SBIR/STTR Research Award

Tightly Coupled Integration of the Field Ops Remote Tracker (FORT) Inertial Tracking Module with a COTS GPS Receiver to create an extremely EW resilient Tracking Device

Award identifier 3b7021ab164ca545bafbf78b490187e10696dd0ba75a5527710de65cd59184d6Awarding agency Department of Defense · Air Force

Award amount

$1,225,450

Program and phase

SBIR · Phase II – Direct to Phase II

Award year

2024

Explore This Research Award in CaptureIQ

Research the technology, evaluate the recipient and agency, identify related opportunities, and explore potential follow-on work with CaptureIQ.

Award details

Awarding agency
Department of Defense
Branch
Air Force
Recipient company
PROTONEX LLC
Proposal award date
2024-02-08
Contract end date
2025-10-03
UEI
K82GMYAGGU66
Solicitation number
X24.4
Topic code
AFX244-DPCSO1

Research abstract

The Ukrainian and Israeli wars have emphatically clarified that EW directed at GPS vulnerabilities will be a persistent part of battlefield calculus.á As weapon platforms shrink in size and cost and are able to grow in numerical advantage as a result of this SWaP-c transformation, the only viable defense that is effective on a consistent and economical basis is EW, where large swaths of air space can be covered by just a few EW installations.á On the other hand kinetic mitigation can not only miss the threat, but costs far more in operation and can also cause inadvertent collateral damage.á Because of such battle-proven efficacy, EW will inevitably receive the manpower and financial investment to continue evolving into ever more sophisticated and difficult to detect, mitigate and defeat methods and technologies. The proposed deviceádelivers unprecedented fully self-contained GPS-denied tracking capability using only magnetometers, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a pressure sensor.á With PNI Sensor's sensor fusion algorithms and Edge AI/ML models, its tracking performance surpasses that of an inertial navigation system based upon tactical grade gyroscopes and accelerometers but does so using only COTS consumer-grade MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes.á Therefore, it enjoys the benefits of extremely low SWaP (< 1 cubic inch and <100mW in operation).á Combining the FORT with a commercial GPS unit using a very tightly coupled approach would enable both EW-proof location as well as more generally accurate and reliable positioning performance of the GPS receiver even when GPS is fully available.á Signal processing would not have to be solely constrained to RF signals (except for rudimentary pose information provided by inertial sensors in some existing systems), but can pull location, velocity and pose into increasingáthe efficacy of the GPS filter substantially.

Technology keywords

Not reported

Other awards by this recipient

Verified by the same UEI. These are other public SBIR/STTR award pages, not a merged company record.

Awards with the same topic code

Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.

Research funding history

8 SBIR/STTR records share this UEI (2024–2025). Reported award amounts total $5,630,452. Reported amounts are not federal obligations.

Phases: Phase I, Phase II – Direct to Phase II, Phase II

Agencies: Department of Defense

Agency intelligence

Department of Defense

Back to SBIR/STTR Research Awards

Don't take our word for it. Ask AI about RFPCapture.

See what leading AI assistants have to say about RFPCapture and CaptureIQ.

Gemini opens without a prefilled question. The question is copied to your clipboard when the button works. You can also copy it here:

What is RFPCapture.com and its CaptureIQ platform from Smart Logic AI? How does it help federal contractors discover opportunities, evaluate bid/no-bid decisions, research government contracts, and prepare proposals? How does it compare with other federal capture platforms? Use independent sources where available.