SBIR Phase II: Space-Based Atmospheric and Integrity Monitoring for Mission-Critical Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT)

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to enable much-needed improvements to global position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services that are used by billions of people every day. The Earth’s atmosphere distorts PNT signals transmitted by satellites (i.e. global positioning systems, GPS), which lead to end user errors in position and time accuracy that are not easily removed. The goals of this project are to remove these atmospheric-derived errors in real-time at a system level. The effort will support novel global PNT services that will bring more precise global positioning and timing accuracy (less than 10 cm, less than 1 nanosecond) to end users in many downstream applications. Global precision timing from such a service will support the scaling up of intelligent transportation systems, making autonomous vehicles safer while driving down equipment costs. These autonomous vehicles include the projected millions of drones and automobiles that will be manufactured over the next several years. In addition, a global precision timing service, when available indoors, will reduce the deployment cost of millions of critical infrastructure devices in power, telecommunications, and financial sectors.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to accurately map the Earth’s troposphere and ionosphere and demonstrate autonomous satellite integrity monitoring using a constellation of small satellites. Proper mapping of the atmosphere may remove atmosphere-derived errors in space-based PNT systems. The first research objective is to expand the algorithmic and data processing framework for PNT satellites, called the Atmospheric Mapping and Satellite Integrity Monitoring System (AMSIM). The research will be adapted to real constraints of the system including spectrum and orbital configurations. The second research objective is to demonstrate the major elements of AMSIM on orbit, which will be accomplished with two demonstration satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The third research objective is to combine these factors to inform the true PNT performance of the production system so that it can be clearly conveyed to target end users. The anticipated technical results will be a commercially-viable and technically-feasible space system architecture enabling a precision global PNT system that can offer 10 cm and 1 nanosecond accuracies to end users.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.