#CATwxTerrestrial Weather
FALL2018
The Catalyst Accelerator is seeking teams across the United States of entrepreneurs, startups, and technologists from established companies with commercial solutions to provide PNT in a GPS-denied environment. Submitted solutions may augment, supplement, backup, complement, and improve upon current PNT capabilities provided by GPS.
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PROBLEM STATEMENT
Catalyst Accelerator is seeking teams across the United States of entrepreneurs, startups, and technologists from established companies with commercial solutions to provide PNT in a GPS-denied environment. Submitted solutions may augment, supplement, backup, complement, and improve upon current PNT capabilities provided by GPS.
Submissions can range from single-user solutions to network-based or satellite-based solutions that serve multiple users. Technology users may be humans on foot, in buildings, in restricted terrain or caves; or, users may be aircraft, ships, satellites or automated networks ingesting PNT data.
Solutions may also focus exclusively on delivering accurate timing without positioning information or conversely, positioning without accurate timing. They may also involve some combination of hardware devices, software, data products, algorithms, or services.
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MeettheCohort
Braxton Technologies software engineers have a rich heritage in delivering Commercial Off-the-Shelf ground solutions for approximately a third of all DoD satellite missions for over the last three decades. We are proposing an augmentation to their ground system work to leverage and validate the capabilities of software defined radio (SDR) transmitters and receivers into a “FlashMAPTM” architecture, a play on the social media concept of “Flash Mobs,” to provide agile signal access to share Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) information in GPS-degraded and/or denied environments.
Braxton Technologies was acquired by Parsons in 2020.
ColdQuanta is a tight-knit family of innovative and entrepreneurial spirits, leading the charge to a quantum-enabled future at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder Colorado. We are developing a moderate size, weight, and power cold-atom atomic clock that targets mobile and remote applications to remove or reduce reliance on GPS for precise timekeeping. Our approach utilizes ColdQuanta’s proven cold-atom hardware with demonstrated state-of-the-art atomic timekeeping techniques to fill a niche between chip-scale atomic clocks (CSACs) and stationary frequency references. Our clock technology, which is capable of operating in harsh and dynamic environments, is well-poised for rapid development and deployment.
Echo Ridge’s team of thought leaders, deliver innovative wireless products to the DoD in PNT, modeling and simulation, and EW, at commercial delivery times from our Northern Virginia home. Echo Ridge has successfully field-tested with the Air Force the Augmented Positioning System (APS) as a software application on our prototype ER310 software defined radio (SDR). This compact, handheld multi-mission device, hosts APS to provide assured position, navigation and timing (PNT) where GPS is unavailable by leveraging non-GNSS “signals of opportunity” (SoOP) available in the environment. The ER310 SDR devices and APS software application are now in early production, with initial customer deliveries expected early next year.
esc Aerospace, Inc. is a global team of solutioneers designing tailored technologies for a diverse customer base. Cars, cell phones, airplanes, ships, and even financial systems depend on stable, precise location and timing that is not possible with GPS alone. Imagine if someone intentionally disrupted the GPS signals over an entire city, or intentionally provided a false signal. These scenarios are possible and relatively easy to accomplish with readily available technology. Our resilient Position Navigation and Timing (rPNT) solution provides centimeter accurate and trusted positioning in such GPS challenged environments. Unlike products currently on the market developed to meet military applications, our product is small, light-weight, and uses very little power. The esc Aerospace rPNT solution is relevant to a wide range of markets including military, aviation, and maritime and will be critical to the emerging autonomous vehicle markets.
Headquartered in Charleroi, PA, Nokomis Inc., is a diverse band of passionate scientists developing unique highly-sensitive multi-channel spectrum analyzers that perform real-time assessments of electronic emissions signature data in our state-of-the-art research facility. The Satellite Identification, Tracking, and Health (SITH) network consist of groundbased, internet-enabled sensors for detecting transmissions of RF-active LEO satellites. The sensor measurements are sent to a central server, where the positions and orbits of the satellites they came from can be calculated. SITH provides a valuable tool for low-cost satellite observations that compliments LEO satellite RADAR observatories.
Novaa is led by a former NASA Research Fellow, joined by defense and telecom industry veterans, with a shared passion for bringing space-age technology into the commercial mainstream. Novaa’s assured positioning platform enables resilient access to GPS in previously impossible scenarios, including jamming and spoofing situations, as well as dense urban environments. Leveraging a multi-antenna system, the platform acts as a spatial filter blocking all but the desired satellite signals. Resilient access to GPS in urban and interference settings is a paradigm shift for the commercial self-driving industry, emergency services, and warfighters in the urban battlefield.
Collaboration is the backbone of PreTalen engineering. PreTalen provides complete GNSS, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber solutions by leveraging their employee’s diverse background and expertise, all while emphasizing a highly collaborative and open work environment. PreTalen is creating a system that can transmit an infinite number of software defined navigation and communications signals simultaneously over a wide frequency band. This tool minimizes vulnerability to interference from outside sources using frequency agility and signal flexibility not found in current systems. Our system utilizes entirely commercial-off-the shelf components, resulting in a piece of hardware that can easily be adaptable to new applications.
PreTalen was acquired by Centauri in 2019.
Third Insight was founded by a team of Artificial Intelligence experts with DoD and Navy experience to solve a key challenge in the expanded use of drones and UAVs in the field — the need for fully autonomous systems that can act on behalf of the warfighter to become true force multipliers. Third Insight’s software gives commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) drones the ability to navigate autonomously in GPS-denied environments while providing real-time 3D imaging and situational awareness to remote operators. They are currently on their second contract with Homeland Security. Commercial applications include mobile Augmented Reality (AR) and autonomous 3D mapping for Building Information Management (BIM) and construction.
