What's Up with Tech?
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With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Telecom/5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Reimagining PNT Systems: Spirent's PNTX Platform, GNSS Integration, and Future Lunar Navigation Initiatives
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
What if the future of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) could revolutionize our world? Join us as we explore this exciting frontier with Adam Price from Spirent. Adam takes us through the groundbreaking PNT X platform, a sixth-generation simulator designed to address the growing complexities in PNT technology. We dive into the critical role of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and the emerging necessity for complementary solutions, including low Earth orbit (LEO) capabilities. Discover how Spirent is pioneering modular and flexible simulators that seamlessly integrate with technologies like LiDAR and radar.
Ever wondered how PNT systems can stay resilient against threats like spoofing, jamming, and interference? Adam explains how PNT X enables commercial customers to simulate these threats and test their countermeasures in controlled environments. We discuss the challenges of urban settings and the importance of building robust systems from the ground up. Listen as we delve into the integration of LEO-based signals and the growing interest in lunar applications, which are essential for enhancing system robustness in both commercial and defense sectors.
Looking ahead, the future of PNT simulation technology is brimming with potential. We discuss innovative programs like LunaNet and Moonlight, which aim to establish navigation infrastructure on and around the moon. Adam highlights the importance of flexible radio and signal generation technologies in this experimental phase and the role of 3D modeling capabilities in realistic simulations. As we wrap up, we express our gratitude to Adam and his team for their invaluable contributions to the industry and recommend following Spirant on social media for more exceptional insights and updates.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, fascinating chat today as we dive into the world of positioning, navigation and timing with Spirant, a true leader and innovator in the space. Adam, how are you? Very good, thanks. And how are you? I'm doing well? Thanks for joining, really intrigued by the mission and the work you're doing in this area at Spirant really important work. Before that, maybe introduce yourself a little bit about your background, role and the mission at Spirant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, thanks, evan. My name's Adam Price. I've been with Spirant for about 10 years now. I'm responsible for the PNT simulation business. No-transcript UK is a multinational company, but the group here in the UK is focused on our PNT business and the simulation portfolio within that. So, yeah, thanks. Hopefully that gives you a bit of background about where I'm coming from.
Speaker 1:It does indeed, and maybe talk about your solution set and the portfolio and how it fits within the PNT environment and some of the problems that you're solving, particularly around PNTX, your newer platform newer platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're really proud of pntx product was launched. Uh, earlier this year it's our sixth generation simulator. So what we're we're passionate about is being able to simulate pnt environments, um, pnt position navigation and timing. You know we've We've been in this application space for many years and become strong market leaders there strongly from, I would say, a satellite navigation, background, gnss. But what we've really started to embrace now is how PNT in general is becoming more rich and more complex and our latest generation of simulator is really to address that. As PNT starts to embrace new signals gets utilised in new environments. We need to simulate that and that's something that our new PNTX solution is addressing and you know it's going to help our customers in the years moving forward to take PNT systems to the next level.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, let's set the scene here, because there's a lot of buzz around alternatives to the global navigation satellite systems networks today, so lots happening in the PNT space, but I don't read much more than the headlines there. So what are some of the main themes and how does PNTX help finding alternative additional data sources? What are some of the drivers there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I mean, I think we should probably acknowledge that GNSS-based PNT is a cornerstone and, although it's been around a long time, it's really continued to evolve and progress, and I'm just amazed how new improvements keep coming in the GNSS part of PNT. It's absolutely unbelievable the amount of new capabilities that are coming through there, of new capabilities that are coming through there. I think we do have to acknowledge, though, that there is a vulnerability to it. I think there's a lot of press around that, and both technologists and industrialists have obviously started to look at complementary and alternative ways of providing PNT. So, again, as we've evolved here at Spiron, we've had to embrace that and, moving from just that GNSS simulation solution, to start utilising some of these newer alternatives. So, if I would call out some of those, I think certainly the low Earth orbit option has continued to evolve, to evolve um for a number of years, um, we have um had a a low earth orbit capability. Our current generation has really accelerated that. You know. We, we, we want to be able to provide the most modular, flexible, low earth orbit simulation pnt capability there is on the market, because the challenge with I'll call it leo rather than still say it keeps saying low earth orbit, and the challenge with leo is unlike gnss is there's very little standardization there's. There's new players coming through. They have proprietary ways of of doing what they do, offering different services and use cases, and then for us to be a simulator within that application, we have to be flexible and modular to do that.
