NEW WIRELESS AFFECTS GPS

New government test results show that a proposed high-speed wireless broadband network being launched by a company called LightSquared could jam GPS systems used for aviation, public safety, military operations and other uses leaving them scrambling for electronic component datasheets.
The results released this week by a federal working group come amid mounting concern that LightSquared's planned network could cripple GPS systems embedded throughout the nation's infrastructure. And they raise questions about whether the government will allow LightSquared to turn its network on as scheduled next year.
In January the Federal Communications Commission gave LightSquared approval to build a nationwide fourth-generation wireless network that would compete with super-fast systems being rolled out by AT&T and Verizon. The new network will wholesale access to other companies that will rebrand the service under their own names.
The FCC sees the LightSquared network as one part of a broad government push to bring high-speed Internet connections to all Americans. It would cover at least 92 percent of the U.S. by 2015.
But the company's plans have set off alarm bells among GPS equipment makers and the many government agencies and companies that rely on GPS systems and a Seagate usb driver, because LightSquared's network would use airwaves right next to those already set aside for GPS. They warn that sensitive satellite receivers — designed to pick up relatively weak signals coming from space — could be overwhelmed when LightSquared starts sending high-powered signals from as many as 40,000 transmitters on the ground.
LightSquared's network could cause devastating interference to all different kinds of GPS receivers.
Faced with these concerns, the FCC has made clear that LightSquared cannot launch its network until the interference problems are resolved. It is requiring the company to participate in a technical working group with GPS manufacturers and users to study the matter. That group conducted GPS interference tests using LightSquared equipment in Las Vegas last month and will report the results to the FCC next week.
The agency will then seek public comments on the matter. The FCC said it will not allow LightSquared's commercial service to proceed if that would cause widespread harmful interference with GPS or a fujitsu hard drive.
Results compiled by a working group of the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing — a government organization that advises and coordinates among federal agencies that rely on GPS technology — found potential for widespread GPS interference.
The tests showed that wireless signals from LightSquared's planned network interfered with GPS receivers used by the Coast Guard and NASA and caused Federal Aviation Administration GPS receivers to stop functioning altogether.
The tests — most of which were conducted by various federal agencies at Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in April — also caused GPS receivers used by New Mexico state police and by fire and ambulance crews to lose reception. In addition, GPS receivers built into farm equipment made by John Deere lost signals, as did most General Motors' OnStar navigation systems.
Last week RTCA, a nonprofit group that advises the FAA, released the results of its own interference tests and found that LightSquared's use of airwaves closest to the GPS spectrum would cause a complete loss of GPS receiver function over large metropolitan areas.
Despite the test results released so far, the FCC insists the interference questions are far from settled. Some of the tests to date may have relied on different assumptions, metrics and mitigation assumptions, and so may not accurately reflect the potential for interference as a result of how the network may be operated.
LightSquared executive vice president said he remains confident that the company's new network and GPS systems can co-exist. After all, he noted, findings of interference do not come as a surprise. What matters, he said, is what can be done about the interference.
Among the solutions outlined by the government working group: modifying LightSquared's antenna patterns and reducing the power levels of its base stations; limiting the slices of airwaves that LightSquared can use or moving the company to a different part of the spectrum; and installing better filters on GPS receivers to screen out LightSquared's signals.
GPS makers and dell refurbished users are particularly concerned about the final option since they say it could take many years — and possibly billions of dollars — to upgrade all of the GPS receivers in use.

Texan Accused of Disabling 100 Cars over Internet

DALLAS (AP) - A man fired from a Texas auto dealership used an Internet service to remotely disable ignitions and set off car horns of more than 100 vehicles sold at his old workplace, police said Wednesday.

Austin police arrested Omar Ramos-Lopez, 20, on Wednesday, charging him with felony breach of computer security.

Ramos-Lopez used a former colleague's password to deactivate starters and set off car horns, police said. Several car owners said they had to call tow trucks and were left stranded at work or home or at private school in Dallas.

"He caused these customers, now victims, to miss work," Austin police spokeswoman Veneza Aguinaga said. "They didn't get paid. They had to get tow trucks. They didn't know what was going on with their vehicles."

Ramos-Lopez was in the Travis County Jail on Wednesday with bond set at $3,000. The Associated Press could not find a working phone number for his family.

The Texas Auto Center dealership in Austin installs GPS devices that can prevent the ignition from engaging the battery. The system is used to repossess cars when buyers are overdue on payments, said Jeremy Norton, a controller at the dealership where Ramos-Lopez worked. Car horns can be activated when repo agents go to collect vehicles and believe the owners are hiding them.

"We are taking extra measures to make sure this never happens again," Norton said.

Starting in mid-February, dealership employees noticed unusual changes to their business records. Someone was going into the system and changing customers' names, such as having dead rapper Tupac Shakur buying a 2009 vehicle, Norton said.

