This study is a brief report of the only re-sailing of Columbus' 1492–1493 Voyage following the data in his log in a scientifically controlled research voyage by a professional and experienced global and ocean navigator. The study is follow-on to the article: “The Controversial Skill of Columbus as a Navigator: An Enduring Historical Enigma,” published in The Journal of Navigation (2009) Vol. 62, 417–4251.

Utilizing both Assisted GPS (A-GPS) techniques and new high-sensitivity embedded GPS hardware, mobile phones are now able to achieve positioning in harsh environments such as urban canyons and indoor locations where older embedded GPS chips could not. This paper presents an empirical analysis of the positional accuracy of location data gathered using a high-sensitivity GPS-enabled mobile phone. The performance of the mobile phone is compared to that of regular recreational grade GPS receivers. Availability of valid GPS position fixes on the mobile phones tested was consistently close to 100% both outdoors and indoors. During static outdoor testing, positions provided by the mobile phones revealed a median horizontal error of between 5·0 and 8·5 m, substantially larger than those for regular autonomous GPS units by a factor of 2 to 3. Horizontal errors during static indoor testing were larger compared to outdoors, but the difference in accuracy between mobile phones and regular GPS receivers was reduced. Despite the modest performance of A-GPS on mobile phones, testing under various conditions revealed that very large errors are not very common. The maximum horizontal error during outdoor testing never exceeded 30 metres and during indoor testing never exceeded 100 metres. Combined with the relatively consistent availability of valid GPS position fixes under varying conditions, the current study has confirmed the reliability of A-GPS on mobiles phones as a source of location information for a range of different LBS applications.

The aim of the paper is to inform design staffs on potential Remotely Piloted Air Systems (RPAS) improvements to afford greater utility on the battlespace. The scope of the paper covers Air Warfare Centre experiences working with several NATO Class II RPAS. Using an ‘assurance framework’ that examines integrity of the aircraft, the operational environment and crew competency, the paper identifies what changes need to be made if the utility of RPAS in this category is to be enhanced.

A major disadvantage of nearly every marine electronic navigation device introduced to date is the necessity for the navigator to turn his or her attention away from the view outside the bridge windows, even momentarily. Indeed, the uncomfortable feeling experienced by seasoned mariners that this ‘head down’ posture creates has led many to be initially reluctant to adopt some marine electronic devices (radar, ARPA, ECDIS, to name a few) that have proven their worth over time as useful, even vital navigational aids. Unfortunately, the use of such equipment has always required the marine navigator to leave behind the real world perspective view and enter an unnatural, two-dimensional plan view of the area surrounding the vessel. Mariners have accepted this type of view by necessity rather than by choice. That may be about to change. Advances in technology and a proven track record of performance benefits from Head-Up Display (or HUD) information in the aviation field have made it possible to consider if such a device would be useful in a maritime context. Accordingly, the authors of this paper conducted a preliminary evaluation to examine empirically what the effects of providing this same type of head-up information would be on marine navigation performance. A series of tests were conducted in the California Maritime Academy's advanced simulation facilities utilizing a full-mission simulator, a laptop-based HUD prototype, a projector, and student participants from an experimental undergraduate course entitled e-Navigation. The goals were to: 1) define the operational requirements and concept of operations for a maritime HUD system; 2) identify essential information, risks, and concerns; and 3) examine performance variations by conditions (environmental, vessel, crew) and tasks. The results indicate great potential for a maritime HUD system, especially for improving situational awareness in low visibility conditions, confined waters, and for vessels where information changes rapidly (i.e., high speed vessels). The results also suggest that there are some standard information requirements across situations that could be augmented with task and vessel specific information.

