GPS, Raytheon scores $886 million contract to improve GPS capabilities
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 26th 2010 6:59PM
posted February 26th 2010 6:59PM
Don't count on your navigation unit seeing a sudden improvement anytime soon, but Raytheon has announced that it's landed an massive $886 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop a new element of GPS called the advanced control segment (or OCX, somehow). Once complete, that promises to not only provide a range of enhancements for military GPS use (including anti-jam capabilities and improved security), but improved accuracy and reliability for civil GPS users as well. Details are otherwise a bit light, and this contract only represents the first of two development blocks, but it looks like GLONASS and Galileo may have to step up their game a bit further if they want to stay competitive in the great sat-nav race.
Another billion in taxpayer dollars? Sure! Why not?? I'm all or great new tech- when a company is using their own money or when the people can afford it but come on- at 13 trillion in debt- when do we start saving?
Oh well. At least MAYBE this will help keep GPS alive. Although the military might want to consider the fact that EVERYTHING can be blocked and hacked given time.
@think before you react Really? We spend hundreds of billions building bombs, and spend more money on our military than anyone else. And you're are complaining about money which will make those billions of dollars of bombs hit their target? Downrank.
@think before you react
Why not complain about the big stuff like entitlement programs? A billion is like a drop in the bucket, not to mention this is actually a useful government program that benefits the entire world, a rarity, so stop complaining.
@FauxNews
I'm sorry but I don't think improving accuracy from with feet to within inches matters much when a bomb explodes (including shrapnel and blast force radius). Also, just because we frivolously spend in certain areas doesn't mean the government is entitled to frivolously spend in other areas.
Don't forget- this is OUR money- not the governments. It does not belong to our elected officials- it is OURS. We elect officials to spend OUR money for what WE feel is good for US. Not what the GOVERNMENT wants.
I agree with over spending with entitlement programs and things like abusing welfare etc, BUT that doesn't mean that we should continue bleeding money because we do it elsewhere...
What I was trying to get at in my first post also was the fact that this is an enhancement and are trying to make it "more secure" and add "anti-jamming." We all know that A LOT of problems with security lies with the user- not the safeguards themselves. Look at how many secrets are released to the public because military personnel were unable to correctly follow security procedures. Also, anti-jamming almost synonymous to anti-hacking in this case. AGAIN we all know that when it comes to tech- there will ALWAYS be a hack or a jam no matter how much time you try to secure yourself in this way. If someone wants it bad enough- they'll get it.
I am not an anti-military person. Exactly the opposite in fact. I've served my country here and overseas in the military. I've LIVED through military overspending and security blunders. Some day- we need to clearly look at how we spend and if it's a NECESSITY or not.
@think before you react
I meant to say--- I agree with *your assessment that we are* over spending with entitlement programs and things like abusing welfare etc,
@think before you react
Yes. As a programmer. I shall add to your point that security only meant to slow down hackers. Not stop them.
And this kind of technology might eventually brings war into space. Example: (US satellites and Russian satellites shooting each other to bring down each others communication)
@think before you react
How sad is that that a billion dollars is just a drop in the bucket. Number one, I have no doubt that they are doing more than they say they're doing to the GPS network/system. The other thing is, our elected officials are elected to figure out the best way to spend money, even if that isn't working at the moment. We're not a democracy (technically), we're a Federal Republic, our vote is indirect and reversable.
i would say as far as GPS accuracy is concerned, its horizontal accuracy is good enough. the ability to successfully locate you on a road (like it currently does) is more than sufficient for typical consumer use.
having said that, GPS's vertical accuracy is horrific. i've looked at *literally* millions of GPS points in logs and the noise in elevation data is really quite laughable.
the military, of course, needs the most accurate everything so here's one to raytheon to see what they can come up with...
@spasewalkr the horizontal accuracy is indeed better but even that would not be sufficient to locate you on a road without the adanced map matching algorithms that are used by every modern car nav system
@Xstream
well then, if that's true let's hope raytheon comes up with something good :)
@spasewalkr
I'd disagree with that. Horizontal accuracy used to be acceptable, but for emerging uses like augmented reality applications, the fuzzy 100 foot radius is just not good enough anymore.
@spasewalkr
Dont expect much improvement to the vertical accuracy.
Why?
Simply said it's how the GPS works. The gps calculates the distance from each satellite, and then knowing the satellites position calculates itself position.
Then why hhe vertical accuracy is worse than horizontal? The distace to the satellite isn't accurate, but there is some noise from the atmosphere due to weather. Usually there are satellites all around you in the sky, and the far west and far east satellites half the distanse noise. Same with far north and far south satellites. So, now we come to the reason why vertical accuracy is poor. Horizontal accuracy is improved by the opposing satellites, but to get same effect on vertical accuracy you would need a satellite under you opposing the satellite over you. So to get similar accuracy in vertical there would have to be underground satellites.
So the vertical accuracy will allways be half of the horizontal accuracy.
@newone
nicely explained. makes a lot more sense now as to why it cant be done. Is there any reason as to why the noise from the furthermost east and west satellites half the noise ?
@spasewalkr What your should be saying is that your GPS device isn't accurate enough.
Professional GPS receivers (read $25k units) are capable of sub-centimeter accuracy both horizontally and vertically. In order to achieve this though you need to have at least two units, one on a known station and one nearby on an unknown station. The known station provides a correction to the GPS signals and when applided to the second reciever, makes it's positional accuracy much greater. This can be done in real-time (one correction per second or so, 2cm accuracy) or post-processed of longer observations (that's how you get the greatest accuracy.)
