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The U.S. Federal Contractor Registration System for Award Management (SAM) makes private companies such as Eos Positioning Systems eligible for federal contracts.

Eos Positioning Systems, global manufacturer of the Arrow Series GNSS receivers, is now certified on the U.S. Federal Contractor Registration (USFCR) System for Award Management (SAM) for NDAA 2019, Section 889.

SAM registration is required to bid on, and get paid for, federal contracts.

According to USFCR.com, “[USFCR] is the largest and most trusted federal registration and certification service provider. We manage and maintain your SAM registration and guarantee its federal compliance.”

In August, Eos Positioning released two new Arrow Series GNSS receiver models: the Arrow Gold+ and Arrow 100+. Arrow receivers are the company’s flagship products.

Interested persons can find the Eos Positioning Systems SAM registration using the CAGE code L0P52 and the Unique Entity ID (DUNS) 202882361.

For sales inquiries, contact Eos.

Nearmap will capture aerial imagery of more than 80% of the U.S. population up to three times a year, enabling clients to access 130,000 square miles of additional content, including double the urban coverage of oblique/3D content

Aerial imagery and location intelligence company Nearmap has expanded its United States coverage program to more than 80% of the country’s population. This massive boost in coverage provides companies that rely on high-resolution aerial imagery with improved decision-making capabilities that will help them save time, effort and money, Nearmap stated in a press release.

“Nearmap customers have asked us to increase the amount of the U.S. that we cover and we’re responding by doubling down on our coverage,” Tony Agresta, general manager of North America, Nearmap said. “Our clients will have access to 130,000 square miles of additional unique captured footprint in the United States.”

Overall, the Nearmap capture program will cover more than 1,740 urban areas within the United States, including more than 80% of the population with 308,000 unique square miles captured annually.

In capturing aerial imagery, Nearmap focuses on currency, consistency, coverage and ease of access. The imagery is published within days of capture, with 24/7 access through a web app, API or third-party integration.

“Around 11,300 customers worldwide rely on Nearmap to be their eye in the sky, and to provide them with the truth on the ground,” Agresta said. “We’re seeing strong momentum with new and existing customers in the United States. This massive boost in coverage reflects the broader investment and focus Nearmap has on the strategically important U.S. market.”

Features of the expanded mapping coverage include:

• 130,000 square miles of additional unique captured footprint in the United States, equivalent to about 63,000 football fields
• double the number of urban areas covered with oblique/3D content
• access to current content, with updates up to three times a year, including leaf-off and leaf-on collection
• images at a high resolution, ranging from 2.2 to 3 inches.

Across the world, Nearmap will also capture more than 64% of the population in Canada; more than 90% of the population in Australia, and about 73% of the population in New Zealand.

“The expanded aerial coverage complements our city-scale 3D content, artificial intelligence (AI) data sets, and geospatial tools,“ Agresta said. “Nearmap has also recently tested in flight the next generation of our patented aerial camera system, HyperCamera3, to ensure our clients are supported by the very best technology in the market.”

Seven Solutions sets new record for long-distance White Rabbit high-accuracy time-over-fiber link

The White Rabbit link has an approximate distance of 1,350 km (840 miles) and was deployed in collaboration with Optiver U.S., a financial company, to connect Chicago and New Jersey trading locations. This link is formed by six long-distance White Rabbit hops using WR-Z16 and WR-ZEN TP devices connected by a combination of DWDM and SyncE-compliant transponders over a public telecommunication fiber network.

Seven Solutions is the leading company in the development and integration of high accuracy sub-nanosecond time transfer and frequency distribution for reliable industrial and scientific applications. Their technology integrates the White Rabbit protocol, the basis for the new high accuracy profile in the IEEE 1588-2019 (PTPv2.1).

This technology has become a reference for different sectors thanks to its unprecedented level of accuracy that outperforms current GNSS-based timing solutions, offering a suitable backup solution to deploy time dissemination networks. In the last few years, the White Rabbit technology has been adopted in the finance sector to deploy plug-and-play local area synchronization and metro-area links connecting different datacenters in financial hubs.

Although the performance of White Rabbit long distance links has been previously validated, this deployment sets a new distance record while integrating new resiliency and interoperability features using the latest WR-Z16 and the WR-ZEN TP devices.

In a series of experiments, the link accuracy and precision were firstly validated setting a three long-distance hops loopback covering an approximate distance of 800 km (500 miles). In this case, the link was measured using an Agilent 53210A time interval counter for a five-day period. This experiment was intended to validate the feasibility of deploying White Rabbit links using commercial SyncE-compliant transponders and commercial telecommunication networks based on DWDM technologies.

