Positioning and timing technology experts from the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Italy recently completed a rigorous, independent scientific test campaign, run over a period of eight months.

It was designed to quantify the performance characteristics of all test candidate Alternative Position, Navigation & Timing (A-PNT) technologies for – as the Report Title states – ‘Potential Deployment in the EU’. The JRC tests covered a wide variety of PNT test cases and technology features considered to be a priority as a ‘backup to mitigate the impact of a potential disruption of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)’.

This performance evaluation assessment was run under a globally-open Tender launched by the EC’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS). It sought submissions from suppliers wishing to demonstrate their technology’s capacity to:

• deliver all specified Positioning, Navigation & Timing (PNT) services, completely independent of space-based GNSS (which includes the GPS system);

• provide effective PNT backup in the event of GNSS disruption; and

• provide PNT services in environments where GNSS cannot be delivered (such as indoors).

The EC Report confirms that Locata’s terrestrial network was the only technology tested which could demonstrate non-GPS-based centimetre-level positioning accuracy in every area where GNSS does not work, including indoors.

The Report also verified Locata’s unique ability to deliver picosecond levels of network self-synchronisation and time transfer across the large areas covered by Locata signals, without requiring satellites or atomic clocks. This new capability, enabled by Locata’s proprietary TimeLoc™ developments, could underpin performance improvement for applications in mobile telecoms markets, and many other digital data systems that also need precise time synchronization.

Download the EU Summary Report

Download the EU Full Locata 141-page Report.