The US satellite/terrestrial venture LightSquared has signed an agreement to develop a system that it claims will “eliminate” interference problems with high-precision GPS receivers.
It said that it had agreed with Javad GNSS, a US-based…
The US satellite/terrestrial venture LightSquared has signed an agreement to develop a system that it claims will “eliminate” interference problems with high-precision GPS receivers.
It said that it had agreed with Javad GNSS, a US-based manufacturer of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), to develop the new system.
It added that Javad GNSS had completed its design, made prototypes and tested these prototypes.
The founder of Javad GNSS, Javad Ashjaee, said that the interference problem was not a difficult one to solve “once you decide to solve it”.
“We’ve begun manufacturing preproduction models and expect to have 25 available within two weeks – we are not talking in hypotheticals here,” he said.
According to the LightSquared statement, the process involves taking the existing flagship receivers and reconfiguring the filters and linear amplifiers to make them compatible with LightSquared’s bottom 10MHz of spectrum.
LightSquared said that this process was “simple and inexpensive”, and that the additional cost for the technology was not expected to increase the selling price of the product to the consumer.
Ashjaee argued that high-precision GPS receivers face a wide range of interference issues, including congested frequencies and intentional jamming. He claimed that LightSquared had made the problem much easier to solve by moving to spectrum further away from core GPS frequencies.
Ashjaee also said that tests conducted so far by the GPS industry did not take into account the GPS modernisation plan that is currently taking place.
He said: “Since we have demonstrated that LightSquared can certainly coexist with the current GPS satellite signals, the coexistence will be even stronger when the new GPS satellites with modern L1C, L2C and L5 unencrypted codes are launched.”
LightSquared’s CEO Sanjiv Ahuja struck an upbeat note on the news.
“This breakthrough is a final step toward LightSquared’s goal of building a nationwide wireless network that will bring lower prices and better service to Americans from coast to coast,” he said.
Yet the announcement drew a critical response from the “Coalition to Save our GPS”, an industry group which includes major GPS manufacturers like Garmin amongst its members.
The lobby group expressed doubts over the significance of LightSquared’s claims. It argued that “this is not a one-size-fits-all solution and a few prototypes does not a solution make” and emphasised that the “estimated 750,000 to 1 million” high precision GPS receivers in the US vary widely.
The group demanded: “If and when solutions are available, LightSquared must accept responsibility for paying to replace the existing base of existing equipment with new products.”
LightSquared was not immediately available to reply to the coalition comments before press time.
Earlier in September, the US regulator FCC said that it believed “additional targeted testing” was required in order to ensure that LightSquared’s technology did not cause harmful interference to GPS.
Political controversy
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Center of Public Integrity has published details of LightSquared’s political connections.
In a report on 20 September, the Center’s iWatch News service said that several major Democratic campaign contributors and supporters of President Obama had held investments in the company and its affiliates over the last ten years.
It also claimed that President Obama himself held “up to $50,000” in stock in the company (then known as SkyTerra) in 2005.
The Republican senator for Iowa, Chuck Grassley, has been calling on the FCC to release documents showing its communications with LightSquared.
“It’s ironic that a communications agency has such a clampdown on its own communications,” Grassley said in a statement on 27 July.
