A very new back-up technology which is not yet well known to the public is Locata – a terrestrial positioning system that remains accurate in the absence of GPS, is vastly more accurate and operationally more robust than eLoran, and which can be flexibly modified to meet specific application requirements.”

This seminal article, which is the feature story in the February 2013 issue of The American Surveyor  magazine, the most high-profile magazine in North America for professional surveyors, highlights the growing worldwide concern with the obvious vulnerabilities and insufficiencies of GNSS-based positioning.

Full article – Download from below

John Hilvert, Australian Defence Magazine, February 2013

A space-based satellite navigation system, GPS provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world.

Developed back in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems, GPS became fully operational in 1994. Significantly for Australia, it is maintained by the United States government and is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver. But reliance on GPS is subject to major vulnerabilities recent official studies have shown.

Issued in 2011, the Royal Academy of Engineering report found jamming of GPS based vehicle tracking devices was easy and cheap. They were often deployed hide a car driver’s movements or avoiding road user charging.

Moreover rebroadcasting (‘meaconing’) a GPS signal maliciously, accidentally or to improve reception could cause misreporting of a position. This effectively allowed for spoofing GPS to create a controllable misreporting of position, for example to deceive tracking devices.

In 2009, the UK Ministry of Defence conducted trials of GPS jamming against the THV Galatea, a buoy tender, in an area of sea near South Shields in the north of England. The jamming caused the ship’s systems, which were reliant on GPS, to malfunction alarmingly. During the trial the ship gradually lost position, and the autopilot told the ship to move off course, moreover, there was no indication on the ship that there had been a navigation failure.

GPS – A global single point of failure

This single point of failure can affect both navigational and communications instruments…

In Australia, Defence accepts vulnerabilities of GPS, informing ADM, it is “focused on ensuring that the Australian Defence Force is able to conduct operations mindful of GPS degradation or denial”. But Defence declined to elaborate on any specific strategies or capabilities it was pursuing as these were classified.

Click “Download File” below to read full article…

In a recent USAF technical report, the need for a new non-GPS based positioning capability was described by the 746th Test Squadron as the key component for “the realization of the new ‘gold standard truth system’ for the increasingly demanding test and evaluation of future navigation systems for the U.S. Department of Defense.”

Just how significant is the Locata development?  In this article we look at some recent events that answer this question and speculate on what might be the wider implications for Australia as a nation and for the global positioning industry in general…

Instead of satellites, Locata uses ground-based equipment to project a radio signal over a localised area that is a million times stronger on arrival than GPS. It can work indoors as well as out, and the makers claim the receivers can be shrunk to fit inside a regular cellphone. Even the US military, which invented GPS technology, signed a contract last month agreeing to a large-scale test of Locata at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Instead of satellites, Locata uses ground-based equipment to project a radio signal over a localised area that is a million times stronger on arrival than GPS. It can work indoors as well as out, and the makers claim the receivers can be shrunk to fit inside a regular cellphone. Even the US military, which invented GPS technology, signed a contract last month agreeing to a large-scale test of Locata at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

It wasn’t created to operate in dense foliage, deep open-cut mines, or even urban “canyons” created by multiple skyscrapers. It is also vulnerable to “jamming” devices that can take out the signal and deny service.

But what if the “holes” in GPS could be plugged? Locata, a privately owned Australian company, has invented a technology, called LocataTech, that is designed to do just that by offering a backup when GPS is unavailable. Unlike GPS, which uses satellites in orbit, LocataTech uses terrestrial transmitters on the ground.

The trials, conducted during September/October on SydneyHarbour, showed a difference of only 4.4 cm in the positioning and navigation guidance signals provided by the Locata system when compared to those obtained from survey-grade receivers using the American GPS and Russian GLONASS global satellite systems.