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On Dec. 3, four U.S. engineers were awarded the 2019 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering  during a ceremony at Buckingham Palace for their work creating the first truly global, satellite-based positioning system, GPS.

The QEPrize is the world’s most prestigious engineering accolade, a £1 million prize that celebrates the global benefit of engineering innovation on humanity. The honorees were announced in February.

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales presented the trophy to Dr. Bradford Parkinson, Hugo Fruehauf, Richard Schwartz and Anna Marie Spilker, who accepted the award on behalf of her late husband, Professor James Spilker, Jr. Learn more about Spilker from his wife’s account.

Bradford Parkinson — often regarded as the “father of GPS” — led the development, design, and testing of the system. Hugo Fruehauf developed a highly accurate, miniaturized atomic clock, a foundational component of the system. Richard Schwartz engineered a satellite hardened to resist intense radiation in space, with a lifespan three times greater than expected. Professor James Spilker, Jr, was the main designer of the GPS civil signal and, with his team at Stanford Telecommunications, built the receiver that processed the first GPS satellite signals.

Lord Browne, chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, highlighted the critical role of collaboration in engineering, and in groundbreaking innovations such as GPS: “Our laureates’ success was the result of inter-disciplinary collaboration, a drive for excellence, and an ability to turn the fruits of scientific discovery into practical solutions. That is what engineers do,” he said.

Today, an estimated four billion people around the world use GPS. At just $2 per receiver, GPS provides an accessible service and a powerful tool that people can integrate with their applications. Simple smartphone apps can track disease outbreaks, self-driving tractors can optimize crop harvests, and sports teams can improve team performance. New applications for GPS continue to revolutionize entire industries, and its annual economic value has been estimated to be $80 billion for the USA alone.

GPS combines a constellation of at least 24 orbiting satellites with ground stations and receiving devices. Each satellite broadcasts a radio signal containing its location and the time from an extremely accurate onboard atomic clock. GPS receivers need signals from at least four satellites to determine their position; they measure the time delay in each signal to calculate the distance to each satellite, then use that information to pinpoint the receiver’s location on earth.

This year’s QEPrize trophy was designed by 17-year-old Jack Jiang from Hong Kong. Jack’s elegant trophy design won the 2019 Create the Trophy competition, an international competition that invites those aged between 14-24 around the world to submit innovative trophy designs for the world’s leading engineers. The 2019 competition saw a record number of entries, with submissions stemming from over 50 countries worldwide.

Lord Browne of Madingley, Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, said, “This year’s laureates have demonstrated that engineering makes things happen. With the first global, satellite-based positioning system, they created an engineered system which provides free, immediate and accurate information about position and time, anywhere around the globe.

“The world now depends on GPS completely and without exception. The high-frequency trading systems, telecommunications and electricity grids of today are all built around GPS. And we will rely on it for the drone delivery systems, self-driving cars and climate monitoring solutions of tomorrow.

“In honoring the 2019 prize winners, we hope to inspire the next generation of engineers to continue to push back the frontiers of the possible.”

Bradford Parkinson said: “Today marks a landmark moment in all of our lives—there is no prize for engineering greater than this, it is an honor. This recognition reflects the responsibility incumbent upon those developing technology today to strive to do so for the good of humanity. Day-after-day, we are astounded at the new ways in which people across the world use GPS. It is a ‘System for Humanity’ in each and every sense.”

Hugo Fruehauf said: “The accuracy of modern GPS satellites astounds me. The atomic clocks we built for the satellites were accurate to within billionths of a second, but today’s generation are working a factor of 100 times better than that. They’re a lot like wine, in a sense—they only get better with time. And they have to be accurate; the timing for GPS is used for core systems around the world—vital infrastructure like banking systems, telecommunications networks, and power grids. Today the world relies on those clocks.”

Richard Schwartz said: “One of the best things about GPS is its accessibility. We designed the system to produce a signal that anyone can use, regardless of where they are on the planet. Today, engineers around the world can still access that signal, for free, and use it to build creative solutions to benefit people around them. It took a great deal of collaboration to make the system work, and it’s great to see the next generation collaborating on innovative products now because of that.”

Anna Marie Spilker, on behalf her late husband, Professor James Spilker, Jr, said: “Jim’s mission statement has always been to create, teach, and mentor for world-changing benefits to humanity through his engineering talents. When working on GPS, Jim knew that it could be of profound benefit globally, and he was right; because of their work, Jim and his colleagues have helped billions of people around the world. He was immensely proud of that. He said many times that ‘Engineering technology is the necessary catalyst for progress to world changing benefits to humanity; it’s magic.’”

A new post-Brexit GNSS “must be secured,” according to the UKspace trade association. UKspace on Nov. 21 published its manifesto for a future British government to consider, actions that will enable Britain to compete in
the “new space race.”