Integrated navigation using multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is beneficial to increase the number of observable satellites, alleviate the effects of systematic errors and improve the accuracy of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). When multiple constellations and multiple frequency measurements are employed, the functional and stochastic models as well as the estimation principle for PNT may be different. Therefore, the commonly used definition of “dilution of precision (DOP)” based on the least squares (LS) estimation and unified functional and stochastic models will be not applicable anymore. In this paper, three types of generalised DOPs are defined. The first type of generalised DOP is based on the error influence function (IF) of pseudo-ranges that reflects the geometry strength of the measurements, error magnitude and the estimation risk criteria. When the least squares estimation is used, the first type of generalised DOP is identical to the one commonly used. In order to define the first type of generalised DOP, an IF of signal–in-space (SIS) errors on the parameter estimates of PNT is derived. The second type of generalised DOP is defined based on the functional model with additional systematic parameters induced by the compatibility and interoperability problems among different GNSS systems. The third type of generalised DOP is defined based on Bayesian estimation in which the a priori information of the model parameters is taken into account. This is suitable for evaluating the precision of kinematic positioning or navigation. Different types of generalised DOPs are suitable for different PNT scenarios and an example for the calculation of these DOPs for multi-GNSS systems including GPS, GLONASS, Compass and Galileo is given. New observation equations of Compass and GLONASS that may contain additional parameters for interoperability are specifically investigated. It shows that if the interoperability of multi-GNSS is not fulfilled, the increased number of satellites will not significantly reduce the generalised DOP value. Furthermore, the outlying measurements will not change the original DOP, but will change the first type of generalised DOP which includes a robust error IF. A priori information of the model parameters will also reduce the DOP.

Over 10 years ago, a paper was published at the ION-GPS ‘99 conference that detailed the design of the navigation system implemented on the Global Hawk UAS program then being run under the auspices of DARPA. Since that time, many changes have occurred in the program including transition from DARPA to USAF management, the development of the larger Block 20/30 unmanned aircraft (UA) and the awarding of the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program to Northrop Grumman which is based on the Global Hawk Block 20/30 aircraft. In addition, many changes have been made to the aircraft navigation system as well as many lessons learned on the kind of navigation system required to support a long endurance UA. The result has been a much more robust set of navigation sensors that allows this aircraft to successfully support the efforts to counter terrorism in the world today.1

The expedition of Zheng He's fleet to the Western Ocean1 in the first half of the 15th century is an important event in the history of navigation, which has attracted the broad attention of domestic and foreign scholars from different fields2. This paper reveals the relation between Zheng He's voyages and the Asian Monsoon from a geographical perspective. Historical records show that Zheng He's seven voyages to the Western Ocean were precisely organized and successfully carried out due to careful consideration of the conditions and periodical patterns of the Asian tropical and subtropical monsoon. Details such as fleet routes, sailing schedules, wind-waiting points, divergent and rendezvous points were painstakingly planned and arranged in advance by the organizers of the expedition, who all paid close attention to the changing patterns of the Asian Monsoon.

We present a method for addressing probabilistic queries about the location of a vessel in the time interval between two position reports, such as from the Automatic Identification System (AIS). The heart of the method is the random generation of physically feasible paths connecting the two reports. The method empowers operators to answer probabilistic questions about any characteristic of the unknown true path. For illustrative purposes, we demonstrate the use of the method to identify which of several vessels is the most likely perpetrator, in a fictitious scenario in which illegal dumping of waste matter has taken place.

Cooperative positioning (CP) is a localization technique originally developed for use across wireless sensor networks. With the emergence of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) infrastructure for use in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), CP techniques can now be adapted for use in location determination across vehicular networks. In vehicular networks, the technique of CP fuses GPS positions with additional sensed information such as inter-vehicle distances between the moving vehicles to determine their location within a neighbourhood. This paper presents the results obtained from a research study undertaken to demonstrate the capabilities of DSRC for meeting the positioning accuracies of road safety applications. The results show that a CP algorithm that fully integrates both measured/sensed data as well as navigation information such as map data can meet the positioning requirements of safety related applications of DSRC (<0·5 m). This paper presents the results of a Cramer Rao Lower Bound analysis which is used to benchmark the performance of the CP algorithm developed. The Kalman Filter (KF) models used in the CP algorithm are detailed and results obtained from integrating GPS positions, inter-vehicular ranges and information derived from in-vehicle maps are then discussed along with typical results as determined through a variety of network simulation studies.