Speaker 2:So leo has started to offer some good evidence of alternative and complementary pnt. You know we can take a look at some players, like Zona, for example. We've been quite public about working on a simulation capability there. That's one clear example of what we've had to do with PNTX to be able to provide a really good solution for that type of signal and I'm sure there will be other alternatives coming through. We have to bear in mind with Leo that a lot of the Leo initiative started from the communication side, not the PNT side. So there's a lot of infrastructure now building in space which has been initially designed for comms and we're working with people now to see what could you use, utilize some of that for pnt, and that actually then means that from a simulation capability we've had to put in more flexibility, more capability into our simulators to be able to to offer that to customers.
Speaker 2:So I think leo is very um, it's very real now um, and then there are the others. So we have um for um, certainly for location awareness. You know we start talking around lidar and radar and terrestrial-based signals. Now what we've done with PNT is we have PNTX. Sorry is that we have set ourselves on a journey to make sure that the architecture of the system is as modular and flexible as possible so we can now integrate with ease with other types of simulators. So say, if there's somebody that does have a LiDAR simulator or somebody that does have a radar simulator, rather than do everything in PNTX, we want to make sure that PNTX can fuse and integrate and be able to work with these other alternative PNT sources or simulators to give you that complete portfolio of PNT signals. But it's a rapidly changing environment, a rapidly changing world. We have to be ahead of this in Spire and that is what PNTX has the ambition to do.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. You mentioned there caught my attention threats to GNSS it's it remains to be a relatively weak signal from space.
Speaker 2:And there are. Firstly, there are there's natural phenomenon that could occur that can create interference to, to GNSS PNT types of signal, so anything that comes in band of GNSS. We are helping customers help to put mitigation algorithms in place in their PNT systems to be able to deal with that. I think, as you move beyond the natural types of interference, the next one would be obviously intentional jamming. So I think if we bear in mind that our business has a strong and long pedigree in defense and space segments, where one thing you know in the defense market is that in PNT areas jamming is used, it's part of a NAV war capability. So, taking from what we know in terms of how jamming, intentional jamming, can interrupt GNSS, interrupt BNSS, we can provide a really credible simulation capability into our simulators to allow our customers to work out how to deal with those types of jamming signal. Why I reference the pedigree is that we feel that's really important when addressing the commercial markets, because I think the commercial markets have been slightly later to pick up on intentional jamming. I think there's a lot of press and building knowledge of it now, but it's certainly behind the defence market from having an anti-jam capability, from having an anti-jam capability. Well, if we can take our knowledge of what we know about how to mitigate jamming from our pedigree and be able to help our customers in the commercial world understand that and build that resilience in, that's a really strong kind of relationship that we can build with them to help them work through that.
Speaker 2:And then the third area I'd say is spoofing. So another clear PNT threat. Now spoofing is a bit more difficult to do, certainly in the commercial world, but it's becoming more and more prevalent. Again it has been an occurrence in the military defence markets. So again we can help our commercial customers with our knowledge around spoofing and how to protect against it by embedding spoofing capabilities in our simulator where it can be done in a nice, safe and controlled environment where our customers then can test countermeasures to it and wow, you only have to look again in the press about spoofing.
Speaker 2:You know if you look at a lot of press around the aviation space at the moment, because you know, unfortunately we're in a time where spoofing is being launched deliberately by various nations and that does have an effect on our commercial industries. So spoofing is very real and the receivers that are going into those types of industries in the commercial segments need to be able to mitigate that as a minimum, be able to detect it and know when spoofing is occurring. So you know, jamming, interference, spoofing they remain to be key threats to certainly GNSS and based PNT, which we want to continue helping our customers mitigate. Some of the benefits of Leo come through to help mitigate as well much stronger signal. There are other challenges with Leo, but if you can then start complementing GNSS with Leo-based signals or ground-based signals, you've then got that fusion to be able to make more informed decisions around jamming and spoofing threats to your PNT system.
