FIRST RF CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A14-066

Description

Since the first NAVSTAR GPS satellite was launched over 35 years ago, GPS has grown into one of the most important and widespread technologies used by modern military systems. These modern systems rely heavily on conventional GPS signals for position, navigation, and timing (PNT) functions and these mission-critical systems could be rendered inaccurate or inoperable if even a portion of the impinging GPS signals are lost. To combat loss of GPS signals, especially in environments where conventional GPS signals are disadvantaged by geography, the military has begun to use GPS pseudo-satellites (pseudolites) to augment the ability of military GPS receivers to reliably generate accurate location and heading solutions.FIRST RF proposes an innovative antenna implementation approach to enhance the capability of both airborne and vehicular pseudolites. By using an efficient and low-size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) element design as a building block, FIRST RF proposes a variety of array topologies optimized for installed platform to provide a tailored radiation pattern allowing pseudolites to provide unprecedented GPS augmentation services.