DARPA Seeks to Eliminate GPS Dependence

As reported by GPSWorld: Call it irony, poetic justice, or just the nature of the beast. The same impulse that led to the invention of GPS now has engendered a drive to beget non-GPS.

In the 1970s, the U.S. military began putting together a program “to drop five bombs in the same hole.” The program office, to the wall of which that mission statement was tacked, went on to develop the first satellite navigation positioning system: GPS. In 2012, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) declared that this system no longer sufficed for reliable delivery of precision munitions under every circumstance.

“More than 98 percent of the missiles currently in the U.S. arsenal have mission durations of less than 20 minutes, and today, almost all of these missions are critically dependent on GPS for achieving the required level of delivery accuracy,” a communiqué stated.

Because of vulnerability to jamming, spoofing, and other intentional or unintentional modifications of position, orientation, and time information, the agency has put forth a new goal “to completely eliminate dependence on GPS or any other external signals during the mission and rely solely on self-contained solutions such as inertial navigation,” which is immune to such extrinsic forces.

The Chip-Scale Combinatorial Atomic Navigator (C-SCAN) program has made 10 exploratory grants to investigate and develop this concept, to large corporations, a small start-up, national labs, and academic groups. Only one has been announced, by contracting agent Wright Patterson Air Force Base, to AOSense. DARPA wishes to emphasize that this is a sample of what is happening in C-SCAN, and should not been viewed by readers as the only technical approach paving the way.

The company, located in Sunnyvale, California, has gotten busy building an experimental navigation-system-on-a-chip that combines traditional, solid-state, and atomic inertial guidance technology. Their goal: create a sensor on a chip that works reliably, without drift, over considerable distances for at least 20 minutes.
AOSense is exploring how to shrink and fabricate atomic sensors together with high-performance solid-state inertial sensors. DARPA hopes the C-SCAN program will lead to a breed of inertial microsystems, with a wider range of operating conditions and greater immunity to the environment, reduced start-up time, increased sensitivity, and improved bias and scale factor stability. Oh, and not cost too awful much per piece.

Another project at Northrop Grumman seeks to develop a  micro-gyro for personal and unmanned vehicle navigation.

Despite impressive micro-PNT work to date, current mechanisms remain complex, bulky, power-hungry — and pricey. They have limited resolution and poor long-term stability. Alternative forms give excellent resolution and bias stability, but are limited in bandwidth and generally do not allow high-frequency measurements.

Make no mistake, however. Yankee (and whatever other forms that can be brought to bear) ingenuity will, eventually, win the day. Where then will GNSS find itself?

NTSB calls for wireless technology to let all vehicles 'talk' to each other

As reported by NBC: Federal safety authorities Tuesday called for all U.S. cars, trucks and buses to come equipped with technology that would allow them to "talk" to one another to help avoid accidents.

The proposal was one of three the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made Tuesday in its investigation of two school bus accidents last year. The main focus was an accident near Chesterfield, N.J., that killed an 11-year-old girl, but the board also looked at evidence from a similar accident in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that also killed a student. In both accidents, the school buses collided with trucks at intersections.

In a summary report, the board recommended that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) develop standards for "connected-vehicle technology" — wireless components that would let vehicles communicate on the road. The full final report is expected in about three weeks.

With those standards in place, "NHTSA can then require this technology to be installed on all highway vehicles," Deborah Hersman, chairman of the NTSB, said at the board's meeting Tuesday. "This technology more than anything else holds great promise to protect lives and prevent injuries."

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the trade group for most of the major automakers — which is working with the NHTSA on research and development of connected-vehicle technology — didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

But in testimony before the Senate Transportation Committee in May, Mitch Bainwol, the alliance's president and chief executive, raised doubts that such systems could be feasible in the near term.
Aftermarket component systems would need to be overhauled, a patchwork of state and federal laws would have to be unified and legal questions of liability surrounding operating cars with automated systems would have to be hashed out, he said.

"The question of who is responsible — when (and) for what — will need to be addressed," Bainwol said.
Last August, the NHTSA began conducting a yearlong study of 3,000 connected vehicles in Ann Arbor, Mich., using WiFi-like components that send electronic data messages back and forth and translate the data into a hazard warnings for the drivers. The test is focusing on safety at intersections, lane changes and rear-end accidents involving vehicles stopped at intersections.

