Growing user demand for position, navigation and timing services has seen their integration into numerous different technologies, making life without them virtually unimaginable. And whilst road and location based services, typically based on GNSS technologies, are where the money is right now, it's the emerging sectors like aviation, agriculture and maritime plus areas like timing and synchronisation that are set to be the star performers of the future.
Think about the advent of unmanned autonomous vehicles, whether airborne, marine or terrestrial, for instance self-propelling cars, which rely on ubiquitous position navigation and timing technology. And precision operational analytics and accurate time stamp systems supporting an increasingly regulated, global financial services industry.
Or terrestrial and space-borne IoT devices which have opened up a huge variety of different applications including drone-based delivery systems and unmanned aerial vehicles for farm crop spraying, to robotics and factory automation, and much, much more.
So how to capitalise on this growing market opportunity? The key is building in greater accuracy and robustness at a relatively low cost.
Engineers at Celestia UK are already working on it, researching novel algorithms and protocols to boost existing space-based PNT solutions with terrestrial systems such as 5G, WiFi and others, to create next generation services. Their research, especially into precision timing protocols (Reference: IEEE 1588), is ongoing.
