GLONASS Naya Sputnikovaya Sistema — Or Global Coordination Board, and Chairman of Satellite Navigation System.) the Forum’S Plenary Session; and Lt

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deputy chief, head of the GLONASS naya Sputnikovaya Sistema — or global coordination board, and chairman of satellite navigation system.) the forum’s plenary session; and Lt. Gen. Alexander Kvasnikov, deputy Official Imprimatur GLONASS commander of the Russian Space Formally enshrined in an April 19, Forces. 2006, government directive, Russia’s They were joined at the opening initiative to develop mass market The Way Ahead session by Yuri Urlichich, director gen- equipment and applications faces many eral of the Russian Institute of Space of the same obstacles to commercial- Device Engineering (RISDE), which ization that GPS has had to overcome designs the GLONASS space and during the past 15–20 years and some Glen gibbons ground equipment; Nikolai Testoyedov, new challenges as well. Editor, inside gnss director general of NPO PM “Reshet- The participation of several high- nev,” which builds the GLONASS satel- ranking U.S. officials involved in GPS lites; M. G. Lebedev, a senior advisor affairs reflected the growing coopera- to the Russian minister of communi- tion in GNSS programs between the Russia’s first major satellite cations and information; and Sergei two countries: Ken Hodgkins, deputy navigation conference underscores Burov, vice-governor of the Yaroslavs- director of the State Department’s kaya region near Moscow that has Office of Space & Advanced Technolo- the intention of the nation’s leaders served as a kind of GNSS showcase. gy; Mike Shaw, director of the National to turn GLONASS into a resource Roscosmos’ Perminov noted, Coordination Office for Space-Based for commercial and civil users. “Development of positioning, naviga- Positioning, Navigation, and Timing; And a surprising number of home- tion, and timing capabilities is one and U.S. Air Force Col. Mark Crews, of the top priorities of the Russian chief engineer at the GPS Wing in the grown GNSS providers attend to Federation, particularly through use Space & Missile Center, Los Angeles show some of the ways that they of GLONASS as a dual-use system. We Air Force Base. are transforming policy changes have a primary objective of [achiev- “Multiple [GNSS] systems create into business opportunities. ing] compatibility and interoperability a winning situation for consumers,” with, first, GPS, and, second, Galileo.” Urlichich said, announcing an initia- Russia has increased its federal tive to create a GLONASS Forum or budget allocation for GLONASS to 9.88 what he called “an association of lovers billion rubles ($379.7 million) in 2007, of GLONASS.” By working to make the more than double the 4.72 billion ruble various systems more compatible and ($181.4 million) federal expenditure interoperable, Urlichich said, Russia in 2006. Launches of six modernized will help lay the foundation for global GLONASS-M spacecraft are scheduled mass markets. “All together, it will esigners and manufacturers of GNSS products for Satellite Navigation Forum, which featured 87 speakers and this year — a triple launch in Septem- make it possible for mass consumers to consumer mass markets may find their next big three tracks of technical sessions. The event was organized by ber and another in December. have GNSS.” boost coming from a surprising source — Russia’s Profi-T-Centre, a Moscow-based conferencing company, and Despite its international title, the Russia’s struggle to transform a DGLONASS system. endorsed by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), event drew a largely Russian audience, command economy shaped by more That was an unmistakable message — and aspiration the Russian Ministry of Communications and Information, with only a few dozen attendees from than 70 years of top-down, Communist — expressed by a series of high-ranking Russian governmen- and the Moscow City Government on whose premises the outside the country. Nosenko under- Party–led governmental planning and tal officials and representatives of home-grown commercial forum took place. lined this aspect of the forum, saying, direction remains a work in progress. enterprises speaking at a major GNSS conference in Moscow An announcement of a decision to add a CDMA signal to “The primary purpose is to inform Many of the institutions, terminology, on April 9 and 10 — the 25th anniversary of the GLONASS GLONASS that would more closely align the Russian system a broad Russian audience of satellite and practices of market-based econo- program. with GPS and Galileo was not forthcoming at the conference, navigation and its applications.” mies