GAARDIAN Consortium Wins GPS/eLoran Integrity Research Project

A business and academic consortium led by Chronos Technology has received a major grant from the U.K. government sponsored Technology Strategy Board for a £2.2 million (approximately $3.3 million) research project to improve the safety and security of location-based applications such as marine navigation and road transportation.

The consortium has dubbed the project GAARDIAN, or GNSS Availability, Accuracy, Reliability and Integrity Assessment for Timing and Navigation. Over the next 30 months, the consortium will be developing a system for mission and safety critical applications that will certify the accuracy, reliability, and integrity of positioning, navigation and timing systems, namely GPS, enhanced Loran (eLoran), and GLONASS.

“GPS is fast becoming an unseen, embedded and low cost commodity. The challenge to the user community is that it may not appreciate the fact that subtle failures of the GPS signal could have disastrous or expensive consequences in mission or safety critical applications,” said Charles Curry, managing director of Chronos Technology. “The impact on GPS from threats such as jamming, spoofing, space-weather, multipath and other types of interference is likely to increase over the coming years due for example to easier availability of jamming technology or more esoteric phenomena such as increased sun-spot activity. The GAARDIAN project aims to create a data gathering system that will enable any user to monitor the health of the GPS signal in the vicinity of use on a 24-7 basis in real time.”

GAARDIAN will use the Universal Time Coordinate-traceable timing signal from the GLAs’ eLoran station at Anthorn in Cumbria, United Kingdom, along with analysis of the GPS signal data to authenticate GPS reception wherever it is needed for mission and safety critical applications. The challenge is to gather and filter large volumes of GPS and eLoran data continuously in multiple, complex and disparate environments without losing content, according to Chronos.

“This is an exciting project that will exploit the complementary benefits of satellite and terrestrial systems to reduce risk and so improve safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment,” said Sally Basker, director of research and radionavigation for the General Lighthouse Authorities.

The consortium brings together seven private, public, and academic organizations: Chronos Technology, BT Design, the General Lighthouse Authorities of the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Imperial College London, the (U.K.) National Physical Laboratory, the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, and the University of Bath