Month: January 2014

Just as a reminder notice for the next speaker for February 13, 2014.  If you have responded, I have you on the list.  I have confirmed we will be meeting at Northrop Grumman on Col Glenn (same place as January’s luncheon different conference room) and catering will be from City BBQ for $8 per person (same price as last month).  We will return to the Mustang Room at the Hope Hotel for this meeting.  The menu is roast pork loin with redskin potatoes and the cost will be $13 ($11 for students).  The meeting time is the same starting @11:30 and lunch starting @12:00.

For February, our featured presenter will be Ms. Rachael Morton discussing Investigating Solar Storm Impacts on GPS. Below is her abstract and bio:

Solar storms are natural phenomena that can disturb the Earth’s atmosphere and interfere with radio signals traveling from the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) satellites to receivers on the surface of the Earth.   Because of the widespread use of GPS, it is important to know the extent of the impact of solar storms on GPS, so that we can be better prepared for these unavoidable natural events.  In this project, GPS stations distributed at high latitude areas were utilized to obtain raw GPS measurements during solar storms.  Over 350MB of data were selected, downloaded, and then submitted to Canadian Natural Resources, a Canadian Government sponsored service, for online processing to generate each station’s precise coordinates.   During a solar storm, solar and geomagnetic disturbances distort GPS signals propagating through the Earth’s atmosphere.  The distorted signals will introduce errors in the computed GPS station coordinates.   By analyzing the errors in the station coordinate solutions, we can establish quantitative relationships between the intensity of a solar storm, the geographic location of receivers, and the level of impact of the solar storm on GPS.   Based on data recorded during 3 solar storms from over 50 GPS stations in northern and southern hemisphere high latitude areas, this report demonstrates that the number of rejected receiver measurements and the number of rejected bias estimations needed for precise position calculations have excellent potential for serving as useful indicators of GPS stress caused by the impact of solar storms.  Furthermore, these indicators can also be used to monitor the level and intensity of solar storms at high latitudes.

Rachael Morton is a senior at Talawanda High School in Oxford, OH.  She started taking college classes since entering high school and has completed 63 credit hours of Miami University classes. She conducted a research project to investigate solar storm impacts on GPS receiver performance. The results are published and have been presented at the 2014 Institute of Navigation International Technical Meeting and she won an Intel Talent Search Research Report Badge for this project.   She was also a Wright Scholar at AFRL in the summer of 2013 and worked under the guidance of Dr. Juan Vasquez on target tracking software performance evaluations.  Currently, she is working on a bioinformatics project with Dr. John Karro in the Computer Science Department at Miami University.  Rachael is an avid tennis player who has been named the Player of Year in the South West Ohio Conference for the last two consecutive seasons.  At her spare time, she enjoys piano, violin, and singing.

If interested please RSVP for the first meeting by Monday February 10, 2014, if not interested no response needed.

ION coffee mugs are now available for purchase for $7.  But with your RSVP for this month’s luncheon by the deadline, you can buy an ION mug at the door for the discounted price of just $5!  That’s a 29% discount!  They’ll go fast!

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Check out the website (dayton2.ion.org).

If your contact info needs updating or you need to be removed from the email list, please let me know.

2013-2014 sponsors:

GNSS Solutions, Ltd.

Institute of Navigation

Miami University

Modern Technology Solutions, Inc. (MTSI)

Northrop Grumman Corp.

Ohio University AEC

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Brian Roadruck

Dayton ION Chapter Secretary

Brian.roadruck@afit.edu

Thursday, Jan 9, 2014, we will meet for lunch at 11:30 at Northrop Grumman, 4065 Colonel Glenn Highway in Beavercreek

For lunch we will have a Hot Taco Bar (grilled chicken and steak) catered by Qdoba.  The cost is $8/person and includes meat, tortillas/taco shells, three salsas/cheese/sour cream/guacamole/lettuce, tortilla chips, and brownies and beverages. If you wish to attend, please RSVP to Brian.Roadruck.ctr@afit.edu by COB on Tuesday, 7 January.

Our guest speaker will be Prof. Jim Garrison of Purdue University.

James L Garrison has been a member of the faculty at Purdue since 2000; he is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  From 1988 to 2000 he was employed by the NASA, first at the Langley Research Center in Hampton VA, and later at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt MD. He earned a PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1997 and also holds a BS from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MS from Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of 26 journal articles and 52 conference papers.  He holds six US Patents and has served as the chair of GNSS+R 2012, an IEEE-NASA-co-sponsored conference.  Prof. Garrison has received a number of awards, including a NASA Exceptional Space Act Award, a NASA New Investigator grant, the Institute of Navigation Early Achievement Award, and a Keck Futures Initiative grant.

Prof. Garrison’s current research interests include Earth remote sensing using signals of opportunity and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) signal processing.

His topic Thursday is “New Methods for Earth Remote Sensing Using GNSS and Signals of Opportunity.”