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is now well established and widely used in commercial shipping. The system originated from a safety mandate but AIS messages have also been shown to be useful from a security situational awareness perspective. In terms of coastal security, AIS messages are often received by land-based receivers positioned along a nation's coastline. The operational range of the receivers is controlled by complex variable VHF propagation characteristics, power of the transmitter, etc. However, certain characteristics of the reception coverage area can be determined from the AIS message receptions themselves. This paper presents an algorithm to compute coverage characteristics using AIS messages. The algorithm is applied to synthetic data with known coverage characteristics, and also real AIS data obtained from the Maritime Safety and Security Information System. Results from the Norwegian, North and Baltic Seas show how the coverage estimate is influenced by the coverage edge, lack of vessel activity, and diversity in the source data.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is unreliable in dense urban areas, known as urban canyons, which have tall buildings or narrow streets. This is because the buildings block the signals from many of the satellites. Combining GPS with other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) significantly increases the availability of direct line-of-sight signals. Modelling is used to demonstrate that, although this will enable accurate positioning along the direction of the street, the positioning accuracy in the cross-street direction will be poor because the unobstructed satellite signals travel along the street, rather than across it. A novel solution to this problem is to use 3D building models to improve cross-track positioning accuracy in urban canyons by predicting which satellites are visible from different locations and comparing this with the measured satellite visibility to determine position. Modelling is used to show that this shadow matching technique has the potential to achieve metre-order cross-street positioning in urban canyons. The issues to be addressed in developing a robust and practical shadow matching positioning system are then discussed and solutions proposed.

Interoperability of GNSS Open Services is a significant trend in the development of all the satellite navigation systems, and its performance will directly affect the users' security and reliability. Therefore, the monitoring and assessment of GNSS Open Services has become a focus of attention for all providers and users of GNSS. In this paper the elements and methods for the monitoring and assessment of GNSS Open Services are investigated first. Then the schemes designed for an international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System (iGMAS) are proposed. The schemes are based on omni-directional antennas, multi-beam antennas and a high-gain paraboloid antenna to achieve Quadruple-overlap and Single-overlap coverage and sophisticated analysis respectively. Moreover, the scheme for the deployment of world-wide monitoring stations is also proposed. Finally, some related works that have been conducted to monitor and assess Beidou Open Services are introduced, which verifies the feasibility of the proposed system.

In environments where GNSS is unavailable or not useful for positioning, the use of low cost MEMS-based inertial sensors has paved a way to a more cost effective solution. Of particular interest is a foot mounted pedestrian navigation system, where zero velocity updates (ZUPT) are used with the standard strapdown navigation algorithm in a Kalman filter to restrict the error growth of the low cost inertial sensors. However heading drift still remains despite using ZUPT measurements since the heading error is unobservable. External sensors such as magnetometers are normally used to mitigate this problem, but the reliability of such an approach is questionable because of the existence of magnetic disturbances that are often very difficult to predict. Hence there is a need to eliminate the heading drift problem for such a low cost system without relying on external sensors to give a possible stand-alone low cost inertial navigation system. In this paper, a novel and effective algorithm for generating heading measurements from basic knowledge of the orientation of the building in which the pedestrian is walking is proposed to overcome this problem. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through three field trials using only a forward Kalman filter that can work in real-time without any external sensors. This resulted in position accuracy better than 5 m during a 40 minutes walk, about 0·1% in position error of the total distance. Due to its simplistic algorithm, this simple yet very effective solution is appealing for a promising future autonomous low cost inertial navigation system.

The latest attempts at improving small scale autonomously guided Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have concentrated around the increase of range and speed. One of these ways is to incorporate dynamic slope soaring manoeuvres as part of the flight path. This is in contrast to most conventional path-planning algorithms where waypoint guidance is merged with terrain avoidance or contour following capability. Additionally, current trajectory optimization techniques are iterative and so have a considerable computational load. The proposed algorithm is based on Dubin's curves, and is therefore optimal by definition. Being non-iterative, it is comparatively a more efficient algorithm. Hence, a key advantage of the proposed technique is that the desired trajectory is generated quickly in real time with minimum computational load while satisfying the spatial constraints of dynamic slope soaring.

