GPS World Welcomes Tony Murfin, New Professional OEM Editor

This month, GPS World is excited to welcome our new Professional OEM editor, Tony Murfin.

Tony Murfin

When Alan Cameron first asked me a year ago to write for GPS World, I was delighted to think that an old crow such as myself could be considered as a potential contributor to this dynamic publication. At the time I had to decline, but as circumstances change — and change they certainly have for me — I now have the opportunity to say something which may from time to time appear to be partially intelligent to you, the readership.

People may know me as a VP at NovAtel, where I spent the large part of the last 15 years creating and sustaining a business around Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) ground-network reference receivers. This was a delightful company to work for as it grew from a small group of GPS engineering fanatics back in 1992, through an entrepreneurial express train which fed on innovation and success after success, to the respected GPS worldwide presence it has now become.

I really enjoyed that ride. It took basic engineering all the way through commercial introduction and acceptance with a small, specialized market base, out into the real world and captured huge programs, partnered with major companies, and fielded thousands of GPS receivers in multiple applications — applications we would never have dreamed of in 1992.

My relationship with NovAtel changed in July last year, when I transitioned into a part-time business consultant working in Canada and the United States, largely driven by my desire to avoid any more harsh Calgary winters and take up part-time residence in Florida. I parted ways with NovAtel this year as we successfully completed transition of a large number of activities to the very capable NovAtel team now executing this business.

But my GPS experience didn’t start with NovAtel; I first grew into GPS at CMC Electronics (previously Canadian Marconi Company) in Montreal. Before GPS, there were other ground-based navigation systems, and I began work at CMC as a software engineer on Omega. This system was based on low-frequency signals from eight worldwide ground beacons, and provided around one-mile accuracy for airborne users. Just as GPS today is used to aid inertial systems, integrated Omega and INS enabled international, over-water flights through the 1970s,’80s, and ’90s before GPS became fully operational.

CMC was one of the very first companies to develop and certify GPS for civil airline use. A long-term relationship between Honeywell and CMC has seen several generations of certified GPS receivers integrated into Honeywell civil aircraft avionics, as well as a host of non-related retrofits that have enabled a multitude of civil aircraft to benefit from GPS en-route navigation. CMC has now developed, certified, and fielded WAAS-capable GPS landing/approach sensors, and also GPS sensors which are the core sensor in GPS ground-landing systems (GPS Ground-Based Augmentation Systems (GBAS), better known in the United States as Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS)).

You’ll notice I keep stressing “certified” as a descriptor of these GPS receivers. Developing and qualifying receivers for use on passenger-carrying civil aircraft requires stringent development and test processes. It’s a difficult undertaking that involved proving compliance with a host of safety standards to certification authorities in a number of countries. This is a science unto itself, which CMC has mastered. I can claim some credit for their capabilities as I was also the software manager at CMC who introduced and coached the organization into initial compliance processes with these software standards in the 1980s and ’90s.

CMC also spun off a commercial low-cost OEM receiver family from its airborne receiver technology, and I was the first product manager who oversaw initial development and took this receiver to market.

Coincidentally, this product line was later purchased by NovAtel, and was the basis from which the current lower-end single-frequency NovAtel OEM receiver family has been derived.

While my consulting business may now take me into other aerospace technologies and products and systems, I’m still firmly grounded in GPS and GNSS. I expect future articles will deal with novel helicopter applications of GPS, news on Galileo and the other developing international satellite navigation systems, and how people are using these systems, both in the civil and military worlds.

Tony Murfin
GNSS Aerospace Inc.