ITT Exelis [XLS] yesterday released details of its new GPS technology, called Exelis GPS Interference, Detection and Geolocation, which will help customers better understand the environment their GPS system operates in, how it is affected by intentional or unintentional interference and then providing the data needed to take action.
“A product will be available in the fourth quarter of this year,” Ted Scopek, director of Positioning, Navigation, Timing (PNT) Strategic Growth for ITT Exelis told Defense Daily in an interview.
This new system combines the more than 35 years the company has been in the GPS business, accumulating a “tremendous understanding of the environment and spectrum and how it operates,” and its core competency in electronic warfare, he said.
The new system that will provide near real-time geolocation of intentional and unintentional GPS jamming sources through a network of sensors and advanced geolocation technology.
GPS is ubiquitous, and the ITT sees a wide market in the military, civilian government and commercial spheres, anywhere GPS performs a critical function, said Ed Morris, director of Strategy and Business Development for ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems.
Interference isn’t always intentional or sinister, Scopek said. For example, at one unnamed local airport, an aviation system dependent on GPS for positioning navigation and timing was periodically unable to perform, but no one could figure out why. Analysts and equipment were brought in and spent months looking before being able to isolate the cause of the interference–a truck driver using a “personal privacy device,” who didn’t want someone to know where he was. The device was readily available on the internet and the trucker used it occasionally when he pulled off the road near the airport. He had no intention of interfering with aviation equipment.
“Our system will be able to put sensors into place that will be able to identify the interfering source, so the customer will then know his system is being interfered with…firsthand actionable intelligence…then geo-locate the source of interference and place a marker on a visual map,” he said. The customer can then take whatever action wanted.
The new product will provide a 24/7 monitoring of the GPS spectrum, and it will automatically provide alerts, and also provide some data such as how long the signal was interfered with and how strong the interference was. The data also can be archived for later processing, Scopek said. The system would also provide information that customers could use to understand how to improve the system that they rely on.
In designing and producing the product, ITT Exelis has “combined its intellectual prowess and physical capabilities to create an offering for the market that we see may have success as so many rely on GPS to do critical functions in their systems,” Morris said.