This may sound unrealistic for casual users, but something similar is already being used called WAAS. The system monitors the positions of 38 known stations across the US, computes GPS corrections and the up-links them to two WAAS satellites that transmits to your WAAS-enable GPS device.. giving your 1meter accuracy. I'm not sure, but perhaps the Raytheon contract has something to do with building more of these stations.
@spasewalkr Agreed, better GPS means better UAVs means few lost lives (UVs in general too), then when its after a while it will be declassified and used by the private sector, creating new industries (where inches accuracy matters), growing our economy, creating jobs and all those things we love. Many things the government spends money on is an economic dead end, the money goes in, nothing of economic value comes out (*cough* IRS) , but technologies and materials research is not one of those, many of the technologies and materials we take for granted were developed using government funds, yet you probably wouldn't want to do without them simply based on idealistic principles.
my first thought was..NASA couldn't get this?
I'm curious to see whta Raytheon will come up with, sincecompanies like Trimble Navigation already have spectacular precision in industry-based receiver. The SPS-series from Trimble has sub-centimeter accuracy, and great vertical accuracy, and can receive GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, etc. In fact their vertical accuracy is good enough for guiding earth-movers for grading.
I was under the impression that the US government was purposefully making GPS satellites inaccurate for civilian use for "national security" reasons. Is this not the case? If it is, doesn't this mean absolutely nothing for civilians?
@bradsh
No they turned that "feature" off several years ago.
@bradsh: They used to add a random amount of error into the signals the GPS satellites sent. As Raffi256 said, that was turned off, circa 2000, IIRC.
@Shadyman Glad to see I've kept up with current events.
I would point out that Raytheon CEO is an Obama lobbyist (so much for that promise, eh?). This is probably why they got the massive contract.
@mininwocollapse
Yes, because Raytheon never was able to score a contract from the government before he started working for Obama.
Not to nitpick, but he isn't an "Obama lobbyist" - he's the Deputy Director of Defense. That being said - he was a Raytheon lobbyist, which means Obama made an exception to his rule about no lobbyists working in his administration.
I don't like it, but I'm not sure you can say this is why they got the contract. There are probably only a few companies in the US that could handle this contract. Every single one of them pours gobs of money into Washington no matter who is President, so I'm not sure that any one of them getting the contract inspires me with warm fuzzy feelings.
They better deliver
OCX Because X makes everything sound cooler.
Can't they improve accuracy by just adding new satellites? Will receivers automatically find additional GPS satellites?
@Raffi256
It isnt the amount of satellites. Adding more wouldnt give better accuracy as the current problem is the atmosphere ambiquity. Weather changes pressure and moisture of air which in turn changes the travel time of radioawaves to the receiver from satellite which in turn changes the measured distance from satellite to the receiver.
There is a way to measure the difference weather makes by using 2 different frequencies as the weather effect is frequency dependant. New satellites will give civilians acccess to both frequencies, not only one of them like its been until nw.
Unfortunately you will have to buy new receivers as the current receivers can only receive the 1575.42MHz signal.
Hmm. I think I like this kind of global competition.
$886m is a lot of change to "improve" GPS, though. Better be some mind blowing improvements.
Wait a minute this doesn't make sense. Didn't we jsut shut down one of our GPS satellites to save government money?
WTF!?
@(Unverified)
*just
@(Unverified)
No. The government is shutting down the LORAN system, which uses some of the same principles. It is generally not as accurate as GPS and is more prone to multipath interference. With the accuracy, cost, and wide availability of GPS receivers, LORAN has fallen out of favor and was only kept in place as a backup to GPS systems.
Whatever happened to Galileo, the European version of GPS? What I found cool about it, was that its signals could penetrate into places that GPS couldn't like inside a buildings.
Some explanation to the news. They are going to update the control segment - the control and multiple monitoring stations that monitor GPS satellites and upload control commands. They need to update them in order to support upcoming GPS upgrade (GPS III). Today the stations cannot monitor more than 32-31 satellites. In future more satellites are expected to be used. Also new millitarry and civil signals are introduced already today. Monitoring stations are responsible to check (and correct) that the transmitted satellite coordinates would be within a meter or so from the true satellite position and that the satellite signals would be "healthy".
Hacking - what exactly you want to hack here? Maybe the stations, but the satellite signals... hmm...
Galileo is coming...slowly... the 4 tests satellites should be launched somewhere within one year. Then testing will be done, then after a yea or two they will gradually launch the rest of the satellites.
Don't overestimate Galileo power. The signal power is the about the same, so this will not help to go deeper indoors. Signal construction is a bit better, but no wonders or revolutions here. One will see the biggest positioning power will be when GPS, Galileo (and GLONASS or Compass from China) will be used together. Then in urban environments the number of visible satellites will go up.
BTW it could happen that Compass would be up and running before Galileo :)
@DariusLT
Thanks for the info. About the penetrating signal, I remember reading somewhere that the US Military wanted the Galileo guys to scale back many of the features that Galileo was originally intended to have because it either overlapped with a military signal or it overlapped with a some military funciotns.
Is it possible that a signal that penetrates into buildings was one of them?
@Toy Yoda
No, most likely no. Here the signal strength plays the biggest role (the close second is errors due to reflected signals-multipath). The signals in that frequency band have power limitation to protect over communication systems. Also the power cost a lot in satellites and in this case each satellite is transmitting to the whole Earth and a few thousand kilometers around it,not like say TV or over satellites.
Plus, if let's say Galileo would increase signal power, than GPS would suffer (this becomes signal jamming).
Do we really need to waste over $1B to get a more precise location with our GPS systems? Couldn't we just lump all of the non-mached use cases into some type of residential or consumer use and just keep an eye on it?