This measurement confirms the sub-nanosecond precision on a loopback and made it possible to perform network effect calibration to minimize the residual offset caused by the link asymmetry. In this case, a mean offset of 112 ps, a standard deviation equal to 139 ps and a peak-to-peak difference of 880 ps were obtained. Additionally, the offsets followed a gaussian distribution with no daily trends impacted by temperature or humidity.

This result proves the ability of high-accuracy time-over-fiber dissemination to fulfill the most demanding telecom requirements (class D Telecom Boundary Clocks) and corroborates one of the conclusions from the Analyzing a More Resilient National Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Capability report released by the RAND Corporation earlier this year:

“White Rabbit can support time transfer with accuracy that substantially exceeds the needs of almost all users; it is better than GPS. Therefore, this method is a strong candidate for backing up GPS time transfer for users that require atomic clock accuracy and for serving as a ‘national backbone’ for time so that secondary users, such as cellular networks, can perform to the limits of its own subdomain without suffering additional inaccuracies of its own master clock. Less accurate methods, like ordinary PTP, could provide timing to the vast number of other users, like mobile and cellular users.”

In a second test, the whole link was deployed using GNSS receivers in both ends of the link. The first GNSS receiver was used as the time reference in one end of the link (located in New Jersey) and the second GNSS receiver was used in the second end of the link to compare to the time reference (located in Chicago). Both GNSS receivers are the same model and have a 15 ns RMS jitter specification. In the second location, the local GNSS reference was compared to the remote time reference originating from New Jersey through the long-distance White Rabbit link.

This resulted in a mean offset equal to 2.98 ns, a standard deviation equal to 10.4 ns and a peak-to-peak equal to 83.3 ns. It is noteworthy that due to the time interval counter, some of the samples were filtered. This effect is shown on the histogram but is considered negligible to validate the feasibility of the link.

Additionally, the White Rabbit protocol automatically corrects daily effects due to temperature or humidity changes in the link, which are not observed in the measurement even when the GNSS receivers are located more than 1,000 km away from each other. This does not represent the real White Rabbit link error but indicates the limitation of using GNSS receiver to accurately measure the link accuracy.

As can be estimated from the measurements, the previous test and the GNSS specifications, the White Rabbit link maintains an approximately ±1 ns precision. In fact, the results show that the GNSS receivers are outperforming their specifications by almost 50%. The final accuracy is influenced by the GNSS receiver calibration. This link can be calibrated using network effect techniques (as shown in the previous experiment) or using the GNSS receivers themselves.

This experiment complements the results obtained in the U.S. Department of Transportation GPS backup demonstration showing the White Rabbit technology (which was catalogued as the most accurate alternative technology for time distribution) in a real telecommunications network scenario with very long distances. Additionally, it justifies the industrial need to deploy high accuracy time distribution when providing an alternative to GNSS-based timing, as it provides a next generation technology that can benefit other PNT systems and several critical infrastructures that rely on time synchronization for daily operations.

Beyond this, White Rabbit is demonstrated as a disruptive technology that can be used to measure the performance of GNSS in various locations to develop a warning and backup system, to connect high stability time references (for example, atomic clocks) for a suitable long-term ground-based backup to GNSS systems or to connect national metrology institutes around the world to compare different time scales.

This long-distance link represents a new milestone in ultra-accurate time transfer over existing telecom networks that allow cross-validating different linked references or accurately synchronize them for coordinated actions at tight relative timing.

Furthermore, the deployment through existing telecom network proves its feasibility at affordable cost and opens the door to new disruptive applications. Atomic clocks have evolved to represent very stable references, but it has been typically assumed that time degrades as it is transferred over long distances making accurate comparisons between different references a challenge. This new generation of long-distance links represent a step further into tightly synchronizing different devices over fiber at long distances making them resilient to the vulnerabilities of GNSS timing.

This level of accuracy is key for certain applications and sectors nowadays. Matt Nassr, Data Engineering Lead at Optiver, remarked “Partnering with Seven Solutions has allowed us to better optimize for the highly distributed nature of the financial markets. Being able to establish a nanosecond-level precision link across the Chicago-New Jersey path further improves our ability to provide liquidity across the major US exchanges.”