"Vehicle-to-vehicle communication has the potential to be the ultimate game-changer in roadway safety — but we need to understand how to apply the technology in an effective way in the real world," NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said when the test was launched.

Regarding the two school bus crashes, the NTSB also recommended tougher qualifications for agencies that oversee the medical certification of commercial drivers. The summary report found that the driver of the bus in the New Jersey crash was fatigued and was using sedatives, and it said he likely wouldn't have been issued a license had he disclosed all the medications he was taking.

In an animated reconstruction of the New Jersey crash, NTSB investigators depicted the truck's speeding into the intersection just as the school bus was leaving it. The reconstruction shows the truck ramming into the left rear side of the bus, which spins off the road.

The truck driver was speeding and was carrying an overweight load in a truck that had defective brakes, the NTSB said.

And the NTSB also looked at the effectiveness of the seat belts on the bus in New Jersey — one of only six states that require school buses to have them.

The board said seat belts and shoulder belts would have helped to reduce flailing injuries, but it stopped short of recommending their mandatory use nationwide.

Instead, it recommended that school districts offer training to bus drivers, students and parents to drive home "the importance of wearing seat belts" in the states that do require them: California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

The National Association for Pupil Transportation said it was eager to work with the NTSB and the NHTSA "to evaluate the practicability of implementing the recommendations that have been offered today."

Lockheed Martin Prototype to Help Prep for GPS III Launch

As reported by GPSWorld: Lockheed Martin has delivered a full-sized, functional prototype of the next-generation GPS satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to test facilities and pre-launch processes in advance of the arrival of the first GPS III flight satellite.

The GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed (GNST) arrived at the Cape on July 19 to begin to dry run launch-base space-vehicle processing activities and other testing that future flight GPS III satellites will undergo. The first flight GPS III satellite is expected to arrive at the Cape in 2014, ready for launch by the U.S. Air Force in 2015.

The GNST arrived at the Cape by Air Force C-17 aircraft from Buckley Air Force Base near Lockheed Martin’s GPS III Processing Facility (GPF) in Denver, Colorado. Prior to shipment, the GNST was developed and then completed a series of high-fidelity activities to pathfind the integration, test and environmental checkout that all production GPS III satellites undergo at Lockheed Martin’s new satellite manufacturing facility.

An innovative investment by the Air Force under the original GPS III development contract, the GNST has helped to identify and resolve development issues prior to integration and test of the first GPS III flight space vehicle (SV 01).  Following the Air Force’s rigorous “back-to-basics” acquisition approach, the GNST has gone through the development, test and production process for the GPS III program first, significantly reducing risk for the flight vehicles, improving production predictability, increasing mission assurance and lowering overall program costs.

“We call the GNST a ‘pathfinder’ because it has truly blazed the trail for every one of our GPS III processes from initial development, production, integration and test, and now pre-launch activities,” explained Keoki Jackson, vice president for Lockheed Martin’s Navigation Systems mission area. “All future GPS III satellites will follow this same path, so the GNST was a smart initiative to help us discover and resolve any issues in advance, implement production efficiencies, and ultimately save a tremendous amount of time and money in the long run.”

GPS III is a critically important program for the Air Force, affordably replacing aging GPS satellites in orbit, while improving capability to meet the evolving demands of military, commercial and civilian users. GPS III satellites will deliver three times better accuracy, include enhancements which extend spacecraft life 25 percent further than the prior GPS block, and a new civil signal designed to be interoperable with international global navigation satellite systems.

Lockheed Martin is currently under contract for production of the first four GPS III satellites (SV 01-04), and has received advanced procurement funding for long-lead components for the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth satellites

Adaptive Filtering for Errant GPS Data in Smartphone and Vehicle Tracking Systems

loop of errant position data - only about
5.2km was actually traveled.

The route shown to the left is for a pedometer application on my iPhone; one of the many free applications available.  You'll note a loop in the middle of the run - where in fact there was no actual loop; I followed streets and highways and took the same path back that I took out.  When I posted the data on Facebook, my friends and family congratulated me on such a long distance over a short time period - I had to explain that the data wasn't accurate, which I only knew from experience on this route - and by looking closer at the actual trail that the application created for me on a separate page.

