Alt PNT
Positioning, navigation and timing that survives GPS denial, degradation and spoofing.
The problem
What this capability is
Satellite navigation is the assumption underneath almost every moving system, and it is also the easiest part of that system to take away. A receiver that cannot tell a genuine signal from a rebroadcast one will accept the wrong answer and report high confidence in it.
Alt PNT is the set of measurements that let a platform hold its own position, heading and time when the satellite signal is absent, weak or wrong. A chip-scale atomic reference gives the platform a clock it owns. Inertial and magnetic measurements give it motion and orientation it can check against that clock. Together they let a navigation solution degrade slowly and predictably instead of failing at the moment the signal is lost.
The engineering problem is not whether atomic references work. That was settled in laboratories decades ago. It is whether they can be made small enough, repeatable enough and affordable enough to sit inside equipment that was never designed around them — which is a manufacturing and characterization question, and the one we work on.
Applications
Example applications
Applications are examples of what the capability enables, not products.
- Spoofing detection
- An independent time reference makes a falsified signal visible, because a rebroadcast signal cannot agree with a clock it does not control.
- Jam resistance
- A platform that holds its own time and motion keeps navigating through a denial event rather than stopping at it.
- Assured navigation
- A position solution that carries a stated confidence, so an operator knows what can be trusted and what cannot.