Repurposing Technology: GPS Used To Help Predict Hazards

As reported by GCN: While necessity may be the mother of invention, tight budgets are the mother of innovative repurposing of technologies. 

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have teamed up to take advantage of a network of hundreds of GPS stations in Southern California, originally installed to measure tectonic movements and to monitor and predict hazardous events such as earthquakes and flash floods.

While the scientific-level GPS stations bounce signals off satellites to record very small changes in location, those signals can also be used to measure water vapor in the atmosphere.

"A GPS receiver fundamentally is measuring the amount of time it takes signals to travel from the GPS satellites to the receiving antenna on the ground," explained Angelyn W. Moore, a scientist on JPL's Geodynamics and Space Geodesy Group. "That travel time is modified by the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. The upshot is that whenever we measure a geodetic-quality GPS station's position, we are also measuring the delay due to water vapor. That delay can be related to precipitable water vapor with a surface pressure and temperature measurement."

When this moisture data is combined with data from barometers and thermometers, it can give forecasters greater accuracy in predicting rainfall and flash floods. According to Moore, there are approximately 40 stations providing water-vapor estimates every half hour. "We are evaluating hardware to provide water vapor [data] at 5 minutes or less at a test site, and plan to install that at approximately 25 sites," she added.

While forecasters are currently accessing the system's water-vapor estimates via a Web interface, said Moore, "We are pursuing integration into their standard forecaster displays."

According to Moore, the network in Southern California consists of 475 GPS stations, about 175 of which are operating in real time and 17 of which have been equipped with accelerometers. While GPS measurements can be used to measure large movements during an earthquake, accelerometers can measure smaller movements. More importantly, accelerometers can measure primary waves, or P-waves, which can be help seismologists predict the arrival of the secondary waves, which signal the phase of violent shaking during an earthquake. Since P-waves move through the earth faster than S-waves, data from P-waves could be used to provide an early-warning system.

While Moore doesn't know of imminent plans to expand the system, she says doing so would offer important data. "Certainly the spatial extent can be extended," she said. "Existing real-time GPS stations tend to be located in California more than in Arizona, so north is the most obvious opportunistic direction at present. That would enable use of the GPS water vapor [data] for other weather conditions such as atmospheric rivers." Atmospheric rivers are relatively narrow regions in the atmosphere in which relatively large amounts of water vapor are transported horizontally. According to NOAA, "While ARs come in many shapes and sizes, those that contain the largest amounts of water vapor, the strongest winds, and stall over watersheds vulnerable to flooding, can create extreme rainfall and floods."

In fact, NOAA already has several hundred GPS-equipped weather stations scattered throughout the nation. Although the density of that network is not sufficient for the kinds of system being developed by the JPL/NOAA/Scripps team, they could be incorporated into an expanding network.

Northrop to Help Sustain Air Force Embedded GPS System for $200M

As reported by GovConWire: Northrop Grumman has been awarded a potential four-year, $200 million contract to help the Air Force integrate and sustain a GPS navigation system.

Up to 45 percent of the contract ceiling could include unclassified foreign military sales agreements, with the first two confirmed orders covering sales to Iraq and Thailand, the Defense Department said Friday.

According to the Navy, the Embedded Global Positioning System Inertial Navigation System is designed to offer users a single standard electronic module for GPS and inertial navigation.

The company will be responsible for platform integration, modernization, diminishing manufacturing sources, flight test support, technical support following integration efforts, training, engineering support and studies, contractor depot repair, spares and data.

Who Carries the GPS/GNSS Gold Standard Now?

As reported by GPS World: China’s BeiDou system claimed a user range error (URE) of 2.5 meters zero age of data (ZAOD) 95% recently.  The parallel GPS specifications commit to 6 meters 95% ZAOD and 7.8 meters 95% all AODs.  Does this mean that BeiDou is more accurate than GPS? Not so fast.  

In late December, director Ran Chengqi of China’s Satellite Navigation System Management Office announced the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) Public (or Open) Service Performance Standard. The document details the public service performance parameters of the BeiDou system, including service area, accuracy, integrity, continuity, and availability. It is a basic commitment to customers from BDS providers, but also an important basis for customers to choose, use, and evaluate the system performance.

