Communications of the ACM
Beyond GPS: Five Next-Generation Technologies
DARPA is pioneering the next generation of PNT capabilities beyond GPS, which includes using miniaturization, pulsed lasers, quantum physics, and even lightning strikes for external navigational fixes.
Credit: DARPA
U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director Arati Prabhakar says his agency is currently running five programs that seek to improve civilian and military GPS navigation technology through development of new methods for obtaining positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) data.
The first is the Adaptable Navigation System project, which seeks to bring together data points from non-navigational sources such as electromagnetic signals from satellites and radio broadcasts with data from new sensors using techniques such as cold-atom interferometry.
The Microtechnology for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing project leverages DARPA's micro-electromechanical systems technology to make extremely small sensors, such as chip-scale gyroscopes, clocks, and integrated timing and inertial measurement devices.
The Quantum-Assisted Sensing and Readout project aims to miniaturize and make portable the technology behind the world's most accurate atomic clocks, which could have applications in new detection and ranging technologies.
The Program in Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering seeks to improve the accuracy and decrease the size of atomic clocks through the use of pulsed-laser technology.
Finally, the Spatial, Temporal, and Orientation Information in Contested Environments project looks to develop PNT systems that will operate independently of global positioning systems, gathering long-range robust reference signals, using ultrastable tactical clocks, and developing systems to share PNT data between multiple users.
From KurzweilAI.net
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