The routes of young, inexperienced pigeons released at four sites up to 13·5 km from the loft were recorded with GPS-based tracking devices. The routes were found to differ from those of old, experienced pigeons in several aspects: (1) Although being oriented when departing, young birds show more scatter and larger deviations from the home direction, but usually restrict their flights to a semicircle. (2) They apparently ignore prominent landmarks near the loft that are clearly visible. (3) Their tracks are typically more complex, consisting of a number of distinctive phases where the young birds head in different directions, which results in significantly longer routes, often exceeding the direct home distances more than four times. (4) At the same time, young birds seldom venture further away from the release site than the direct distance to home. Their behaviour can be interpreted as exploration to obtain new information on the distribution of navigational factors to be included in their still rudimentary navigational ‘map’. At the same time, their flights seem to include elements of safety, like anchoring the flights around the release site and a sense of distance, which help to reduce the chance of getting lost.

Over the recent decades, there have been a number of trends that have driven the desire to improve the ability to position and navigate in all environments. While GPS has been the driving factor behind most of these trends, there are limitations to GPS that have become more evident over time as the World has increasingly come to rely on location. These limitations are mostly due to the low transmission power of GPS satellites, where navigation signals broadcast from space are comparatively weak, especially by the time they have travelled to receivers on the ground. This makes the signals particularly vulnerable to fading in difficult environments such as built-up urban areas. The low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) also means that the signals are susceptible to jamming, both hostile and accidental.

This motivates the need for non-GPS (or, more generally, non-GNSS) navigation technologies, for example, terrestrial based alternatives to GNSS such as eLoran. But, there is also significant interest in the exploitation of other non-navigation signals for positioning and navigation purposes. These so-called ‘Signals of Opportunity’ (SoOP) do not generally require any alterations to existing communications transmission infrastructure and often use alternative multi-carrier modulation techniques to those methods used by most GNSS services. The major challenge of using a SoOP for location purposes is that the transmitter network infrastructure has not generally been designed with positioning as a requirement.

An ongoing project, at the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy (IESSG) of the University of Nottingham, is directed towards an investigation of the potential of the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) signal for positioning purposes. A prototype Software Defined Radio (SDR) DAB positioning receiver has been developed and has now been tested. This paper presents a detailed review of the structure of the DAB signals and explains how these signals can be used as the basis of a positioning system. In addition the development of the prototype SDR receiver and the initial results are presented and discussed.

The evaluation of Beidou system time is one of the important tasks in constructing and developing the Beidou satellite navigation system. The evaluation methods based on two-way satellite time and frequency transfer method (TWSTFT) and GPS common-view method are proposed in this paper. Tests and performance evaluation of the Beidou time system (BDT) were conducted. Results show that BDT is stable and reliable. The BDT frequency deviation, Allan deviations and clock offsets, relative to UTC (NTSC), are 10e-14, 10e-15 and less than 30 ns respectively.

This paper presents key models and concepts developed in psychology which help to understand the role of human factors in complex systems. It aims to explain their significance for anyone who wants to analyze the role of human factors in maritime accidents. Reason (1990, 1997, 2000) makes a crucial distinction between “active failures” that are made by first-line operators (captain, officers or members of a crew) and “latent failures” that are deeper causes and upstream factors concerning people who are at a distance from the accident. In agreement with this theoretical framework, this paper proposes examining the role of human factors in maritime accidents at three different levels: i) the level of individual – and namely cognitive – factors of first-line operators, ii) the level of social – and namely interpersonal – factors and iii) the level of systemic or organizational factors which correspond to “latent failures”. For each level, the main and recent contributions of the human and social sciences are presented and then used to analyze an emblematic accident.

Personal navigation has grown rapidly with the introduction of ubiquitous computing and the new generation of smart phones. Appropriate localisation is nowadays a central element for many applications and mobile services. However the proper estimation of the user's location remains a challenge. This paper presents an innovative concept for accurate and reliable positioning in challenging applications. It consists of three components: an absolute geographical reference, the hybridisation of complementary technologies and specific motion models. Two different applications illustrate this concept: urban displacement of blind people and guidance of firefighters. The validity of the concept is assessed with indoor experimental results. Finally the conclusion gives a prospective view of robust personal navigation.