remain unfamiliar to both public With 15 operational GLONASS satellites expected to be as many had hoped. Nonetheless, a remarkable number of Unlike GNSS conferences in most officials and nascent businesspeople. broadcasting by the end of April and 18 by the end of the private companies and public institutes joined the proceed- other venues, the focus was pointedly Lebedev, the Communications and year, Russia is looking to bolster its domestic market for ings and discussed their efforts to build and use combined on Russia’s own GLONASS system. Information Ministry advisor, under- GNSS commercial applications and project its presence into GLONASS and GPS receivers. Indeed, although the English transla- took a sort of tutorial on entrepre- international markets over the next few years. Russian offi- Russian President Vladimir Putin has put the restoration tion of the event’s title was “satellite neurialism and private business in his cials are fostering a GLONASS industry association and at of and modernization of GLONASS high on his political navigation,” the Russian name was presentation. “It is necessary,” he told least 120 Russian companies were reported to be active in the agenda and is following its progress closely, a fact underlined “International GLONASS Forum.” (In his plenary audience, “to understand GNSS sector. by the stature of the officials taking part in the forum: Anato- fact, GLONASS itself is the Russian the value chain in order to successfully More than 600 delegates registered for the International ly Perminov, head of Roscosmos; Yuri Nosenko, Roscosmos acronym for Global’naya Navigatsion- develop markets.”

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should complete the unit by CDMA: Decision Still to Come single point of failure if all GNSS signals at L1/E1, national next year. All this GNSS development activity is particularly remark- security issues, the matter of paying for new civil signal RISDE and the St. Peters- able considering that GLONASS is a frequency division mul- design, and an element of Russian uniqueness. burg–based Russian Institute tiple access (FDMA) system that differs markedly from GPS Numerous GNSS manufacturers — among them JNS, for Radionavigation and Time and Galileo. FDMA is, in fact, the inverse of GPS’s code divi- NovAtel, Trimble, Leica, Magellan, and Topcon — already (RIRT), two institutes that have sion multiple access (CDMA) design in which each satellite offer combined GPS/GLONASS receivers, typically for pro- relied on government support broadcasts a distinctly coded signal on a common frequency. fessional and commercial activities such as surveying, geod- for much of their existence, In contrast, GLONASS transmits a single code on dif- esy, and construction. But such equipment is substantially have launched commercial ferent frequencies allocated to antipodal sets of GLONASS more complicated in design and expensive — a long way development activities. RISDE’s satellites using two swaths of spectrum — currently from from becoming consumer-friendly. M. G. Lebedev Yuri Urlichich Lt. Gen. Alexander Kvasnikov Urlichich described an agree- 1598.0625 to 1609.3125 MHz (above GPS L1 centered at By having a L1 civil signal apart from the band in which ment signed last month for a 1575.42 MHz) and from 1242.9375 – 1251.6875 MHz for L2 consumers will find most benefit from GPS and Galileo (and, Lebedev showed several slides from presentations by the “public-private partnership that will develop and produce (compared with 1227.6 MHz for GPS L2). for that matter, China’s Compass GNSS), GLONASS requires Galileo Joint Undertaking and the U.S. Office of Space Com- user equipment.” The $64 million question — or, closer to the mark, the manufacturers to widen the reach of their receivers’ antennas merce to illustrate the GNSS value-added chain and GNSS S. V. Filantchenkov, deputy chief of RIRT’s research divi- $68-billion question (to pick up on Shaw’s projection for the and “front-end” components. market projections. Later, he noted that in order to “extract sion, traced several generations of GPS/GLONASS receivers global GNSS market in 2010) — is how compatible the Rus- As the GPS Wing’s Crews pointed out in his presentation, profits in this sector, we need to develop business models.” developed by the institute since 2004. Known primarily for sians will decide that GLONASS will be. Russia has commit- the key technical issue may be that CDMA-based systems Although the level of such discussions might seem basic developing the atomic clocks for GLONASS satellites and ted to reaching a decision on the question of adding a CDMA can more easily filter out a common delay in the GNSS time — even primitive — to Western