SAT-SURFING in Vietnam

After the successful workshop carried out in Thailand at the AIT (see previous post), the tutoring activities continued on 24 and 25 November in the framework of the PROGENY project, introducing SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER tools also in Vietnam. A second seminar, hosted at the Hanoi University of Technology (HUT), has been organized thanks to the cooperation between the ISMB and Prof. Nguyen Thi Hoang Lan, Dr. Ngo Hong Son and other hard working people of HUT. The two day seminar has been managed by two members of the NavSAS Group (Fabrizio Dominici e Davide Margaria) and it included a presentation of background, features, and potential applications of these educational tools. Attending such a workshop, the students of HUT had the opportunity to face real measurements on GNSS signals, understanding the most important receiver performance parameters through extended practical exercises and open question sessions.


In spite of the short time allocated to the workshop, it has been a successful initiative, achieving all its initial objectives. In fact, the students had the opportunity to see and to try on their desks all the potentialities of both SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER, stimulating their interest on GNSS technologies. Very positive feedbacks have been obtained from the students, who would like to spend more time using these tools. In addition, some interesting suggestions and ideas for future developments have been collected.

We hope that SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER could be a first step in the “ocean” of GNSS signals for many other students in the World!

PROGENY Pilot Project in Thailand

On November 21-22, Fabrizio Dominici and Davide Margaria presented the SAT-SURF & SAT-SURFER solution at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) of Bangkok. The two days workshop was carried out under the Progeny project (funded by the European GNSS Supervisory Authorithy) and organized by ISMB and AIT with the support of Prof. Nitin K. Tripathi and Prof. Kiyoshi Honda. The seminar has been attended by 45 students from AIT.

DAY 1: The day started with an introduction of the NavSAS Group research activities. In particular it has been showed the background for the SAT-SURF & SURFER realization, providing also an overview of the NAVKIT. Moreover in the morning the presentation included details about architecture, functionalities and application fields for both the hardware and software platforms (SAT-SURF & SAT-SURFER). The morning session has been concluded with the setup and configuration of the demonstration platform with a quick view of the main features previously described. In the afternoon it has been faced the first data collections and the solution of some exercises provided with SAT-SURFER.

DAY 2: The exercise session has been concluded in the second day proposing additional exercises and providing the solutions. The students have been also assisted for the setup and configuration of the educational platform on their PC. The seminar ended with a fill out of the tutorial evaluation questionnaires and an open question session for deepening on SAT-SURF & SAT- SURFER.

We hope that the positive feedbacks and the useful suggestions received by the students can feed the discussion on this blog and help to learn how to practically SURF with GNSS!!!

N-GENE presentation @ the Asilomar conference

Today, dr. Fabio Dovis of the NavSAS group presented at the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers 2008 a paper on the novel algorithms implemented in the N-GENE fully software receiver.

The paper is entitled Efficient Signal Acquisition for a Real Time GPS/Galileo Software receiver and is co-authored by Maurizio Fantino, Marco Pini and Fabio Dovis.

It describes some architectural choices for acquisiton, in order match the real time constraints, keeping the performance level high, and for the tracking in order to make it robust to lock loss at low C/N0.l

The presentation was hosted in a special session, where also other papers reated to GNSS signal processing have been presented by University of New South Wales, Stanford University and University of Westminster.

Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer Suite brought to life!

Education on GNSS topics is sometimes difficult and often lacks of practical experience. In order to train students and professionals to face real issues and manage satellite navigation data, the NavSAS group developed Sat-Surf and Sat-Surfer: the Training Board & the Software Suite for GNSS Training!
This solution includes hardware and software facilities as well as practical exercises. It is dedicated to the GNSS students but it can be also useful for all the professionals in the field of navigation.

For a complete GNSS training the theory is provided by the NAVKIT distance learning tool, and the practical skills are trained by means of the Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer suite. The Sat-Surf is a compact, lightweight and versatile device able to accommodate different GPS receiver. It can embed different kinds of GPS receivers, such as: the new uBlox5 Galileo Ready, the uBlox – Antaris4, the Falcom JP13 LP based on SiRF Star III technology and the Falcom JP15 based on SiRF Star II. In the next months the platform will be adapted to accommodate also other chipsets.

Sat-Surf includes communication capabilities using a GSM/GPRS quad-band unit that enables the development of innovative A-GPS strategies as well as the study of DGPS techniques.

The Sat-Surfer software thanks to its flexibility allows the interface to the Sat-Surf and includes the possibility of data collection and storage.Hardware and software are complemented by a set of proposed exercises, included in the package, that ranges from a simple level of usage, to an advanced for development of original navigation algorithms for data processing.

More information are available on the official web site: http://www.navsas.ismb.it/sat-surf or contacting us at: sat-surfer@ismb.it

A Special Session on GNSS at IEEE CCNC

The Consumer Communications and Networking Conference is an annual event organized by the IEEE Communication Society in Las Vegas, in the same week of the Consumer Electronics Showcase.

http://www.ieee-ccnc.org/

As happened for the 2008 conference (held in January), I've been asked to organize a special session "Beyond GPS: Where Navigation Meets Consumer Communications" for the 2009 conference, addressing the sinergies between navigation/positioning and mass market terminals . This year the special session has been one of the most succesfull as a number of attendees, and I believe also for the quality of the papers presented.

Not to say that the conference is in Vegas, that it's always fun (at least for few days !).


Here is the pic of the people of the NavSAS group attending the 2008 IEEE CCNC, Fabrizio Dominici, Simone Savasta and myself together with prof. Dennis Akos of the University of Colorado @ Boulder, who was my co-session chair.

The call for papers of the special session can be found here.

Deadline for papers abstracts is June 29, looking forward to receiving a lot of submission !!