Soon, customers began calling saying their cars wouldn't start, or that their horns were going off incessantly, forcing them to disengage the battery. Norton said the dealership originally thought the cars had mechanical problems.

Then employees noticed someone had ordered $130,000 in parts and equipment from the company that makes the GPS devices.

Police said they were able to trace the sabotage to Ramos-Lopez's computer, leading to his arrest.

Norton said Ramos-Lopez didn't seem unusually upset about being fired.

"I think he thought what he was doing was a harmless prank," Norton said. "He didn't see the ramifications of it."

GPS Shootout: Droid Vs iPhone

Washington Post

Getting lost ain't what it used to be. With most smartphones now sporting built-in GPS, we're running out of excuses for showing up late. And we wanted to find out which smartphone navigation application will get you to your destination fastest.

For this contest, we grabbed two of the most capable smartphones on the market: Apple's iPhone 3GS (AT&T) and the Motorola Droid (Verizon). Both feature large, touch-sensitive displays and robust processors that can handle serious computing tasks. More important for this test, both have GPS receivers that work with full-featured GPS navigation apps.

This is where the differences start: While the Droid comes with built-in Google Maps navigation for Android 2.0, the iPhone's top GPS tool is the TomTom for iPhone, a $100 download from the App Store. The features of these two products are so eerily similar that it's a no-brainer to make a head-to-head comparison.

For our test, we took the Droid and the iPhone 3GS on a wild, Bullitt-style ride through the streets of San Francisco. With the same destination entered on each device, we took wrong turns, changed directions, and made a generally erratic spectacle of ourselves that bordered on public menace.

As we drove, we kept a close eye on each unit, noting which updated routes faster, which provided the most effective directions, and which offered the most helpful turn-by-turn instructions.

TomTom for iPhone

TomTom's fully-loaded GPS app costs an eyebrow-raising $100, but it does give the iPhone enough navigation features to rival most stand-alone GPS devices.

The program supports the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and it can also be used on the iPod Touch in conjunction with the optional TomTom Car Kit ($120). The app takes up 1.3GB of the phone's built-in memory, which forced the owner of our 16GB test unit to delete a bunch of music files from the device before installing it.

TomTom for iPhone uses the iPhone's 480-by-320 touchscreen to full advantage, offering turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation with both 2D and 3D maps. The home screen lets you choose between a few options: You can enter a destination address, select a recently-used destination, search for a point of interest, select a point on the map, or pull an address out of your contact list.

We particularly liked the intersection interface for entering addresses. The app narrows down the list of available cross streets to include only those that intersect with the primary street you've entered. In a big city, this greatly simplifies entering your destination; you don't have to scroll through a seemingly endless list of streets.

Out on the road, TomTom's 3D maps offer a clear view of your immediate route that make it easy to spot your next turn without taking your eyes off the road for very long.

Meanwhile, the voice guidance includes helpful information about the distance to the next turn, so you know whether you need to get over immediately to make that left turn in 300 yards, or whether you've got a half-mile to go. TomTom's voice guidance helpfully gives you the next two turns in advance, as in "Turn right on Fifth Street, then left turn."

We did encounter several GPS signal failures during our drive with the iPhone 3GS. These occurred mostly in narrow alleyways that obstructed our line-of-sight to the sky.

The Droid, however, made no corresponding complaints about loss of signal at such points, and kept on navigating without interruption throughout our test.

We don't know whether this difference in GPS continuity was due to hardware differences between the devices or to tolerances for signal loss in the apps. But for practical purposes, TomTom for iPhone was slightly less effective than the Droid's app at maintaining a seamless guidance experience through the city.

We should note that we tested both phones without any optional hardware, such as a mounting device or car kit. However, users who opt for the TomTom Car Kit should experience a better GPS experience with their iPhones, since the car kit comes equipped with its own GPS module, one that's superior to the iPhone's: It's similar to the receiver that TomTom integrates into its larger stand-alone GPS devices, and it features a more robust antenna design.

Google Maps Navigation for Android

While the TomTom iPhone app is a freestanding navigation program, Google's Android navigation software lives inside the phone's Google Maps app. Originally available only on the Android 2.0-based Motorola Droid, Google Maps navigation has now made its way to Android 1.6 devices as well. Android 1.6 users can download the app from the Android Market. We took it for a spin on a Verizon-connected Droid.

Rather than begin by picking a method of entering your destination, you're given a bird's-eye view of your current location from the start. To begin navigation, you hit the menu button in the Google Maps app and tap Directions. From there, you're presented with a field to enter your destination, and you select options to navigate by car, by public transit, or on foot.

The differences between pedestrian navigation and automotive navigation can be significant, particularly since pedestrians aren't restricted by one-way streets or footpaths that would be inaccessible by car. Having the option to toggle between these modes is a massive point in Google Maps' favor. Add to that the ability to automatically compile a list of bus, ferry, and train routes complete with schedule information, and you've already got the best navigation experience I've seen on any phone.