“This is not a first step on the deployment of long-distance time synchronization networks, this is just one step further,” said Francisco Girela, Americas tech responsible at Seven Solutions. “We have been working for years on improving our devices, easing the monitoring and management, enhancing the resiliency, integrating failover features, adding interoperability with IEEE 1588 (PTP), NTP or PPS and allowing the integration of High Accuracy timing in third party devices thanks to the HATI core. During this journey we have learnt how to integrate the technology to work at its best and we have proved its effectiveness in telecom, data centers, finance, defense, or power grids among others.”

When asked about next steps, Francisco added, “We want to demystify this technology. People think that its deployment is complex or overkill, but that is not true. We see White Rabbit as the core technology to build alternative PNT systems, setting a sub-nanosecond timing foundation that will push the development of a more diverse and more accurate technology ecosystem.

“We have worked to evolve White Rabbit devices to be a market commodity when deploying time synchronization in local areas but providing a level of accuracy that will fulfill the requirements for the current applications and for the next decade. For long distances, complex deployments, or projects we are always happy to assist our customers and partners to get the best from our devices. We are sub-nanosecond natives; we care for every single picosecond.”

Two decades ago, the Volpe National Transportation System Center released its landmark report on the vulnerability of GPS. Have this study and its many successors helped move us to the necessary levels of PNT resilience? Have we done enough? What is left to be done?

“This study and others underscore that safety must be maintained in the event of GPS loss. Among the many recommendations, I maintain that ‘systems and procedures to monitor, report, and locate unintentional [and intentional] interference should be implemented.’ Similar to GPS integrity monitoring, awareness of signal vulnerability ‘hot spots’ may allow an understanding of the RF landscape, and thus users may employ tactics, tools and techniques to combat against it. This ‘issue’ will not be solved with a singular solution; rather, continued education and urgency will produce innovative solutions over time. I just hope that a large ‘trigger event’ is not needed to do so.”
— Bernard Gruber, Northrop Grumman

“We have widespread awareness now, but not enough implementation of safeguards. There is no one simple solution – a single alternative system to GPS is not the answer. Rather, the integration of several diverse alternative PNT sources will provide the necessary resiliency. DHS and NIST have taken the proper initial steps to set standards for resiliency, but the next step is implementation. Twenty years without a major incident has only reinforced complacency, but we can’t keep betting our luck will continue. We have everything we need now — the technology, the standards, the exec orders — let’s implement!”
— John Fischer, Orolia

“This study was instrumental in getting the U.S. government to face the fact that GPS is vulnerable on many fronts. It seems that the first response was to focus on making signals more robust and therefore less vulnerable. The backup systems, alternatives, or simply additional sensors have come onto the scene very slowly due to factors that include funding, politics, and difficulty in deployment on all platforms, where the costs could be astronomical. I hope that it doesn’t take a catastrophic event to force all factions to come together to find best solutions, but that is sadly often the case.”
— Ellen Hall, Spirent Federal Systems

GPS World Editorial Advisory Board

Tony Agresta
Nearmap

Miguel Amor
Hexagon Positioning Intelligence

Thibault Bonnevie
SBG Systems

Alison Brown
NAVSYS Corporation

Ismael Colomina
GeoNumerics

Clem Driscoll
C.J. Driscoll & Associates

John Fischer
Orolia

Bernard Gruber
Northrop Grumman

Ellen Hall
Spirent Federal Systems

Jules McNeff
Overlook Systems Technologies

Terry Moore
University of Nottingham

Mitch Narins
Consultant

Bradford W. Parkinson
Stanford Center for Position,
Navigation and Time

Stuart Riley
Trimble

Jean-Marie Sleewaegen
Septentrio

Michael Swiek
GPS Alliance

Julian Thomas
Racelogic Ltd.

Greg Turetzky
Consultant

Orolia has been awarded €70 million in two contracts to provide atomic clocks for the first 12 satellites of the Galileo Second Generation System (G2S). The first was from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the second from Leonardo.

Each of the new G2S satellites, designed to provide unprecedented accuracy worldwide, will contain three Orolia Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standards (RAFS) and two Orolia atomic clock physics packages integrated with Leonardo’s Passive Hydrogen Masers (PHM).

“We are truly honored to be selected by the European Commission, ESA and Leonardo to continue to supply our advanced space atomic clocks for the next generation of Galileo,” said Jean-Yves Courtois, CEO of Orolia. “Our dedication, hard work and innovative design for all the clocks in the current Galileo constellation have contributed to the most accurate GNSS system in service today. We look forward to continuing to support the Galileo program with the most advanced GNSS timing technology available in the world.”

