GPS World: Expert Advice -- eLoran, Superhero Sidekick!

Expert Advice -- eLoran, Superhero Sidekick!
http://tl.gpsworld.com/gpstl/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=481241

Jan 1, 2008

By:Sally Basker
GPS World

Today, GPS is the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) superhero.
The miracle of our age is that over a period of just two decades or
so, GPS has become a mass-market commodity. We have massaged the
physics; watched broadband mobile communications become a reality;
and seen computers become smaller, faster, and much more capable. The
result: GPS chips for a few dollars in mobile phones; GPS in-car
navigation systems for a few hundred dollars that protect marital
harmony; and new traffic signs to warn the unwary.

Marvel Comics tells us that even Spider-Man uses GPS: "while allied
with Iron Man, Spider-Man wore a new costume that was equipped with
\u2026 a short-range GPS microwave communications system (with a
built-in fire, police, and emergency scanner)."

But, like the very best superheroes, GPS has its flaws. Spider-Man is
neither omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor omnipresent -- and he has a
terrible work/life balance! This is why he works with other
superheroes. Like Spider-Man, GPS provides safety nets for the unwary
that we come to rely on, but it isn't always available. Indeed, there
are real concerns about the level of our critical infrastructure's
reliance on its weak signals; signals that my colleague, David Last,
describes as perhaps the next jamming or hacking adventure playground
for young, spotty youths without a girlfriend!

Sidekick. This is why enhanced Loran, eLoran, is GPS's new best
friend and superhero sidekick. It is independent of GPS with
dissimilar failure modes and delivers complementary levels of
performance to multi-modal users. This time last year, a small and
select band of international, fun-loving, radionavigation
professionals met at the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center in
Washington to agree on the baseline definition for eLoran. Over a
three-day period we masticated, meditated, and mediated, and produced
the International Loran Association's eLoran Definition Document. Our
"elevator speech" encapsulates the definition and benefits:

* Enhanced Loran is an internationally-standardized positioning,
navigation, and timing (PNT) service for use by many modes of
transport and in other applications.

* eLoran meets the accuracy, availability, integrity, and continuity
performance requirements for aviation non-precision instrument
approaches, maritime harbor entrance and approach, land-mobile
vehicle navigation, and location-based services, and is a precise
source of time and frequency for, say, telecommunications.

* eLoran is an independent, dissimilar complement to GNSS. It allows
GNSS users to retain the safety, security, and economic benefits of
GNSS, even when their satellite services are disrupted.

So, how's eLoran going? We have made real progress worldwide during
2007.

Authoritative figures in our GPS industry are now welcoming eLoran as
a way of securing our current GPS benefits as demonstrated in recent
issues of GPS World. In March 2007, Len Jacobson said that we need
eLoran "to extend and defend the global positioning and timing grid
based on GPS today and in the future based on GNSS." In May, Jim
Doherty stated that "eLoran should extend and defend GPS into
GPS-challenged areas and deter those who would interfere with GPS."
Finally, Bradford Parkinson, the "Father of GPS," is reported by the
U.S. National Space Based PNT Advisory Board as saying, "The ultimate
compliment to GPS is that it is taken for granted . . . A contingency
augmentation, like eLoran, is essential and would act as a deterrent
to terrorism."

The Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) has set
up Special Committee 127 to deal with eLoran standardization. The
first meeting took place in Orlando, Florida, in October and there
are already meetings planned for January, May, and November 2008. Its
first task is to update the existing signal-in-space standards before
moving on to new eLoran data formats.

Independent, Redundant. In the maritime world, there is growing
recognition of the importance of a backup to GNSS. At its
e-Navigation seminar in July, the International Association of Aids
to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities concluded that "independent
and fully redundant position fixing and timing systems are vital for
the implementation of e-navigation" and that eLoran is capable of
meeting the PNT requirements. The International Maritime
Organization's Navigation Sub-Committee agreed in July that there was
"a need to provide an internationally agreed alternative system for
complementing the existing satellite navigation, positioning, and
timing services to support e-Navigation," although it was premature
to identify solutions before user requirements had been finalized.

In Europe, the General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom
and Ireland awarded a 15-year contract to VT Communications for the
provision of a state-of-the-art eLoran radionavigation service to
improve the safety of mariners in the U.K. and Ireland. European
Loran service providers have created the European eLoran Forum to
support the successful introduction, operation, and provision of
eLoran services in Europe as part of a European Radio Navigation
Plan. Finally, there appears to be some positive movement towards
issuing the first European Radio Navigation Plan in 2008.

Encouragement. All of us, however, eagerly await the most important
eLoran development in the last decade: a positive policy decision in
the United States following the Independent Assessment Team on eLoran
in 2006 and the Federal Register Note on Loran at the end of 2006 and
beginning of 2007. The sharp-eyed among us found encouragement in the
open-source reports of various Appropriations Committees. The U.S.
House of Representatives Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Appropriations Committee report states that the Independent
Assessment Team "concluded that Loran C should be retained and
modernized to serve as a long term back up for GPS." The U.S. Senate
DHS Appropriations Committee report states that "a group composed of
officials from the departments of Homeland Security and
Transportation and other federal agencies met earlier this year and
unanimously agreed that the United States should maintain the Loran
system."

Even more tantalizingly, an open-source DHS letter to the U.S. Senate
Authorization Committee refers to a decision on Loran by the end of
2007. A positive decision by the United States will undoubtedly cause
a chain reaction worldwide and will stimulate the market for
applications and services.

Finally, I have some good new for those of you who are excited about
innovation, are insatiably curious, love experimenting wantonly, and
want to recapture the pioneering spirit of yesteryear: there is a new
and thrilling world of low-frequency radionavigation systems with
high-powered transmitters and very, very large masts; an almost
once-in-a-career opportunity to contribute to the development of a
new radionavigation system; and perhaps even a pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow!