Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Without The Global Positioning System (GPS)

In order to fully utilize the potential of collaborative navigation and multi-sensor fusion for GPS-denied PNT, QuNav and our academic partner, University of Colorado, propose to develop a collaborative network system that provides resilient PNT solutions in GPS-denied environments for mounted and dismounted platforms, thus providing war-fighters with ubiquitous PNT capabilities. Furthermore, the deployment of our resilient PNT network (PNT-Net) is safe, secure, and covert, thus protecting its users from electromagnetic countermeasures, spoofing threats, and anti-radiation attacks in radio-frequency (RF) contested environments. The PNT mechanization optimally combines sensor measurements from networked nodes by: (i) Extracting (partial) information about absolute navigation and timing states from non-GPS sources (when and if available) such as terrestrial or space-based opportunistic signals; (ii) Applying collaborative networking with secure inter-node data exchange to (a) combine sparse information from individual nodes into fully observable navigation and timing states, and (b) propagate these states over the entire network; and, (iii) Using a dead-reckoning sensor-fusion to maintain reliable PNT capabilities over mission segments where absolute navigation and timing sources are not available.