GPS Innovation Alliance

The year 2023 saw a steady approach to established issues as gpsia continued our use of virtual fora to conduct business, but also included some limited in-person and even hybrid formats to remain active across a broad range of policy fronts. While the range of topical issues remained steady throughout the year, we did have an uptick in activity in the second half. This is a direct result of gpsia concluding its search for a new full-time executive director, who started in may 2023. (continued on schedule o)a more detailed summary of gpsia activities follows:2023 overall activities developed gpsia's strategy and communications plan in the first 90 days of the executive director's tenure. Held the "GPS: the first 50 years" event on capitol hill, featuring speeches by two members of congress, senior officials from the department of transportation and the department of defense, the first program director of GPS, and one of the people credited with inventing the internet (november 2023) participated in the 63rd meeting of the civil GPS service interface committee (september 2023) provided quarterly "industry viewpoint" articles for GPS world magazine drafted and filed responses to requests for information, alternative position, navigation, and timing satellite applications, and notices of proposed rulemaking for the federal communications commission and the national telecommunications information administration. Delivered GPS portion of l-band briefing to national spectrum management association annual meeting (may 2023) and the satellite safety Alliance (august 2023) met virtually with potential candidates for gpsia membership and prospective affiliate relationships, outlining the benefits of participating in gpsia increased gpsia's relationships with other trade associations, participating in monthly space industry trade association meetings, serving as guest speaker at events, and appearing in podcasts increased external communications by updating the gpsia website, conducting a social media campaign to promote the "GPS: the first 50 years" celebration, and creating materials that can be reused in future communications chaired opening session of the annual munich satellite navigation summit conference, hosted by the technical university of the german military, in munich, germany. First in-person running of the conference since 2019. Worked with organizers of the munich conference to coordinate international outreach and establish agenda for the following year's (2024) in-person running of the conference participated via virtual link in the european space policy conference in brussels, belgium which provides interface opportunities with space policy and satnav policy leaders within the eu. Arranged several private consultations via virtual media with key leaders in the european commission, european space agency, and gnss supervisory authority who oversee satellite navigation activities and policy development in europe. Participated in the 2023 in-person session of the civil GPS service interface committee (cgsic) meeting in denver, co, providing commentary during the plenary session as well as the during the international issues subcommittee sessions. Participated in private meetings with newly appointed key japanese space and gnss policy officials from the japanese embassy and the office of national space policy under the cabinet office during their visits to Washington. Was able introduce insights and share views on overall japanese space policy, including japanese satellite navigation project, qzss, which works in conjunction with GPS. Coordinated information gathering sessions on newly emerging regional satnav systems such as korean positioning system (kps) with us, korean and japanese counterparts. Conducted a series of virtual meetings with senior level japanese government officials to provide background information on GPS technical requirements and operational sensitivities in order to help guide japanese initiatives with the us and other nations to provide coordinated supplements to GPS via qzss. Tracked the evolution and continuing reorganization of responsibilities of the european authorities overseeing the galileo program. Kept abreast of the changing responsibilities and personnel of the european commission, european space agency and the newly formed european agency for the space programme (euspa). Monitored developments and coordinated outreach on newly emerging positioning, navigation and timing (pnt) technologies that have potential to augment, complement and supplement GPS in various applications and fields. Kept abreast of development in areas such as alt-pnt, leo-based pnt, and other new approaches with some engagement with companies/organizations developing these new approaches. Gpsia continues to play an active role in the civil GPS service interface committee (cgsic), and works to assist in developing the agenda and program for meeting of the cgsic. Gpsia technical team activitiesthe gpsia technical team (tech team) was established to address questions arising from the various committees and agencies which require research and analysis. The tech team works closely with the policy and public affairs groups within gpsia to ensure that they understand the impact to gnss of the proposals to alter the usage of the electromagnetic spectrum.as such, the tech team provides a unique forum for connecting gnss aligned interest groups at the engineering level to impact policy and regulatory issues, based on fundamental knowledge of how satellite navigation works. An objective of the gpsia technical team is to provide the engineering analyses and technical insight needed to maintain stability and integrity of the spectrum environment, which is essential to Innovation, resilience, and cybersecurity of gnss receiver functions. Tech team activities span both us and international spectrum-related issues, and there is a lot in common between the two.activities in the us have focused on defending the protections of gnss spectra using the 1db degradation of c/n0 criterion, which provides a scientific fact-based definition in determining harmful interference to GPS devices from other sources. The criterion is used to support multiple stay requests during the ongoing regulatory debates in the ligado authorization pending before the fcc. Gpsa techteam members have also been engaged in the "independent technical review of the [ligado] order and authorization", directed by the fy2021 national defense authorization act to be produced by the national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine. The 1 db standard is the only reliable mechanism to ensure adequate protection for the continued functioning of global positioning system ("GPS") and global navigation satellite system ("gnss") receivers. Reasons for advocating the 1 db standard include: avoids harmful interference to GPS receivers establishes consistency with u.s. national space policy, which sustains the overall radio frequency environment in which critical u.s. space systems operate. Provides protection against in-band and adjacent-band interfering sources, as established in multiple historical proceedings.over the past three years, the most prominent interference threat to the radionavigation satellite service (rnss) spectrum in the us has come from the fcc authorization of ligado's ancillary terrestrial component (atc). However, other adjacent band interference sources of concern, explained further below, include: globalstar (1611-1616 mhz), international mobile telecommunications (imt) band 74 in europe (1492-1517 mhz), cept/ecc se21 work item 24, uwb waiver requests to fcc rules, earth-exploration satellite service (eess) active sensors in the 1215-1300 mhz band, secondary amateur/amateur-satellite transmitters in the 1240-1300 mhz band, and in-band incursion by french startup syntony.on the international side, the tech team has been deeply involved for five years in the development of new receiver standards to address the european radio equipment directive or red. All commercial gnss manufacturers use the etsi gnss standard to provide a presumption of conformity to red, and thereby market and sell equipment on the eu market with legal certainty.in these pursuits, gpsia has been battling a systematic effort within europe to use the market-entry process in the quest to make ever more spectrum usable for terrestrial mobile broadband operations (including calling into question the protection of gnss), and it has been dealing with a pro-galileo bias within certain quarters in the eu hierarchy. Despite these challenges, gpsia was instrumental in creating the etsi harmonized standard for gnss receivers (en 303 413), cited in the official journal of the european union (ojeu). December 2017. (continued below).