A few important qualifications of BeiDou’s performance standard first:

According to the foreword of the document, “This document specifies the BDS open service performance standard at the current stage.” This is as it should be.

A paragraph on service volume, however, highlights the fact that BeiDou is as yet a regional service.

“4.4 BDS OS Service Volume

The BDS OS service volume is defined as the OS SIS coverage of the BDS satellites where both the BDS OS horizontal and vertical position accuracy are better than 10 meters (probability of 95%). At the current stage, the BDS regional service capability has been achieved, which can provide continuous OS to the area as shown in Figure 2 & Figure 3, including the most part of the region from 55°S to 55°N, 70°E to150°E.”

The BDS Service Area.

This means that BeiDou commits to 2.5 meter accuracy in China, as well as neighboring countries — and importantly, trading partners — in Southeast Asia plus Australia.

Does this mean that once BeiDou attains global status, it will provide 2.5 meter accuracy everywhere, on its basic single frequency, open service?  Hard to tell.  Much of its strength, its core strength, one might say, comes from 5 geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellites and 5 Inclined Geosynchronous Satellite Orbit (IGSO) satellites. The GEOs  hover over the Equator more or less permanently, south of but in the general longitude of  China’s sovereign national territory. The IGSOs move back and forth from the northern to the southern hemispheres in the same area.

When BeiDou achieves its planned global reach, an event scheduled for 2020, the constellation will consist of 35 satellites: 5 GEOs, stationed at longitudes so their footprints cover China,  27 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites encircling the globe in continuous paths as do those of GPS, and 3 IGSOs over the East and Southeast Asian regions.

Will globally available accuracy at that point match what is achievable in China?  It takes a better geometric mind than mine to fathom this.

Even disregarding the geographic limit of the 2.5-meter claim, and ignoring for the moment the mathematical conundrum outlined above, there are reasons to scrutinize the BeiDou Performance Standard more closely, as John Lavrakas of Advanced Research Corporation has done.  His notes, and an illuminating table, follow below after a bit more introduction and background on the general topic.

The publishing of the Public Service Performance Standard, a common practice among GNSS operators, is also a prerequisite for BeiDou system involvement in international civil aviation, international maritime, 3rd Generation Mobile [phone] System, and other international standard-setting organization activities.

The document has Chinese and English versions. Because document download from the BDS government website can be difficult, Richard Langley has made them available at the University of New Brunswick website:

http://www2.unb.ca/gge/Resources/beidou_open_service_performance_standard_ver1.0.pdf

http://www2.unb.ca/gge/Resources/beidou_icd_english_ver2.0.pdf

Analysis

John Lavrakas of Advanced Research Corporation posted the following comment to the an earlier online article announcing the Performance Standard document.

“I took a quick look at comparing the BeiDou Open Service Performance Standard with the GPS Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard and obtained mixed results.”

Table 1. Coded to show green for the GNSS service committing to a more stringent standard over the other. Courtesy of Advanced Research Corporation.

“In some cases, the commitments from BeiDou were stronger (URE accuracy, vertical position), and in other cases the commitments from GPS were stronger (continuity of service, advance notice of outages).

“The good news is that GNSS systems are documenting the service levels that users can expect. What we will need next is monitoring to verify these service levels are being met.

“Here is a link to my quick look:

http://oregonarc.com/2014/01/beidou-performance-standard-how-good-is-it/.”

Thank you, John.

A final note.  As the GPS stewards from the U.S. Air Force carefully and proudly remind us at each GNSS conference where they deliver a briefing, actual GPS performance has almost always bettered its specs over the last decade or two — often by a considerable margin.

And with that, I think we may all return to our various pursuits, secure in the knowledge that while the gold standard may — repeat, may — at times pass in limited special circumstances or under particular conditions, from system to system, overall GNSS Things Are Getting Better All the Time.

Trains Turn to Natural Gas to Cut Fuel Costs, Compete with Trucks

As reported by Environmental Leader: General Electric’s locomotive division and other companies are testing natural gas equipment as rail companies look for ways to take advantage of natural gas production, which has halved the price of fuel, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

The savings could be in the billions, the publication reports. Union Pacific, the nation’s biggest freight railroad, spent more than $3.6 billion on fuel in 2012, about a quarter of its total expenses.

