Blended Alt-PNT Solution for Improved Situational Awareness, Navigation, and Localization in GPS Contested Environments

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a utility owned by the United States that provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services and its space and control segments are maintained and operated by the U.S. Space Force (USSF). As GPS-denial and spoofing become larger concerns for military, civil, and commercial navigation, alternative methods to provide PNT are highly desired. In this Direct to Phase II SBIR effort, Polaris proposes to combine celestial, inertial, and magnetic sensing with robust sensor fusion algorithms and a chip scale atomic clock into a scalable prototype to provide absolute and reliable PNT when GPS is unavailable. This effort will yield two prototypes achieving an objective position accuracy of less than 20m (threshold of less than 100m) in operationally relevant ground-to-air environments, with an objective SWaP of 4.5” x 3.2” x 3.9”, <250g, and <5W. The proposed prototype will include innovative celestial navigation technology developed and matured by Polaris over the past 10 years. SkyPASS Gen3N, utilizing advanced imagery of the sky and state-of-the-art celestial navigation techniques, calculates absolute position with greater than 100m accuracy and provides a highly accurate heading of less than 0.1125° in real-time. Functioning day and night, even in twilight, the SkyPASS Gen3N sensor employs separate optical channels to image the sun (moon), stars, and sky polarization, ensuring 24/7 availability and reliability. Inspired by nature, the SkyPASS polarimeter observes Rayleigh scatter of sunlight in the atmosphere and can track the sun, even when the sun is occluded (clouds, twilight, canopy, etc.). Paired with a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and inertial navigation system (INS) that combines low SWaP, cost and fiber-optic gyroscope (FOG)-like performance and a chip scale atomic clock (CSAC), the sensor will offer enhanced all-weather performance and advanced alternative PNT (Alt-PNT) capabilities. The prototypes to be developed in this effort shall be easily adaptable for integration with other technologies and platforms, meet open system architecture standards, enhance resilience, and have a small form factor, benefiting multiple use-cases (ground and sea to air and space missions). An end-to-end capability demonstration in a relevant laboratory operational environment and at a government sponsored field test shall be completed during the period of performance to prove that the proposed Alt-PNT capability is prepared to move in to limited production and limited operational field testing. The successful Phase-II Alt-PNT capability shall achieve TRL-5 (Threshold) or TRL-6 (Objective).