ears, it does reflect a clear ground facilities, RIRT is currently designing a receiver that signal by the end of 2007. signals on a common frequency. With FDMA systems, he desire to learn how to do business in a completely new way. can process GLONASS M and GPS IIR signals. By next year, Different perspectives and philosophies are competing continued, “We can calibrate our filtering for multiple fre- Filantchenkov said, the institute’s engineers expect to com- among the country’s various institutional groups. A new gen- quencies [and time delays], but it increases costs. That means Home-Grown GNSS plete an OEM GPS/GLONASS/Galileo RFIC module that eration of engineers appears inclined to forge greater interop- it’s an issue for making affordable, mass market equipment.” Perhaps the most notable aspect of the conference emerged in would sell in the $12 range for large volumes. erability with other GNSSes by adding a CDMA signal on a Nonetheless, the American delegates went out of their the numerous presentations by domestic Russian companies Telematics services, particularly vehicle tracking/fleet common frequency. way to emphasize that GLONASS signal design questions are designing multi-system GNSS receivers and offering GNSS- management applications, appear to be the most common The main arguments raised against CDMA seem to be: completely up to the Russians to sort out. based services. GNSS businesses to have developed in Russia so far. The Gra- Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when almost nit and Navis presentation touched frequently on their tele- all major manufacturing and business activities were based matics products and customers. Other telematics-oriented on government ownership and management, commercial Russian companies taking part in the forum included M2M, activities have appeared in a variety of forms: privatization of ITS Soft, Geizer, and SecTrack. former public enterprises, public/private joint ventures, com- A typical business development path for the new enter- mercial spin-offs from public institutes, and, increasingly, prises is to secure contracts from public agencies at the fed- true private startup companies. eral, state, or local levels to design and install systems. These ZAO Navis, for instance, exhibited a variety of GLONASS/ contracts then establish a foundation for further government GPS products at the forum — mostly larger form factors such contracts and product line extensions. ad racks and boards for aviation, commercial vehicle tracking, Lebedev cited “expert opinion” in estimating the current and synchronizing communications systems. Russian market for GNSS products at up to five million units, Adding GLONASS to GPS increases costs by 10–20 primarily in government-regulated commercial and profes- percent, according to O. A. Borsuk, chief designer for the sional markets, including safety and security. 11-year-old Moscow-based design bureau. The company has Looking ahead to a true consumer market in Russia, he announced a new GPS/GLONASS module, CH-4706, and pointed to two platforms that have incorporated GNSS tech- plans to bring out a 0.13 micron GPS/Galileo L1 chip in 2008. nology in many other countries: private cars and portable Another 13-year-old company, Granit, began developing electronic devices. Russia’s automobile market over the next GPS navigation units in 2001 without government support, five years is expected to produce sales of two to three million, E. V. Vikharev, Granit’s deputy director of research, told his while 380,000 portable PCs and mobile phones were sold in forum audience. Characterizing the company’s self-financed the country last year. progress in post-Soviet Russia as “a difficult experience,” he Although the central government is accumulating large described four generations of product development, includ- financial reserves from taxes on extraction and exports of ing the current Granit Navigator 04 based on SiRF Technolo- natural resources, however, Russia still lacks channels, work- gy’s SiRFstarIII. plans, and, the experience needed to recycle part of these Vikharev said the company has sold 25,000 units in 15 through the nation’s emerging small and medium enter- different models to more than 250 different Russian com- prises. One promising indication, however, could be found panies and organizations, including 200 Navigator 02 units among several representatives of private Russian banks who installed on city buses in one of Yaroslavl’s projects. Granit attended the event to meet with the entrepreneurs and evalu- has developed a prototype GPS/GLONASS/Galileo and ate the prospects for investing in the GNSS businesses.

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