Speaker 1:Wow, really important work, and it sounds like PNTX can make systems, countries, people more secure today. I mean, these are capabilities you can offer customers as we speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. I think I think the that one of the one of the um. I think the challenges that we see in the commercial world is being able to really model things like jamming and spoofing credibly. Because if you think about things like um at the handset industry, well, um, how do I effectively model that I'm being spoofed or jammed in a downtown urban environment in a credible way? Yeah, you can. You can simulate a jamming signal mixed in with a pnt signal to a handset that's under test. But how do you make it real? And that's one of the challenges and pushbacks we've had historically with our customers. So we've addressed that. So if I say, well, how are we helping people, industry, countries, if I take that handset example, well, we can now actually model a city from a 3d model and go from something that is statistically representative to something that is much more real, with actual building models in there from real life. So we could take a specific street in a specific city at a specific time of day with specific PNT signals and then move step-by-step for example, a example handset on a journey through that city and we could simulate how resilient it would be to those types of threats that I've just talked about. So, working with the handset providers, the chipset providers that are actually putting those types of devices into the field for user consumption, we can make a real difference there, because what we're doing is helping them to build resilience in to those chipsets and handsets from day one. Many of those chipsets, for example, are then used in other industries downstream on. Many of those chipsets, for example, are then used in other industries downstream. So if we can address that with realism in the commercial world, I think we could really take PNT resilience forward. With PNTX At the country level, I would say we're moving more than to critical national infrastructure and maybe defense markets.
Speaker 2:Again, there are really complex systems in place, um in pnt today that have built in jamming resilience and spoofing resilience, some really credible um system, and there are also some credible ones, I should say, in the commercial world as well, um. So the challenge is that even though those systems exist today in the defense markets, the, the, the, the threat to them continues to grow. The complexity of the threat, the amount of signals that can, that can be there as threats, continue to grow and it's making these systems more and more complex. Again, with PNT-X we have the ability to model those systems and the signals that they are being presented with to help those nation states improve the resiliency of those systems, albeit complex. We can really help them to move those systems forward with really complex scenarios in really complex environments, by introducing more signals, more realism into the environment to help them move their development forward. And that's something that we do feel really, really proud about and we want to continue our market leadership position on.
Speaker 1:Well done, and it sounds like, as P&T moves into new areas, as you describe, including space, all kinds of new projects and proof of concepts are possible. What else are you seeing customers asking for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I probably. You know Leo is just worth there for reference again, clearly, numerous, numerous engagements around those Leo application spaces. I think Luna's getting really popular at the moment. Um so um, you know, a good number of um of our customers are looking at lunar navigation in different ways. There's some good, um, I'd say, space agency backed programs right now to look at putting infrastructure around the moon, on on the moon and utilising bandwidth from the earth to the moon. Programs like Lunar Nav and Moonlight, for example, are really, really interesting because we're starting to see the potential fusion of communication systems and PNT systems for the first time at scale and PNT systems for the first time at scale.
Speaker 2:Now it's a really interesting area and why we feel that PNTX is really a key enabler for simulation in that space. One example would be that with Luna, we're potentially starting to look at different types of radio signal in different radio bands, for example, moving from a traditional gnss satellite system in l band to a lunar navigation system, potentially in s band. Um we're looking potentially at if, if the communication side of this starts to get more gravitas, then we could be up at much higher bands, so having a simulation capability that has flexible radio technology. Flexible signal generation technology is going to be key because industry is going through quite an experimentation phase at the moment in things like Luna. I don't think anybody can say how it will predominantly end up. Will it be all consolidated or will it be different into different groups? It's really important that we here at Spiron can actually deal with that and be flexible to allow our customers to experiment to get to those types of conclusion.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, lunar is a very interesting application because a lot of the physics that we apply for navigation to earth in the satellite area they have to be modified for, um, lunar type navigation gravity, the lack of atmosphere, for a bit. For most of the part it's, it's all changing. So we, we we're really, uh, we're really excited to actually see how this all all works out. And the final one I would say evan, is um, we're obviously keeping a close eye on things like terrestrial based navigation systems as well. A lot of these are in pursuit of, again, resilience in PNT. If we can actually utilize more signals, not just from space but from the Earth as well and terrestrial, then all the good, because it adds more robustness to PNT systems.
Speaker 1:Wow, sounds like science fiction. Realized Amazing. Wow, sounds like science fiction realized, amazing.
