Resilient PNT threats, solutions detailed in webinar

New details are emerging from talks among the speakers slated for this Thursday’s free webinar Resilient PNT for Military Applications.

Virtually everyone in the industry agrees that threats to military positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) are real; the threats continue to be newly emerging, and they are growing in complexity.

“We value the idea of open architecture and universal communications buses to make it easier to incorporate the latest in technologies in a timely manner without system redesign,” said one webinar speaker, and the other three speakers agreed.

Though designed with military applications in mind, the webinar will provide multiple points of relevant reference for non-military users and applications as well.

Here’s an advance peek at the topics that participants will hear in detail at 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific) in Thursday’s webinar.

Mikel Miller

Vice President for PNT Technologies at Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S); Former U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory

• Introduction to the problem
• Situation today
• Situation in the future (where we want to be in ~5 years?)
  • Open architecture
• Communications problem/solutions overview
• Cybersecurity problem/solutions overview
• PNT problem/solutions overview
  • NetAssure introduction and details

Excerpt from Miller’s presentation. (Credit: Mikel Miller)

Lisa Perdue

Product Manager and Applications Engineer, Spectracom

• Introduce the categories of solutions – Protect, Detect, Mitigate, Test
• Discuss several technologies in each category brief overviews
  • Protect – Antennas – AJAS and Horizon Blocking
  • Detect – receiver algorithms, multiple receiver integration, system level monitoring and alerting
  • Mitigate – Augmentations – STL and eLoran, system level mitigation
  • Test – just a reiteration that new threats are always emerging and we need to be able to test vulnerabilities to the latest emerging threats – in a timely matter
• Discuss Layered approach that include not only the technologies, but also proper integration
• System design to support easy addition of new technologies and advancements
  • Supporting the open architecture point that Mike made earlier
  • Victory bus

Mike Jones

Capability Lead for Array Processing, Roke Manor Research

• Protect, Toughen, Augment strategy – related to the Protect, Detect, Mitigate, Test strategy introduced Lisa Perdue
• Deeper dive and introduction into specific technologies
  • Augmented-Reality Jammer geolocation
  • Latest anti-jam antennas (I am only going to mention the fact that AJ antennas exist and their main purpose – feel free to provide more details in general or about specific antennas)
  • Anti-spoof (is this about M-Code, receiver algorithms, system algorithms, or all of these?)
  • Visual sensors
  • Inertial Sensors

Randy Villahermosa

Executive Director, iLAB, The Aerospace Corporation

• Project SEXTANT: New Thinking on Alternative PNT
• To Cope with increasing disruptiveness: Modify, Augment, Substitute, Reach a New Paradigm
• Major Findings: GPS is vertically integrated, with no obvious ‘Drop-In’ replacement; Novel combinations of multiple approaches is fertile ground for PNT innovation. However, many experts have been working on GPS alternatives for some time with no clear consensus crystallizing on a path forward.
• An independent body is needed to evaluate and coordinate Alternative PNT concepts for critical functions
• The Basis for an Alternative PNT Framework
• Creating a PNT Ecosystem
• Open-Source PNT
• An Alternative PNT Assessment Workflow

Learn more about the webinar on our Webinars page.