Among the recommendations is a satellite system to provide navigation services.
“The UK’s post-Brexit participation in a new global satellite navigation system must be secured, whether through ESA or a sovereign capability,” the manifesto said.

“The 2019 Spending Review committed to continuing to provide £191M of funding to support Brexit-related activities ‘including the development of a UK Global Navigation Satellite System option and delivering business stability for company law and audit.’

“Following this initial design phase, the estimated cost of the programme is £5B. This needs to be reflected in long-term budget lines to sustain key precision, navigation and timing skills in the industry.”

Other topics in the manifesto include increased funding for the European Space Agency (ESA), establishment of a national space program, continuing to partner on Copernicus, and funding for the new National Space Council.

DoT remarks follow China announcement on “comprehensive PNT”

The U.S. Department of Transportation “…is seeking the best solutions to ensure that America has a combination of  PNT [positioning, navigation and timing] systems which, when used together, will be difficult to disrupt” according to remarks made at a recently concluded conference.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology. She made the comments during a keynote address at the Royal Institute of Navigation’s annual conference in Edinburgh mid-November.

Trained as an economist, Furchtgott-Roth noted that Edinburgh was the home of Adam Smith who in the 1700s referred to the efficiency of free markets as an “invisible hand” guiding economies. She regularly referred to GPS as “the invisible hand” guiding individuals, transportation, and technologies across the globe.

Citing GPS as a “one of the great and heroic systems of our times,” she also acknowledged wide and generally unconscious reliance on GPS signals, and its vulnerabilities. “A lot of the work in research and technology at the Transportation Department…assumes the existence of GPS. It assumes that GPS will continue to work, sight unseen, without interference.”

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A dedicated GPS-only receiver “sounds as outdated as a pager.”

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While PNT is essential now, she said, it will be even more important in the future as it becomes essential for even more safety applications.

“Public confidence in these will be critical. People will not be comfortable getting into an automated vehicle or with platooning driverless trucks heading down the highway if they think that their invisible hand is not reliable and that their GPS might be spoofed.”

As part of this, development and adoption of a wide variety of space-based, terrestrial, and self-contained navigation sensors must be deployed and widely adopted. A dedicated GPS-only receiver, she said, “sounds as outdated as a pager.”

She also echoed the theme of protecting frequencies, toughening receivers, and augmenting GPS signals as a way of achieving greater PNT resilience.

The department let a contract in November for demonstration of 11 technologies that could serve as a GPS augmentation/backup system. Furchtgott-Roth said, “This effort will inform implementation of a system that by law is required to be terrestrial, wireless, have wide area coverage, be difficult to disrupt, and be capable of expansion to provide positioning and navigation services.”

Departing from her prepared script, she added, “The Department of Transportation hopes to come to a decision by next May. Then we will get together with the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security and chose a technology or combination of technologies… And then we hope that our Congress will allocate funds to purchase this equipment. Our top priorities are national and economic security. We cannot have GPS be a single point of failure for transport and other critical infrastructure.”

The United States published its National PNT Architecture Study in 2008 citing the need for an integrated and resilient approach. Despite its call for use of multiple phenomenologies and an implementation plan signed several years later little has been done as of yet now.

Furchtgott-Roth’s comments came roughly a month after a Chinese representative to a Stanford symposium that here nation was developing a national “comprehensive PNT” after the fashion of what was called for in the U.S.’s 2008 study.

Her prepared remarks are available here.

Test and measurement specialist Rohde & Schwarz has supplied mobile network testing tools used in drone-based network coverage, performance and operation tests managed by Ericsson, a global leader in network infrastructure.

Testing mobile coverage. A project team based in Jorvas, Finland, and led by Ericsson’s 5G Readiness Program RAN Technical Lead Richard Wirén, has developed— together with Centria University of Applied Sciences — a novel system for testing cellular mobile network coverage.

The new system uses mobile network-testing scanners and smartphones from Rohde & Schwarz mounted on a drone that can be programmed to execute automatic tests with considerable flexibility, for example for precise route selection and drone speed control.

This solution is especially valuable for industrial use cases. It also has the advantages over traditional walk and drive tests by providing unprecedented repeatability and positional accuracy with the ability to verify beamforming and map coverage in 3D.

Drone-mounted scanner. The R&S TSMA6 network scanner is mounted on a drone and is able to simultaneously verify important LTE and 5G NR coverage metrics such as reference signal received power (RSRP) and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in accordance with 3GPP standards.

When combined with the R&S QualiPoc Android smartphone-based optimizer, IP trace, application quality of service (QoS) metrics such as serving cell parameters are possible. The solution currently uses LTE user equipment (UE) but will soon be further developed to include 5G UEs such as the Samsung S10 5G.

The drone can be programmed to follow an exact three-dimensional route.

