Navigation Warfare Algorithm Development and Hardware Integration

Navigation Warfare (NAVWAR) Electronic Support (ES) requires sophisticated algorithms and considerable hardware for jammer detection, characterization and geo-location. Unfortunately, unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) have highly constrained Size, Weight and Power (SWAP) requirements and yet need access to the same sophisticated NAVWAR algorithms and hardware that protect larger air vehicles. Furthermore, most military navigation systems including UAVs rely on GPS which is inherently susceptible to intentional and unintentional sources of electromagnetic interference. Electronic protection (EP) of GPS traditionally requires a large antenna array, adaptive processing or Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) techniques. There is therefore a need to combine GPS EP with ES capabilities in a small form-factor while ensuring that the system is not susceptible to blue-force Electronic Attack (EA). Toyon has developed several key technologies needed for the successful fusion of these NAVWAR functions, including an antenna array with STAP processing, highly effective anti-spoof and multipath-mitigating processing techniques, GPS angle-of-arrival measurements for precise platform attitude determination, and jammer angle of arrival detection algorithms for jammer geolocation. During this effort Toyon will develop algorithms to combine these key GPS technologies, and integrate them in an FPGA or ASIC utilizing less than one watt of power. BENEFIT: The anticipated benefits of this program include the development of a robust anti-jam navigation system that is efficiently integrated into a low-power integrated circuit that simultaneously provides precise direction-finding and attitude-determination capabilities and which enable the geolocation of jammers, jammer-aided navigation, home-on-jam, and GPS spoof detection. In particular, such a small form-factor system will provide significant new protections for small platforms while extending their operational envelope.