Global Positioning Without GPS

GadgetMike sends word of an award to Boeing for work on a Robust Positioning System that could make use of cell signals, television transmissions, and other clues to provide position information when GPS is unavailable. (Wonder if they've heard about Skyhook Wireless, which does a similar job based on Wi-Fi hotspots, for 2500 US cities and towns.) The work is being sponsored by the US military, so it's not surprising that they don't want to rely on upcoming GPS enhancers or replacements from France, China, and Russia. Here is the Boeing press release.

Comments

Manual navigation sucks

[schwillis]

I always imagined that the GPS network must be very vulnerable to attack, any nation as industrialized as say china could probabbly fill orbit with enough shrapnel bombs to destroy the bulk of the satellites around the planet if they put the resources into it. what did people do before GPS? Well theirs a few things, but most of them don't fit in your pocket. land navigation is extreamly difficult, I spent a good part of my child hood/early teens practiceing land navigation, and I wouldn't ever want to rely on it for anything that requires great precision or speed. Also celestial navigation relies on a unubstructed horizon and clear weather obviously. from the sounds of this system it seems fairly vulnerable to tampering and interference. I wonder if you could use sound freqencys transmitted through the earth to triangulate a position.

Re:Not a new idea really

[drix]

I think this is a new idea. It sounds like they want to construct a radionavigation system that doesn't require any new hardware outlay, based instead on the known locations of various cell towers and TV transmitters. When you consider that the investment in equipment and maintenance in GPS runs into the tens of billions of dollars, this approach is nothing short of revolutionary.

Second, there's really no issue with acquiring a GPS lock in an airplane, since you have unobstructed access to no less than 10 signals at any one time. Where GPS fails is in cities, forest, indoors, etc. But those are absolutely swimming in radio, TV and cell signals. If this system really works, it would be a boon to hikers and drivers who are plagued by spotty GPS reception.