ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: N151-032
ARETE ASSOCIATES — SBIR Phase II award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $499,797
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Navy
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase II
- Topic
- N151-032
- Solicitation
- 15.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- 2020-06-29 → 2021-07-10
Description
The superior availability and position accuracy afforded by GPS is undeniable, and today’s submarines have become heavily reliant on GPS for safe navigation due to its availability and accuracy. Given the recent development of sophisticated GPS jammers and anti-satellite weaponry, however, this over-reliance on GPS has become a critical weakness for the submarine force, which must be supplied with alternative means of open ocean navigation. To address this need, Areté has developed Hyperion, an algorithm to generate automatic celestial navigation position fixes with no additional submarine hardware required. By associating the stars observed in periscope imagery with a catalog of over 100,000 stars (compared to the 52 navigational stars in traditional celestial navigation), Hyperion is able to estimate the submarine’s position with an accuracy of better than 0.1 nautical miles in less than 60 seconds of periscope employment time. Hyperion offers an accurate,passive, and software-based alternative to GPS navigation for the US Navy’s submarine fleet.