Image: Locata/US Air Force

Full Disclosure – Locata is a corporate member of the RNT Foundation.

What’s New: The EU finally published the results of its evaluation of seven APNT different technologies. Of those evaluated, Locata was the only one that satisfied all of the criteria. – See charts below from pages 24 and 24 of the report.

What Else to Know: We expect to be writing more about this 85 page report.  Some preliminary observations, though:

• This wasn’t a complete look at all possible APNT tech. There are far more than seven firms offering APNT technology. The number of evaluations were limited by:
  • The requirement for companies to partly fund the demonstrations/evaluations.
  • EU funding that precluded examination of technologies not sponsored/offered by companies
• Four of the companies/tech were among the 11 evaluated in the US Department of Transportation APNT tech demo.
• The EU report does not list solar activity as a concern/threat to GNSS. Yet scientists say that over the next several decades it will be a real danger. The UK has listed solar activity on its risk register since 2012.
• We are also interested to see the report apparently under valuing the societal benefits of GNSS, and the economic loss should it become unavailable for any reason.

Assessing Alternative Positioning, Navigation and Timing Technologies for Potential Deployment in the EU

3.2 Objectives and Assessed Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

As part of the Alternative Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Services tender, the main goal of
the project was to analyse the technologies, which could deliver positioning, and/or timing
information, independently from GNSS, to be effective backup in the event of GNSS disruption,
even if it represents an unlikely situation AND if possible, to be able to provide PNT in the
environments where GNSS services cannot be delivered (e.g. complementary PNT). Such back-up
and complementary technologies are further called in this project “alternative PNT services”
which together with GNSS constitute “resilient PNT services” shall comply with the following Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs), as defined in the Tender specifications for Alternative Position,
Navigation and Timing Services):

• Can deliver positioning, and/or timing information independently from GNSS;
• Act as the backup in the event of a GNSS disruption or outage;
• Able to provide the coverage for the EU European territory including in-land waters;
• Resilient to GNSS failure modes and vulnerabilities (including GNSS frequency jamming and
spoofing or unintentional interference);
• (If possible) extend PNT provision to the environments where GNSS cannot be delivered, i.e.:
urban canyons, indoor, underground and underwater.
• Have TRL greater than 5 for position/navigation services OR greater than 6 for timing
services.
• Provide minimum performance of the alternative PNT service for at least 1 day upon GNSS
loss:
1. Positioning Accuracy (Horizontal and/or Vertical 95%) < 100 m OR Timing Accuracy
to UTC (3 sigma) < 1 microsec AND
2. Availability > 99%
• If the alternative PNT service provides a timing service, traceability to UTC shall be possible.

Charts from pages 24 & 25 of report.

Asterisks (*) indicate either the EU did not have testing equipment available or the test was not required.

READ MORE/Download Report Here