The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements to overcome GNSS’s potential performance and availability risks. Congress debated whether to retain and upgrade the LORAN-C infrastructure to become enhanced LORAN (eLORAN), a national backup to GPS. In October 2009, Congress enacted a Department of Homeland Security appropriations measure allowing LORAN-C termination. […]
FAQ
What? LORAN may be back? Why? How? Part 2
The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements to overcome the potential performance and availability risks of GNSS. Before GNSS and GPS, and before INS systems were available, another type of RF-based position-determining system was in wide use: LORAN. Q: What is LORAN? A: LORAN is short for LOng RAnge Navigation. LORAN, […]
What? LORAN may be back? Why? How? Part 1
The defunct, obsolete LORAN navigation system is being revived with enhancements to overcome the potential performance and availability risks of GNSS. There’s no need to tell the readers of this FAQ about the impact of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services from global, regional, or even localized perspectives. Billions […]
Improved estimation of automotive radar signal strength
The signal strength of automotive radar can be estimated from the target radar cross section and distance. Greg Lee, Keysight Technologies Sir Robert Watson-Watt is generally credited as radar’s inventor, having developed the first practical system in 1935 and later applying radar to aircraft and weather. We’ve since used radar to monitor everything from ballistic […]
Evolving radar technology in ADAS
Lidar may become unnecessary for future autonomous vehicles thanks to advances in highly integrated RF chips. Prajakta Desai, Texas Instruments Over the years, the application of radar within the automotive industry has improved both safety and convenience. Radar can work in extreme environmental conditions such as rain, snow, dust and bright sunlight and also provide […]
Keeping hackers out of GPS receivers
Resilient GPS/GNSS receivers protect inertial navigation systems from jamming and spoofing. Maria Simsky, Septentrio The demand for accurate and affordable navigation is on the rise thanks to the growth of automation and robotization. Of course, the go-to technology for navigation is GPS—able to locate receiver position to within 16 ft or less—and other GNSSs: Russia’s […]
Keeping autonomous vehicles on track
What autonomous vehicle developers need to know about inertial navigation systems. James Fennelly, Acienna inertial measurement systems The inertial navigation system (INS) is essential to autonomous vehicles. It provides timing information for sensor synchronization and rapid updates of velocity, position, and attitude needed for the ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems). It complements perception sensors for […]
Planning for vehicle dynamics with simulation
Vehicle dynamics play an important role in validating intelligent systems. Michael Peperhowe, dSpace gmbh Advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving (ADAS/AD) functions are designed to make everyone on the road more safe. Design engineers have long validated these functions by simulating them in test scenarios involving other vehicles, pedestrians, and obstacles. But it is […]
The basics of dielectric resonator antennas
The mmWave equipment on connected vehicles may sport dielectric resonator antennas that look nothing like conventional antennas. Automotive designers have always put a premium on technologies that are light-weight and compact. The preference hasn’t changed for connected vehicles. As connected features increasingly rely on mmWave frequencies, designers investigate ways of shrinking the size of radio […]
Writing a bootloader for Arm Cortex-A35/A5X microprocessors
By Aaron Bauch, Senior Field Application Engineer, IAR Systems Design specifications require the ability to update a device’s firmware in the field dynamically. This is done commonly via a bootloader. Designing a bootloader, however, is challenging as it must meet various requirements. For example, the mechanism for getting the new application into the MPU is […]