Orolia’s RAFS is an ultra-stable rubidium atomic clock able to deliver a frequency stability of about 2 x 10^-14 over averaging intervals of 10,000 seconds. The Leonardo PHM, with its excellent frequency stability performance, is the master clock for the Galileo satellite payload. The maser technology embedded on Galileo offers superior stability compared to all other types of clocks onboard navigation satellites, according to Orolia.

Orolia has delivered more than 140 RAFS Flight Models worldwide, with 114 flying on GNSS satellites. In addition, 100 PHM Flight Models have been delivered worldwide, and 56 are flying on the current Galileo constellation.

According to ESA, the G2S satellites will revolutionize the Galileo constellation, joining the 26 first-generation satellites currently in orbit. They will be much larger than the existing Galileo satellites, use electric propulsion for the first time, and feature a more powerful navigation antenna. The G2S constellation should achieve decimeter-scale positioning precision.

In May, the European Commission and ESA announced the selection of Orolia to provide its Skydel GNSS signal simulation core engine for the G2S radiofrequency constellation simulator.

The Galileo program is managed and funded by the European Union. The European Commission, ESA and EUSPA have signed an agreement by which ESA acts as design authority and system development prime on behalf of the commission and EUSPA as the exploitation and operation manager of Galileo.

Under a new agreement, Lidar USA — a developer of geomatics solutions — will include Hesai Technology Co. Ltd., 3D lidar sensors in its product lineup. Hesai Technology announced the agreement at the Commercial UAV Expo 2021 in Las Vegas, Sept. 7-9.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lidar USA will leverage its marketing and sales expertise to distribute Hesai sensors across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

“Hesai’s product portfolio has the sensors we have all long awaited — bridging the gap between sensors made for automotive navigation and those made for precision measurement,” said Lidar USA CEO Jeff Fagerman. “Users will enjoy the affordability of the former and results of the latter.”

Hesai’s lidar units offer superior performance and reliability to ensure robust detection under different operating and environmental conditions, the company stated in a press release. Hesai’s XT sensors, embedded with proprietary lidar application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), deliver performance advantages while maintaining a compact form factor and low cost.

The XT sensors are lightweight and draw less power, enabling longer operation for airborne applications. The XT’s precision and accuracy allows for fine detail capture.

PandarQT, a short-range sensor for blindspot detection, has a large vertical field-of-view of 104.2°. The Pandar series lidars — Pandar128, Pandar64 and Pandar40P — deliver long detection range, high resolution and high point density for optimized perception results.

“Lidars are increasingly being adopted for different end markets and applications,” said David Li, Hesai’s CEO. “We’re excited to partner with an industry leader like Lidar USA, whose strong foothold in North America will help expand access to sensors across different segments.”

New flagship offering can be mounted on a light manned aircraft or switched to different types of UAV platforms

YellowScan, a designer of UAV lidar solutions, has launched the YellowScan Explorer. The Explorer can be mounted on a light manned aircraft or switched to different types of UAV platforms. The compact, versatile, long-range platform allows users to tackle a wide range of projects and mission profiles.

The Explorer’s high-power laser scanner can catch points up to 600 meters away, yet its low weight (2.3 Kg without battery) provides users with an integratable system. Combining Explorer with YellowScan’s full suite of software solutions to extract and process point cloud data provides users with a highly accurate set of tools for surveying, forestry, environmental research, archaeology, industrial inspection, civil engineering and mining.

The Explorer comes with an Applanix APX-20 UAV GNSS/inertial solution, precision of 2.6 cm and accuracy of 2.2 cm. Flight operation speed is 5 m/s to 35 m/s and it is capable of above-ground-level (AGL) altitude up to 300 m. Designed to be mounted on fixed-wing UAV, multi-rotor UAV or manned aircraft (light plane and helicopter), Explorer can enable a large variety of mission profiles.

YellowScan launched the Explorer during Commercial UAV Expo 2021 in Las Vegas, Sept. 7-9.

“We have been working on Explorer for the last three years, building on everything we have learned and achieved to date from a hardware, software and component integration perspective,” said Nassim Doukkali, R&D project manager, YellowScan. “One of the elements we are most proud of is the laser scanner, which has been designed according our specific specifications. With a maximum range of 600 m, the Explorer has exceeded YellowScan’s initial expectations.”

Mowi is an open-source reference design for Septentrio’s highly accurate GNSS module mosaic. It offers Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication, which can easily be programmed for custom applications.