So what happened?  GPS data (which is a key source of how the pedometer generates it's data) from time to time can lose accuracy - it's a fact of life; nothing is infallible.  This can be attributed to several potential factors: inadvertent or intentional signal jamming, loss of signal strength in heavy tree foliage, multipathing, an impaired view of the sky combined with a poor satellite constellation, ionospheric interference, space weather interference or signal degredation, GNSS systemic issues, etc.

This reminded me of the reason we developed adaptive filtering processes into our vehicle tracking software.

Big Data - Real-time position data
Smartphone and vehicle tracking systems are a kind of 'Big Data' system that is continuously absorbing position data from the field - pre-processing some of the data, but storing it away for use and forwarding to customers; either in near-real-time, or at a later date.  Some errant data can be identified and eliminated immediately, but most data must be evaluated later for cohesiveness.  Data errors are not always multidimensional: in some cases all but one particular portion of the data is correct.

Adaptive GPS Filtering

A position taken under an overpass inadvertently increased
the estimated speed of the vehicle to 99MPH, which triggered
an over-speed alert, which in turn warranted an investigation.
The driver was cleared of any wrong doing after the analysis.

By looking at moving 'windows' of patterned data, the system can evaluate positions and select those that seem to be out of sync with prior patterns, by evaluating significant speed deviation, sudden direction changes, sudden changes in available satellites for a location calculation and position data that appears 'out of place'; or combinations of the prior conditions.  The larger the data-set to work from, especially when looking backward and forward, the better these types of analyses perform - and the more likely they are to find and remove the errant data while leaving valid data in-place.

Endpoints and window size of data
Errant data at the beginning or end of a reported sequence of data can be more difficult to detect - but one easy way to fix that is by changing the time window; by choosing an earlier start or stop time for the report.  As the window narrows, this gets more and more difficult to determine - such as in instantaneous alert reporting - i.e. over-speed alerts.

Fleet Managers - the human brain as a Big Data Engine
In a prior report we discussed how fleet managers can act a a 'Big Data' Engine, evaluating data in order to determine if it's valid, and to give it proper meaning.  In the above example, it was difficult to tell from the position report or the over-speed alert if this was an actual violation by the driver or not. Though positions prior to and after the report looked normal, it was possible for the driver to have increased their speed long enough to reach the alert trip - but by pairing the data with the satellite map data, we were able to determine that there was an impaired view of the sky, and possible multipathing - eliminating the point as a possible traffic violation.  This kind of analysis would be difficult or impossible with today's technology; there is still a place for humans as part of the critical evaluation of events.

In the future, use of inertial measurement unit technology will be able to help 'fix' the problem at the source by providing an estimate that the GPS signal can corroborate with or can identify as 'challengable'.

In the original example, it appears that there is an intermittent wide-band jamming source in the area that I happened to be traveling.

Hybrid location technologies: indoor/outdoor GPS/WiFi

As continued from our previous report: Smart phones commonly support Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet, a feature encouraged by network operators to offload the large amounts of cellular data a standard smart phone generates. In addition, the properties of the Wi-Fi technology can be exploited for location positioning, or combined with an existing GPS tracking system it can be used as a hybrid positioning system.

There are many different proprietary implementations of Wi-Fi positioning, including fingerprinting techniques, which take advantage of environments with high Wi-Fi access point (AP) density such as cities and buildings.

First, the device scans and sends information about the visible Wi-Fi APs—generally the strongest APs are rated in terms of received signal. Second, this information is reported to a server on the network. The server houses a database of APs associated with geo tags and other markers. A fingerprinting algorithm is applied to the input from the handset, which then provides an estimate of the mobile’s position.

The information doesn’t always have to be provided to the network. Instead, the network may provide a subset of its central database to the handset, which then can run the fingerprinting algorithm itself. The fingerprinting algorithm can only work if a sufficiently advanced central database of Wi-Fi APs for the location of interest is available. This database is created by:

• Wardriving: Driving (or walking) in specific areas and using high-grade receivers to collect visible Wi-Fi AP data.
• Crowd sourcing: Having a smart phone constantly report observed Wi-Fi APs along with a GPS location (if available) to location servers

In some cases the handsets are used to augment the database of Wi-Fi reference points; reporting or augmenting the position data for the device or handset that is mobile - while also 'wardriving' - reporting mobile position data and AP updates at the same time.  When done with the users knowlege, this can be helpful - but when done as 'secret' tracking then this can be potentially injurious to the user.