GE’s NextFuel kits (pictured) allow railroads to use liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a fuel source, reducing emissions and fuel costs. Caterpillar’s Electro-Motive Diesel has also developed an LNG prototypes; both will be tested by Union Pacific, CSX, BNSF and Canadian National railroads this year.

Natural gas could help railroads improve their profits and better compete against trucks, the Christian Science Monitor reports. However, any changes will happen slowly as they would require expensive new fueling stations and infrastructure across the US’ 140,000-mile freight-rail system.

The natural gas truck market experienced a growth spurt in late 2013 driven by lower fuel costs and environmental benefits over diesel, according to an analysis by Navigant Research published last month. The report forecasts this trend will continue this year as new engines and vehicles are introduced. Overall, the markets for natural gas trucks and buses are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively, between 2013 and 2022, the report says.

New emissions regulations coupled with low LNG costs are also driving commercial maritime firms to LNG-powered fleets.

Shell, GE and Clean Energy Fuels will this year begin construction on the US’ first fuel station for liquefied natural gas-fueled cargo ships in Jacksonville, Fla.

New "Look And Link" Wireless Technology Enables Device-to-Device Links By Pointing

As reported by Spectrum IEEE: Researchers from South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute demoed a new wireless technology this week that could enable better device-to-device (D2D) communications, allowing smart gadgets such as phones to link to one another without going through a base station. Many researchers believe that D2D capability will be a key feature in the next generation of wireless networks after 4G LTE and LTE-Advanced. It could help decongest overloaded base stations and usher in new applications, such as screening a video clip on a big screen while it's actually stored on your phone, or downloading the service manual directly from your smart car.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Don’t D2D technologies already exist? Sure they do. You may be scrolling through this story using a Bluetooth-connected mouse. Perhaps you bought a cup of coffee this morning by tapping your smartphone to a near field communication (NFC)-enabled cash register. Other D2D standards already available or in the works include Wi-Fi Direct, LTE Direct, and Peer Awareness Communications.

But these technologies have yet to catch on in a big way. And maybe for good reason. Surveys show that users don’t particularly like touching their phones to things or scanning a list of available devices to connect with the one they want, which Wi-Fi Direct and most other D2D technologies require. Most people find all that tapping, scrolling, and clicking to be physically demanding, annoying, or just plain awkward. Given the choice, we would much rather engage with smart objects simply by pointing our smartphones or tablets at them—or better yet, by looking at them, such as with smart glasses.

But here’s the problem: In order to connect with, say, a smart poster or with your friend’s television, your phone must know its ID, such as an IP address or a given nickname. Without knowing this information or making you select it from a list, how would your phone identify the device you’re pointing it at?

The South Korean team, led by Young-Hoon Kim, devised a solution using a novel beamforming technique. Dubbed “Look And Link,” it uses an array of antennas to direct a phone’s transmissions toward the correct receiving device. The demo took place on Wednesday at an IEEE wireless standards meeting in Los Angeles.

So how does Look And Link work? Imagine, for instance, that you are strolling down the street, and you see a restaurant that you think you might want to try. But this is the future, so rather than walk in and ask for a menu, you simply stare through your smart glasses at the smart sign in the window. Using a built-in antenna array, your smart glasses form a directional beam to transmit a query toward the smart sign, thus avoiding querying other nearby devices.

But not just any beam pattern will do the trick. Conventional techniques, for instance, would create a beamform that, while concentrating most of its gain toward the smart sign, would also radiate in unintended directions. So devices that you’re not looking at, but that are close to you, might receive a signal that’s just as strong—or stronger—than the signal received by the smart sign. In the below figure, for example, both the device you’re pointing at (Device A) and a nearby device (Device B) will receive your query quite strongly.

Kim and his team solved this problem by randomly varying the shape of the beam over short time intervals—a technique they call jittering. Only the gain in the direction of the target device stays the same. The effect is that while the smart sign receives a signal of consistently high strength, other nearby devices see huge gain changes. The researchers illustrate the concept nicely in the figures below:

So now, when your smart glasses send out a query to the smart sign, nearby devices know not to answer. Meanwhile, the smart sign transmits back its ID, allowing your glasses to connect with it using some other wireless standard, such as LTE Direct. Then you can download information from the sign, such as menus and operating hours. Maybe you even decide to make a reservation for later that evening.