Septentrio, a manufacturer of high-precision GNSS positioning solutions, has added to its open-source resources for GPS/GNSS module receivers with mosaic wireless, which it calls mowi.

Mowi combines the Septentrio mosaic-X5 or mosaic-H module receiver with a dual-mode Bluetooth and integrated Wi-Fi from the well-known ESP32-WROVER programmable module by Espressif Systems. It is an addition to the already existing mosaicHAT board, designed on the Raspberry Pi platform.

“We are excited about the mowi project being part of the GitHub and prototyping community,” said Gustavo Lopez, market access manager at Septentrio. “The project is available as open-source, thus empowering the community to easily fit autonomous or robotic systems with communication and highly accurate and reliable GNSS positioning technology. Mowi empowers the native Ethernet features of the mosaic module, the perfect tool for fast prototyping and developing proof-of-concept projects in a simple and connected way.”

The mowi project facilitates accurate and reliable GNSS positioning for robotic and autonomous devices, on a hardware level. Numerous engineers today use the ESP32 and the multiple libraries available for internet-of-things (IoT) prototyping. The mowi board is an easy way for integrators to get started with Septentrio’s mosaic-X5 or mosaic-H heading module receivers.

The mowi board can be used on its own or plugged into a mobile computer such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino to deliver high-accuracy positioning with high update rates, suitable for machine navigation, monitoring or control. The internet connection via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enables numerous industrial IoT applications, simplifying the connectivity to mobile data for the delivery of GNSS corrections needed for centimeter-level RTK positioning.

On top of the wireless communication, the 47.5 x 70 mm board can host IoT applications in its internal memory. It has onboard logging and exposes interfaces such as USB, serial communication and general-purpose pins. The schematic’s reference design, PCB layout and documentation are openly available for prototyping or further customization.

The mowi open-source project is available to the community on the Septentrio GitHub repository.

Segway has launched a smart lawn mower, the Navimow. The autonomous mower uses GNSS to navigate and stay inside the programmed perimeter, set in an accompanying smartphone app.

According to Segway, Navimow uses a GNSS-based “Extra Fusion Locating System” that help the mower achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy while mapping out a working perimeter. Rather than using a perimeter wire to prevent the lower from leaving grid, Navimow combines multi-sensory data to create a virtual map while cutting grass in addition to using GNSS.

The company has introduced four models, for lawns ranging from 500 square meters to 3,000 square meters. All cut lawns from 30-60 millimeters on a maximum slope of 45 degrees.

During its runtime, the robot uses its smart navigation system and intricately plans the most effective cutting route. When necessary, it can make changes in direction to create a systematic pattern.

Velodyne Lidar will display its lidar sensors and software at the IAA Mobility trade show, which takes place Sep. 7-12 in Munich.

Showcased are:

• Velarray H800, a solid-state lidar sensor architected for automotive grade performance. With combined long-range perception and a broad field of view, the sensor is designed for safe navigation and collision avoidance in ADAS and autonomous mobility applications.
• Velarray M1600, a solid-state lidar sensor designed to serve mobile robotic applications, enables touchless mobile and last-mile delivery robots to operate autonomously and safely, without human intervention.
• Velabit, Velodyne’s smallest sensor, designed for versatility and affordability to 3D lidar perception.

Velodyne Lidar’s Intelligent Infrastructure Solution addresses the pressing need for smart city systems that can help improve road safety and prevent traffic accidents. The solution creates a real-time 3D map of roads and intersections, providing precise traffic monitoring and analytics that is not possible with other types of sensors like cameras or radar.

Partners Using Velodyne

NI, developer of automated test and automated measurement systems, is co-exhibiting at the Velodyne booth. NI is showing simulations optimized for Velodyne’s lidar sensors that can be used in developing and testing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicle (AV) capabilities.

NI will demonstrate how its monoDrive AV simulation software is using Velodyne’s lidar technology to create digital twins and is providing validated physics-based sensor models for Velodyne lidar sensors.

Seoul Robotics, an Automated with Velodyne partner, is demonstrating at the Velodyne booth its AI perception engine for Velodyne’s lidar sensors. The engine provides real-time object detection, classification, tracking and prediction for autonomous systems.

The AI engine can power self-driving cars as well as smart-city applications and advanced parameter monitoring systems for facilities. Seoul Robotics’ SENSR perception software includes an AI engine that is fully optimized to utilize Velodyne’s portfolio of lidar sensors, including the Puck, Ultra Puck and Alpha Prime.