Speaker 2:So PNTX is very interesting platforms, tons of features, hundreds of capabilities. Care to highlight a few that are top of mind, that are really interesting. I would pick two. I think one has already been forementioned is this 3D modeling capability we're finding is becoming very important to our customers, because simulation is fantastic in terms of being able to have something repeatable, controllable, to utilize in the lab, to devices under test or PNT devices under test. The real kind of key, though, is to be able to make it real as possible, so realism, for us, is vital. We want our customers to take, or have the confidence that they can have, as much of the outside world, the area, the outside world that they operate within with their pnt, pnt systems, and be able to bring that into the lab. So being able to control and simulate the outside world with more realism it's it's going to become more and more important moving forward, and we've taken a massive step forward on that with pntx. So I think that's the first one, that whole 3d world modeling that we can do for both urban and, you know, mountainous any type of environment. We can utilize that 3d environment.
Speaker 2:The second point I would make is that, when we start to look at things like the threats, the jamming signals, the interference signals. We find our customers want to be able to go out into the world and capture those, so they might go out into a city or an environment and actually capture real world signals that threaten PNT. Well, we have a capability now to take real world signals that have been captured and actually now put those into our simulator and manipulate those signals. So we start with a real world baseline and be able to then make that signal, for example, move. That signal, for example, move. So have all the qualities of a.
Speaker 2:If you have a jammer that you've captured, a jamming signal that you've captured in the field, we can now take that jamming signal, put it into the simulator and make it a moving jammer, because that could be real, you know. So, say, you might have somebody in a city which has got a, a plug-in jammer from a cigarette lighter you know which you shouldn't have, but people do, unfortunately and model. What is it like if that jammer was moving around the city? What would that mean to me operating my pnt device with this jammer moving around? So I can't, as that jammer might move around behind buildings and stuff. It would be obscured and then it would become visible. Things like that are becoming more important to simulate within the lab and having that capability within our PNTX simulator is really important for so many types of industries because again it comes back to that same word types of industries because again it comes back to that same word. It's become, it's becoming more real. You know, real realism, however we call it, that's what we want to get to fantastic, I guess.
Speaker 1:Final question here looking forward, short term, long term, uh, where do you see the future of pnt uh headed? And you know how does PNTX, you know, fit in the picture?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, we, you know, we were just talking about it this last couple of weeks and it feels, over the last two to three years, pnt in general is just accelerated in terms of the, the types of PNT signal that are becoming more viable, the number of threats to PNT and what we see and what the public read about in the press that are becoming more real, both adding up to this really complex environment. Pnt is becoming more complex. We're becoming more dependent on it. We think of all these different industries that continue to strive for levels of autonomy. So much of our infrastructure is dependent on it, particularly the timing piece of PNT. I just think that will continue to develop forward and I can see more and more experimentation of different types of PNT signaling in space, pnt signals on the ground, different types of sensors. In terms of what's going on in the silicon world, we've got some really advanced programs in terms of what's going on in the silicon world, we've got some really advanced programs in terms of improving inertial-based systems. I think it's going to be a really interesting five years. If I think of a five-year window, I think we're going to see lots and lots of experimentation, investment and ambition to make PNT more available, integral and reliable, and again, that's been part of what PNTX has been about.
Speaker 2:We are really trying to look over the horizon on this and making sure that what we are putting in place has that capability to flex and mold and change as we anticipate the next phase of PNT activity. And anticipate is the key word, because it's no point having a simulator after the event. We want to help customers before they get to those conclusions, and that's what PNTX is about. I think, in terms of the technology for us as well, we've made sure that we are putting in place the most modular technology possible. I've called out you know, when I talk about Luna I'm talking about this different types of radio bands that need to be adopted, different types of radio bands that need to be adopted.
Speaker 2:Well, if I then think about some of these really complex jamming and spoofing signals and producing lots and lots of them at the same time, well, what we've done in PNTX is we've started to fuse together different types of technologies to produce those types of signals. In our previous simulators we had some very good traditional technology that is bang on for the job that it needs to do, and we continue to take that type of technology forward with us. But with PNTX, when we're starting to see the amount of new signals, the diversity of them, we are fusing in new technologies to be able to blend and make sure that we produce and simulate these new types of signals in the most effective and reliable and real way, and that's going to continue. That's what that PNTX architecture allows us to do is to mold, anticipate and implement before our customers get to their conclusions.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, keep up the amazing work, really important for ourselves and the industry, and onwards and upwards. Thanks so much, adam, for joining and sharing a bit of insight into the mission.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, thank you very much for your time. I do appreciate it, Thank you.
Speaker 1:Likewise and thanks everyone for watching and listening and follow Spirant on all the social channels. They put out some really incredible and educational content. Thanks everyone.