific information
about course locations, our 2002 schedule, or to register
on-line, click HERE.
Our paper catalog was mailed in early January. To subscribe
to our mailing list to receive our paper catalog of courses,
click HERE.
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3)
Product News from Navtech GPS Supply
Global
Positioning, Inertial Navigation, & Integration by
Grewal, Weill, and Andrews was reviewed in GPS World
(July 2001 issue) by Dr. John Angus, a consultant and researcher
in the area of GPS-aided navigation systems, and professor at
Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA. Following, see
some of his comments:
"Noteworthy
is the comprehensiveness of the material on GPS, Kalman
filtering and Kalman filter engineering, and the appendix on
coordinate transforms...An instructor could easily develop a
one-semester course on basic GPS or a full year course on GPS
and inertial navigation, each of them "glued" together
by the Kalman filter and enlivened by computer experiments with
the MATLAB code provided."
"The
writing...tends to be concise and the mathematics is kept to the
minimum necessary to expose the theory and methods of filtering,
GPS, and INS."
"...effectively
addresses most of the basic engineering and performance issues
relating to GPS/INS."
"...recommended
for personal and professional libraries."
For
more details on this book, and to order, click HERE.
A table of contents is available on-line.
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4)
See
Navtech Seminars' Photo Page!
Featuring
a photo of a great class from New Orleans in December 2001!
(click on the thumbnail to see a larger image)
For
previous attendees or anyone curious to see what our courses
look like, click HERE.
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5) SVN-56 Scheduled for Launch in March
CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
Ground testing has been performed on SVN-56 that
is scheduled for launch in March. There is a possibility that
this launch will be delayed. No more details are available at
this time. There are a variety of efforts underway to make
better use of the GPS measurements coming from the NIMA Monitor
Station Network (MSN) within Operational Control Segment (OCS).
Initially, this means an independent computer on the operations
floor that is connected to the NIMA MSN. The MSN was deployed to
augment the OCS monitor stations for precise ephemeris
computations at NIMA. However, it also greatly improves
visibility of the constellation from an OCS perspective. The
NIMA computer system provides various kinds of GPS measurement
quality information to the OCS crew to aid in monitoring the
health of the satellites. Other possible uses of NIMA data
within the OCS are being investigated but are still too
preliminary to provide specifics.
[Information provided by:
Scott A. True
NIMA Technical Liaison (TLO)
GPS Master Control Station
Schriever AFB, CO
Phone: (719) 567-5695 (DSN 560)
Fax: (719) 567-6607 (DSN 560)
scott.true@schriever.af.mil <mailto:scott.true@schriever.af.mil>
TrueS@nima.mil <mailto:TrueS@nima.mil>]
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6)
GPS Constellation Status
SUBJ: GPS
STATUS 12 Feb 2002
1. SATELLITES, PLANES, AND CLOCKS (CS=CESIUM RB=RUBIDIUM):
A. BLOCK I : NONE
B. BLOCK II: PRNS 1,
2, 3,
4, 5, 6,
7, 8,
9, 10, 11, 13,
14, 15
PLANE : SLOT F4,
B3, C2, D4, B4, C1,
C4, A3, A1, E3, D2,
F3, F1, D5
CLOCK :
CS, CS, CS, RB, CS,
CS, RB, RB, CS, CS,
RB, RB, RB, CS
BLOCK II: PRNS 17, 18,
20, 21, 22, 23,
24, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30,
31
PLANE : SLOT D3,
E4, E1, E2, B1,
E5, D1, A2, F2, A4,
B5, F5, B2, C3
CLOCK :
RB, RB, RB, CS, RB, CS,
CS, CS, RB, CS, RB,
RB, RB, CS
[Information courtesy of USCG NAVCEN. Click HERE
for the latest constellation status posting. Click HERE
to subscribe to the GPS status message list.]
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7)
Galileo
A
further revision to Keith McDonald's Galileo article included in
our Jan. 24 newsletter is available on-line at: http://www.navtechgps.com/Newsletters/GPSetc_News_January_24_2002.asp.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Go to <http://www.galileo-pgm.org>
for news about the Galileo program and <http://www.genesis-office.org>
to subscribe to the Galileo newsletter from the EU.
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8)
Meeting Notices
ION 58th Annual Meeting & CIGTF 21st Guidance Test
Symposium
June 25-26, 2002
Hyatt Regency Hotel - Albuquerque, New Mexico
Meeting information can be found on the ION Web site by
visiting:
http://www.ion.org/meetings/meetings.cfm.
If you have any questions, visit the ION Web site or call the
ION at (703) 683-7101 mailto:meetings@ion.org.
***********
For information on upcoming GPS and related
meetings, go to: www.navtechgps.com/seminars/meetings.asp
Please send us your meeting information - we will post it on our
meetings page! Send info to courses@navtechgps.com.
Be sure to include the name of the meeting, location, date,
description, and web link or email address if people need
further information.
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9)
On-site Course Concept - See Our New On-line Slide Show!
If
you would like Navtech to present an on-site course at your
facility, please check out our new generic sample proposal slide
show recently posted on our Web site. This proposal summary
answers most basic questions about the value and the cost of
having an on-site course by Navtech. It can be a great tool for
managers assessing training possibilities! Go to www.navtechgps.com/seminars/onsites.asp
and follow the "On-site_Course_Concept_Slide_Show"
hyperlink.
Contact Carolyn McDonald (mailto:cmcdonald@navtechgps.com)
for a customized version, for a standard contract proposal, or
for more information.
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10)
GPS Jokes of the Day
Q: What do you call a GPS receiver with 3
antennas?
A: A receiver with an
attitude
Q: What did you call loading crypto keys using a
Kick 13 connector?
A: Kicking AS.
[Jokes courtesy of Avram K. Tetewsky.]
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SEND
US YOUR NEWS ITEMS, WITH SOURCES!
Carolyn McDonald, Editor
cmcdonald@navtechgps.com
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Thank
you for subscribing to our news update emails.
We hope the information will be useful to you!
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