Repeatable tests. More than 20 successful measurement flights conducted so far have shown the solution procedure and results to be extremely repeatable. The drone flights were of various duration, altitudes and routes, depending on the test case.

Control, authentication and air traffic control are considerable challenges to the development of robust drone-based solutions. In this new system they are conducted over cellular networks, eliminating the requirement for line-of-sight connection between the drone and its pilot.

The unique procedure enables unprecedented 3D accessibility, positional accuracy and repeatability of the testing.

It also opens up new possibilities to ensure end-user QoS for demanding 5G use cases such as industry 4.0, automotive and public safety, Rohde & Scwarz said.

5G New Radio. The deployment of 5G New Radio (NR) brings new applications of cellular networks for subscribers, government and industry. It also makes the verification of the correct coverage, performance and operation of networks more critical, increasing the demand for accuracy and accessibility in traditional field network tests.

“For 5G to realize its promise, field verification of operation and quality is essential, and this development is a pioneering way to ensure our customers receive the network performance they require,” said Richard Wirén, 5G Readiness Program RAN Technical Lead from Ericsson. “We are delighted to utilize test solutions from Rohde & Schwarz that have proven themselves very reliable and are excited that we now have access to solutions based on commercially available 5G NR UEs such as the Samsung S10 5G.”

“We are delighted to combine our industry-leading mobile network testing know-how with Ericsson’s long tradition of network innovations to ensure the delivery of end-user Quality of Experience as 5G NR becomes a reality,” said Hanspeter Bobst, vice president of mobile network testing for Rohde & Schwarz.

Ericsson and Rohde & Schwarz are collaborating with Tampere University and Centria University of Applied Sciences, and the project forms part of the Business Finland 5G FORCE program.

Future developments will focus on testing critical 5G applications such as public safety and machine-type communications for Industry 4.0, extending the frequency to extremely high frequencies of the mmWave bands and testing in an urban environment.

Verified photomontages for UNESCO World Heritage sites achieves accuracy with Spectra Geospatial SP80

Verified photomontage is an important planning tool to envision how proposed surrounding development plans would affect UNESCO World Heritage sites. Verified photomontage demands the best accuracy for the best visualization to determine what a development may look like to a person standing at the photographic viewpoint.

For MS Environmental (MSE), selected to provide verified photomontage for multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites, including in the UK Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and the City of Bath, the Spectra Geospatial SP80 GNSS receiver enabled the highest quality visualization.

“The one-centimeter accuracy delivered by the SP80 is essential,” said Mike Spence, a verified photomontage specialist and founder of MSE. “The highest level of accuracy in the relationship between the actual camera location and the 3D model camera gives confidence in the visualization. In addition, The SP80 offers both simplicity and a robust design though it’s taken a few knocks over the years, it gives us the confidence we can use the equipment anywhere in the world and get the best results.”

At Kew Gardens, MSE was commissioned to produce accurate visualizations of views from within the UNESCO World Heritage Site. There was concern about development proposals for tall tower blocks in west London and how these might affect historic views from Kew Gardens.

The work culminated in a public inquiry, where evidence was presented that showed how views would change as a result of the proposed development. “Without the level of accuracy provided by the SP80 together with a transparent technical methodology it would have been unclear precisely how these historic views would change,” Mike Spence said.

At the UNESCO World Heritage City of Bath, the Bath and North East Somerset Council commissioned MSE to produce technical photography from strategic views around the World Heritage City to show how development proposals would affect strategic views across the city.

GE Aviation and Hybrid Project team to provide commercial high-endurance vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) UAV, with Auterion and GE Aviation providing comprehensive integration of ground, cloud and airborne components

GE Aviation has teamed with Hybrid Project to provide a VTOL UAV designed for high-endurance commercial applications at scale. Flight testing is underway, with commercial availability targeted for the first quarter of 2020.

The agreement enables Hybrid Project’s 35-pound hybrid-powered SuperVolo VTOL UAV with a full stack airborne computing hardware platform, flight and safety management, and integration from GE Aviation and Auterion.

GE Aviation’s computing platform enables flight control and airborne computing power at the edge while maintaining an independent and authoritative safety controller. Auterion’s Enterprise PX4 operating system resides on the vehicle, in the cloud, and the ground station.

The integration is the result of an agreement announced earlier this year between GE Aviation and Auterion to provide all-in-one hardware and software platform for commercial drones.

“The combination of Hybrid Project’s SuperVolo airframe, GE Aviation’s computing platform, and Auterion’s software stack enables an all-in-one solution that readily scales for commercial applications,” said Matt Vacanti, product leader, Avionics Systems for GE Aviation. “A highly integrated system is critical to achieving scalable commercial UAV operations.”