Kim points out that another advantage of Look And Link, besides enabling device identification through pointing, is that it allows devices to link with one another quickly. Using Look And Link, he says, two devices can connect in a just a few seconds, compared to almost a minute using Bluetooth.

At Wednesday’s demo, the researchers used a prototype transmitter with four antennas, according to Byung-Jae Kwak, one of the team members. He concedes that four or more antennas may not fit into today’s smartphones, which currently have no more than two. But, he says, cellular carriers as well as unlicensed device makers are beginning to look toward higher frequencies, which require smaller antennas. The South Korean team demoed Look And Link, for instance, using 5 GHz spectrum. “We are also interested in using 60 GHz,” Kwak said in an e-mail. “In that case, we can easily put eight antennas in the space of a finger nail.”

One Billion Smartphones Were Shipped In 2013—And That’s Not Even The Interesting Part

One way to boost growth: Convince people they need two phones.

As reported by Quartz: In 2013, the world’s phone manufacturers shipped (as opposed to sold) just over a billion smartphones according to IDC. 

Strategy Analytics, a competing research firm, puts the number for smartphones slightly lower at 990 million. Either way, what’s interesting isn't the nice round ten-digit number—it’s the suggestion that the big manufacturers at the top are running out of road.  

Start with Apple. It accounted for 15.3% of all smartphone shipments in 2013, even though it makes only a handful of very expensive models. That’s down 3.4 percentage points from the previous year. Samsung looks to be in slightly better shape, growing market share a smidge from 30.3% to 31.3%. But both companies announced disappointing numbers over the past week, with Samsung’s fourth-quarter handset sales down 9% (paywall) on the previous quarter and Apple selling 10% fewer iPhones than expected.  

Then look a bit further down the rankings The next three biggest companies by shipments—Huawei, LG, and Lenovo—together grew their market share to 14.2%, up from just 10.9% last year.  

The numbers point to an inescapable conclusion: The era of high-margin, high-growth smartphone sales is over. Huawei, LG and Lenovo make good phones, but few of their handsets aspire to be the very top of the market where the iPhone competes with Samsung’s Galaxy S series. Indeed, Samsung’s growth can probably be attributed to the lower-priced models it peddles in emerging markets, rather than its flagship phones.  

Despite the astronomical numbers, smartphone growth is slowing in percentage terms, up a mere 38% in the past year compared to 46% between 2011 and 2012. One reason is that much of the low hanging fruit has been picked; many people in the developed markets of the west who were going to buy smartphones already have. Now comes the more difficult task of convincing them to keep buying new ones every couple of years, and digging into the lower end of the market where most of Earth’s less prosperous residents reside.

 The low-end still has quite a way to go: smartphones remain prohibitively expensive for vast numbers of people. 

Unmanned U.S. Aircraft Plunges Into Pacific

As reported by NBC Montana: U.S. Customs and Border Protection grounded its fleet of unmanned aircraft Tuesday after losing one worth $12 million in the Pacific Ocean.

The unarmed aircraft had a mechanical failure while on patrol of the southern California coast.

The crew determined that it wouldn't make it back to Sierra Vista, Ariz., "and put the aircraft down in the water," the agency said in a statement.  It's unknown what caused the failure.

The majority of the aircraft is submerged. The Coast Guard is assisting in recovering any floating pieces, an official said.

Unmanned aircraft systems are technically not "drones," which operate under preprogrammed instructions, Customs and Border Protection said.  They are piloted remotely.

Customs and Border Protection's fleet of 10 is now down to nine, all grounded, an agency official said.  The one lost Tuesday cost about $12 million, plus another $6 million for the ground system.  The agency lost a smaller unmanned aircraft in 2006. It ultimately crashed about 200 yards from a home, the official said.

Last November two sailors were treated for minor burns after a drone malfunctioned and crashed into a guided missile cruiser off the coast of Southern California.  The ship was testing a combat weapons system.

The drone was being used to test the ship's radar tracking when it malfunctioned, veered out of control and struck the cruiser, the military said.