The navigation itself is great, too. As I've already mentioned, the Droid managed to maintain a GPS signal throughout our test, even at times when the iPhone lost communication with the satellites. What's more, the Droid established its connection more quickly than the iPhone at the time the app launched, and it refreshed its directions more quickly than the iPhone whenever we took a wrong turn or otherwise deviated from its instructions.

On a couple of occasions, the directions from the two devices varied. Though judging the efficiency of the directions is unavoidably subjective, my copilot and I both agreed that the Droid's choice of routes was a bit better than the iPhone's. Google Maps also includes real-time traffic information as a data layer, which adds value by letting you see which parts of your journey are likely to result in delays.

While both devices offer voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, we preferred the clarity of the Droid's voice directions to the iPhone's, but felt the iPhone gave us distance information more effectively. In our tests, the Droid did a much better job at pronouncing street names than did the iPhone.

When we arrived at our destination, Google Maps capped off its superior run on the course by presenting us with a Google Street View image of the address we were looking for.

We Have a Winner

Both TomTom for iPhone and Google Maps for Android are excellent GPS tools that should get their owners to their destinations with ample efficiency. However, it wasn't hard to choose a winner in this showdown.

The Droid's free, built-in software is so well integrated with its Maps app that it offers a seamless navigation experience the iPhone just can't rival at this time. Though we liked the simplicity of TomTom's 3D map images better than the slightly more complex images afforded by the Droid's higher-res display, the Droid beat the iPhone in quickly refreshing directions to compensate for wrong turns. In the end, the Android navigation tool was simply superior on most counts--including, obviously, the price.

Of course, these two apps are available only on totally separate platforms, and almost nobody is likely to switch handsets over the quality of the phone's GPS experience. If you haven't noticed, iPhone users have built a reputation for loyalty to that device.

However--assuming you're on the fence about your next smartphone purchase and are not locked in to a particular carrier--which phone will do a better job of getting you where you want to go? The answer to that question today is the Droid.

GPS Satellites "Wearing Out"

Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A government report says the accuracy of GPS signals could deteriorate in the next few years because of delays in satellite launches, but the Air Force says it has plenty of ways of keeping up the navigation system increasingly relied on by drivers and cell phone users.

The Government Accountability Office reported last month that there is a risk that launches of new satellites will not keep pace with the wear and tear on the Global Positioning System.

That could mean that the accuracy and reliability of hundreds of millions of civilian and military GPS devices — including everything from "buddy finder" cell phone applications to guided bombs — could degrade until new satellites are in orbit.

The next generation of GPS satellites, dubbed IIF, has been beset by launch delays and budget overruns. Contractor Boeing Co. said the delays were due to design changes necessary to ensure that the satellites would last. The work is now done, and the first IIF is slated to launch in November, nearly three years behind schedule.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said the chief risk is that the following generation of satellites, IIIA, will be delayed in a similar fashion. Lockheed Martin Corp. is building that series, and the first are scheduled to launch in 2014.

Though it's now in widespread civilian use, GPS was originally developed for the military, and it's still managed by the Air Force.

The Air Force's mission is to maintain a "constellation" of 24 working satellites, virtually ensuring that at any time there are at least four in the sky above any point on the Earth. That's the minimum number needed for a GPS device to compute its location by measuring the slightly different amounts of time it takes for radio signals to reach it from each satellite.

The satellites don't work forever: A few launched in the early '90s are still in operation, but most have shut down. The delayed launch of the IIF series means that for a few years, satellites could be failing faster than they're being replaced.

Lt. Col. Tim Lewallen, deputy director of GPS at Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, agreed with the GAO's conclusion that there is a risk that service could degrade. But he said the risk is very small.

There's substantial spare capacity in the system, Lewallen said. There are 30 working satellites in orbit, plus three older satellites that could be reactivated. Another satellite, based on the previous-generation technology, is due to go up in August. The $30 billion system has never been larger and more accurate, Space Command says.

There are also ways to extend the useful life of current satellites if some of them break down, Lewallen said.

For instance, the Air Force could shut down other functions of the satellites to conserve power for GPS signals. These secondary capabilities of the satellites are mostly secret, but one that has been made public is that they carry sensors to detect nuclear explosions.

Per Enge, a professor of aeronautics and the director of the GPS Research Laboratory at Stanford University, said the Air Force had developed good stopgap measures, but they won't work forever.

"No one can complain or state that the sky is falling right now," Enge said. At the same time, delays in launch schedules and funding are difficult to account for and it's possible that new satellite models could have problems that aren't discovered until they are in orbit.

Enge would like to see the nation commit to maintaining a higher minimum number of satellites, perhaps 30.

"The GPS constellation is skinny compared to what it should be," he said. "The most important thing is that we keep funding GPS and don't take it for granted."