Where am I?

Tuesday, January 2, 2001

Just as the proving ground for automotive technology is the racetrack, research in GPS (global positioning system) has always happened on the battlefield.

The U.S. government began using satellite signals for submarine navigation in the 1960s. Today, the system has evolved so the 24 satellites circle Earth in six orbital planes with each satellite passing over a given point every 24 hours. Users gain a four-dimensional fix (x, y, z axes and time) by triangulating between the time lags of signals received from any four satellites.

The whole system is controlled from Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO (www.shriever.af.mil), and works so well that the military scrambled the signals, allowing civilians accuracy only within 100m. But after President Clinton ordered them unscrambled in May 2000, the GPS system began working within a fraction of that error, spawning new consumer applications in cars, boats, cell phones, and pagers. (The U.S. military can still re-scramble them regionally at any time).

Now KVH Industries (www.kvh.com) is returning to the system's roots for its latest advance-the TACNAV(TM) tactical navigation system for armored vehicles. The product provides position data for every vehicle, even navigating by dead reckoning when satellite signals are jammed. And it creates a single interface that includes the vehicle location and azimuth, gun turret angle, and target location. It has a contract to supply the systems to an undisclosed Southeast Asian country.