Hybrid Project’s SuperVolo has been designed from the ground up with an emphasis on endurance flight, ease of maintenance, and modularity. The combined system is comprised of technologies and services which have the capability to enable commercial operations in complex environments while meeting regulatory and mission outcomes.

“This collaboration, and the combined solution, will increase commercial operator flexibility, efficiency, and overall performance to a level not previously available in its class,” said Ryan Pope, co-founder of Hybrid Project.

Auterion’s Enterprise PX4 software is built on top of open software standards that are supported by a global developer community. Auterion’s enterprise software also provides the infrastructure enabling online workflows, compliance monitoring, and enterprise fleet management. “With Auterion software, the Hybrid Project SuperVolo flies farther, safer, and more efficiently, unlocking new BVLOS capabilities and missions that were previously not possible before commercial drones of this class were available,” said Kevin Sartori, co-founder of Auterion.

Just before 13:00 GMT on Monday, a private plane piloted by David Last, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation, disappeared from radar and hit the sea approximately two miles off the coast of Wales.

On-going search and rescue efforts have recovered pieces of wreckage and personal effects.

“Last was one of the most respected and well-loved figures in the worldwide positioning, navigation, and timing community. His loss creates a hole that cannot be filled,” said Dana Goward, president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation. “David was a close personal friend. Our grieving will not be brief.”

According to BBC News, the search for the missing plane and its pilot off the Welsh coast resumed on Tuesday. North Wales Police said the light aircraft was flying from Caernarfon Airport to the Great Orme, Llandudno, and back on Monday when it disappeared. There were no other passengers and officers were supporting the missing pilot’s family.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the search has resumed around Puffin Island, near Penmon, Anglesey. A plane carrying a sonar technology camera is searching the area as well as a lifeboat, helicopter and coastguard teams on foot.

David Last was a UK consultant engineer specializing in radio navigation and communications systems, professor emeritus at the University of Bangor, Wales, and past president of the Royal Institute of Navigation.

He also was a member of the expert panel and co-author of the January 2018 Blackett Report.

China launched two satellites of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at 8:55 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 23.

Launched on a Long March-3B carrier rocket and the Yuanzheng-1 (Expedition-1) upper stage attached to the carrier rocket, the two satellites have entered their planned orbits. They are the 50th and 51st satellites of the BDS satellite family.

The two medium earth orbit (MEO) satellites are also network satellites of the BeiDou-3 system.

The two new satellites, the carrier rocket and Yuanzheng-1 were all developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

The launch was the 319th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.

Quectel Wireless Solutions has partnered with SAIC Motor, Shanghai International Port and China Mobile to install its C-V2X modules on trucks to conduct smart truck trials for the shipping industry.

Developed by SAIC Motor, the heavy smart trucks are powered by advanced technologies, including 5G, V2X and AI, to achieve 5G L4-level intelligent driving at the port. Each truck has been equipped with “senses” to detect the external environment and cope with unexpected situations such as crosswinds, obstacles in the road or pedestrian traffic. After arriving at the destination, the vehicles can also dock in target locations.

Quectel C-V2X modules AG15 were integrated in the trucks to help identify and communicate with roadside units such as gates and traffic lights, greatly improving driving safety and efficiency.

According to McKinsey and Company, the automation of ports has proved safer, more cost-effective and efficient than conventional ones. However, the adoption of automation remains slow compared to other sectors. One reason is the high upfront costs associated with automation and difficulties in ensuring effective operations.

The introduction of 5G provides port owners with an unprecedented opportunity to embrace automation to reduce costs by 25-55% and raise productivity by up to 10-35%, according to the same report.

Modules, such as the Quectel C-V2X portfolio, offer even more significant cost-effectiveness and flexibility than conventional forms of investment in automation as they can be custom-installed to meet automakers’ or port authorities’ requirements.

Additionally, Quectel’s AG520R module integrating LTE+C-V2X technologies has supported over 30 automotive customers in product design. The 5G+C-V2X module AG550Q is currently under development and compatible with AG520R in both HW/SW, ensuring a smoother migration from LTE to 5G, which means that the future of automation is now just a module away.

Skyward has updated its InFlight mobile ground control system app. It now offers operation planning and mobile LAANC requests.

In October, Skyward released a major update to its airspace intelligence map on both web and mobile platforms. The update included a new airspace design, clear LAANC grids, and a redesigned user experience.

It also integrated essential ground intelligence, including information on transmission lines, pedestrian walking paths, and 1 million vertical obstacles, as well as 3D views of key structures.

The new features announced this month include the ability to create and plan flights from mobile device. Users can now plan flight areas, check airspace and deploy without leaving InFlight, directly from the airspace intelligence map.

Users can now also make LAANC requests in the field to give users faster, greater access to controlled airspace. With LAANC, users can request access to airspace around airports and receive authorizations in near real time.