SIM card encryption exploit leaves mobile phone users vulnerable to hacking

A SIM CARD EXPLOIT that could leave millions of mobile phones vulnerable to hacking has been uncovered by German security firm Security Research Labs (SRL).

The research, which is due to be presented at the Black Hat security conference next week, has been detailed on a blog post by SRL founder and cryptographer Karsten Nohl, who said that the use of outdated 1970s cryptography could be exploited, granting hackers access to a device's location and SMS functions.

In the blog post, Nohl explained that the 56-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm used for many SIM cards' signature verification is weak and outdated and thus "poses a critical hacking risk".

The security researcher found that it was possible to exploit a SIM card's SMS over the air (OTA) update system that is built with Java Card, that is, a subset of Java that allows applets to run on small memory devices.

"OTA commands, such as software updates, are cryptographically secured SMS messages, which are delivered directly to the SIM," said a blog post on SRLabs.de.

"While the option exists to use state-of-the-art AES or the somewhat outdated 3DES algorithm for OTA, many (if not most) SIM cards still rely on the '70s-era DES cipher."

In an experiment, SRL sent an improperly signed binary SMS to a target device using a SIM encoded with DES, which was not executed by the SIM because of a signature verification failure. However, while rejecting the code, the SIM responded with an error code that contained the device's cryptographic signature, a 56-bit private key. It was then possible to decrypt the key using common cracking techniques.

Nohl explained that with this key in hand hackers are able to sign malicious software updates with the key and send those updates to the device. The attacker is also able to download Java Card applets, send SMS messages, change voice-mail numbers, and query location data.

"This allows for remote cloning of possibly millions of SIM cards including their mobile identity (IMSI, Ki) as well as payment credentials stored on the card," Nohl added.

Nohl listed three ways that mobile phone manufacturers can defend users against this SIM vulnerability, including SIM cards that support state-of-art cryptography with sufficiently long keys, do not disclose signed plain-texts to attackers, and implement secure Java virtual machines.

Another additional protection Nohn recommended was a SMS firewall anchored into handsets. "Each user should be allowed to decide which sources of binary SMS to trust and which others to discard. An SMS firewall on the phone would also address other abuse scenarios including 'silent SMS'," Nohl said.

The final defense listed by Nohl was "in-network SMS filtering", which would require filtering at the phone network level.

Hybrid location technologies: indoor/outdoor A-GNSS

Assisted GNSS systems rely on the visibility of GPS satellites (left).
Together, GPS and GLONASS satellites could improve location effectiveness.

As posted by Brock Butler with Electronic Design:
Location-based services (LBS) is one of the fastest growing segments in mobile device applications, so it is easy to understand the urgency to provide accurate-everywhere location (5  to 10-m accuracy) in any environment. Considering some of the data about how and where mobile devices are used, it is apparent why indoor positioning is becoming a much higher-value item (and a much bigger challenge) than outdoor tracking, from both a regulatory and commercial perspective.

Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) uses the GPS satellite constellation, which is controlled by the U.S. military and consists of 30+ satellites in medium earth orbit. The wireless network provides “assistance” data to the handset, which includes information to speed up the process of locking on to the satellites. The final position can be calculated at the user equipment (UE), termed UE-based positioning, or at the network, termed UE-assisted positioning. To speed up the process of obtaining a GPS fix, the network provides satellite constellation information, including:

• Current GPS constellation for the UE’s location
• Current GPS time
• Information on satellite orbits
• Frequency shifts in GPS frequencies because of Doppler effects

The availability of access to the GPS system chiefly governs A-GPS performance. The reference signals are very weak, easily attenuated, or even outright blocked by environmental obstructions. Any remaining satellite signals suffer heavy multipath, and any visible satellites may display poor geometry, which causes a higher positioning error. These issues are most prominent in urban and indoor situations.

Assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) uses satellite constellations other than GPS to improve overall satellite availability.  Increasing the number of visible satellites in the sky would cause fewer of them to be blocked out and provide better geometry, increasing performance in urban situations. Currently, the Russian GLONASS system is available for use. With A-GPS, the network can choose to provide assistance data for the additional satellite systems for enhanced performance. With clear visibility, A-GNSS provides very high accuracy, as high as 5 meters under 16 seconds in cold start.

Combined GPS and GLONASS signals, along with similarly configured repeater system could be used to provide indoor GNSS tracking services, providing indoor-outdoor accurate and ubiquitous location coverage for consumer, and commercial tracking needs.