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TAG: Expert Advice

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Expert Advice: Soldiers and Civilian GPS: Dangerous (and Deadly?) Expediency

April 1, 2012

An old adage says, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” That is particularly relevant in today’s world of GPS and the positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) dependencies it has created. In business, it’s all about location, and in military circles, something called real-time situational awareness, driven by the ready availability of PNT from GPS. However, it has been reported (and validated by experience) that U.S. soldiers believe that the GPS equipment they are issued through official channels is too big, too heavy, uses too many batteries, and is old-looking and not sexy like the multi-color, multi-app personal electronics and smart phones they are accustomed to at home.


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This article is tagged with , , , and posted in Defense, Opinions
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Expert Advice: Thank Your Lucky Stars

March 1, 2012

In my 20-plus years of involvement in the GPS/GNSS industry, nothing has come close to the LightSquared debate for technical and political complexity, nor for potential effects on nearly every high-precision GPS/GNSS user in the United States. The industry’s destiny is somewhat controlled by a federal agency that is not very knowledgeable about how, when, and where GPS is used — although I’m sure they’ve learned a lot in the last 14 months.


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This article is tagged with , , , , , , and posted in Opinions, Survey
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Expert Advice: Location Context, Relevance for Revenue

February 1, 2012

Mobility’s first phase saw fixed-line communications go mobile. The next phase saw the Internet go mobile. We now behold a paradigm shift in the third phase, where real world communication bridges to the virtual world, via richer communications on smartphones. For device manufacturers and location-aware service and app creators, it’s no longer about creating unique standalone experiences, it’s about enhancing real-time experiences by enriching everyday consumer behavior with virtual content and relevant information to a particular place and point in time.


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This article is tagged with , , , and posted in Mobile
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Expert Advice: Getting to Accurate Everywhere Location

February 1, 2012

In the next two to four years, mobile device location platforms will be able to provide positioning performance that enables emergency call (E911) and location-based services (LBS) with excellent accuracy (5–10 meters) in all locations. We call this accurate everywhere location, and it will be a significant enabler of indoor navigation applications and for even wider adoption of consumer LBS.
In fact, we may eventually forget how we ever lived without it. This technology can enhance our lives by enabling our mobile devices to know precisely where we are at all times. Armed with this information, our devices can behave in a way that suits our specific situation, and they can do this without us having to do anything other than keep the phone with us.


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This article is tagged with , , , , and posted in Mobile
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Expert Advice: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

January 1, 2012

Across transportation, agriculture, industry, commerce, and finance, GPS has replaced earlier technologies, opened up innovative applications, and led to new ways of doing old things. GPS now plays a key role in the critical infrastructures of all industrialized nations, from the most sophisticated telecommunications system to the production of a simple loaf of bread. Wheat is the world’s second staple food, and bread its main product. Bakers have been around for 30,000 years. GPS, among its manifold other duties, now also helps bring us our breakfast toast and midday sandwich.


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This article is tagged with , , , , , , and posted in Opinions
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Interview: 2nd Space Operations Squadron Commander, Lt. Col. Jennifer Grant

December 14, 2011

December is typically the month when writers of regularly featured columns wax nostalgic and engage in a certain amount of prognostication. This year I enlisted the help of Lt. Col. Jennifer Grant, the 2SOPS/CC at Schriever AFB, the home of GPS, to help us with our year-end review and crystal-ball gazing as we look ahead to the GPS horizon. Lt. Col. Grant reminisces about her first 16 months as 2SOPS/CC, reviews numerous major accomplishments, and updates us on the status of the GPS constellation as well as the often overlooked, ever contentious and always seemingly in flux critical Command and Control (C2) segment.


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This article is tagged with , , , , and posted in Defense, Opinions
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Expert Advice: Test-Based Civil Receiver Certification

December 1, 2011

Disaster-preparedness plans recognize the individual’s role in his or her own survival. When storms approach, have water, food, and basic survival gear on hand. It takes time for help to arrive. The civil GPS industry faces an oncoming storm of interference, and the receiver is the first line of defense. As we integrate GPS into all facets of our lives and infrastructure, we become more subject to disruptions, both unintentional and intentional. Newark International Airport now sees several jamming events per day. In Taiwan, one airport experiences an average of 117 events per day!


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This article is tagged with , , , , and posted in OEM, Opinions
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Expert Advice: MSS Misinformation, and Ten Truths

December 1, 2011

LightSquared is currently conducting a public campaign intended to persuade federal regulators to approve a nationwide broadband service that would be detrimental to users and applications that depend on GPS. The campaign relies on misinformation, revisionist history, half-truths, and clear misstatements of fact. To understand the effort to convince regulators and legislators that the experts are wrong, one must consider 10 basic truths.


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This article is tagged with , , , and posted in From the Magazine, Opinions
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