Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT)
NTA offers expertise in developing, evaluating, testing and integrating technologies to provide Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT) for ground, missile and aviation systems and subsystems. NTA enables customers to make informed, data-driven decisions about APNT technologies that maintain the U.S. Army’s dominance and ultimately protect the warfighter.
Areas of Expertise
NTA researches and develops emerging and fielded inertial sensors and systems for missiles, manned and unmanned aircraft systems and land navigation systems.
- Support, operate and maintain unique, state-of-the-art precision test equipment to include: temperature-controlled rate and indexing tables, indexing heads, temperature-controlled high speed rate tables, precision turn-tilt tables, three-axis positioning tables, precision centrifuges, temperature-controlled vibration tables, shock stands, Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) chambers, temperature chambers, and land navigation test vans.
- Investigate navigation system performance and develops solutions to challenges in the areas of initialization, calibration, compensation, algorithm development, modeling, test and evaluation, shelf life, transfer alignment, error budgets, trade studies, industry surveys, specification/requirement development, integration, and flight test support.
- Verify and validate state-of-the-art and emerging navigation technologies through evaluation in both laboratory and field environments, system integration, and demonstration.
- Perform Design Verification Tests (DVT), qualification tests, and inertial sensor/system shelf life analysis.
- Develop test and data analysis procedures, data collection software/hardware, and test automation.
NTA provides integration expertise across a wide spectrum of navigation technologies, including GPS receivers and GPS Anti-Jam Electronics (AJE). NTA supports the integration of these technologies into ground platforms, missile systems, manned and unmanned aircraft.
- Support, develop and utilize state-of-the-art simulation capabilities for integration, testing and verification.
- Execute all-digital modeling and simulation of GPS scenarios, including contested environments.
- Provide integration expertise for interfacing with GPS/AJ hardware and integrating measurements into navigation software/kalman Filters, as well as proper mode control of the device.
- Evaluate precise initialization (hot-start) for legacy and modernized GPS receivers.
- Perform integration test and evaluation using state-of-the-art hardware-in-the-loop.
- Utilize advanced inertial sensor models for tightly coupled integration evaluation.
- Perform complete evaluation of advanced system performance by leveraging the full capabilities of the hardware-in-the-loop.
- Execute complete system test and evaluation with advanced transfer alignment and initialization capabilities, GPS hot start of the system, with GPS signals, interference signals, and inertial sensor measurements generated over realistic flight dynamics.
NTA facilitates cost-effective integration of emerging technologies for quick-response demonstrations and fielding, and provides sustainability assessments of fielded hardware.
- Implement technologies in accordance with the U.S. Army PM PNT Assured PNT (APNT) Reference Architecture.
- Integrate APNT solutions that reduce maintenance, logistics and integration cost burdens while meeting size, weight, power and cost constraints.
- Develop and evaluates survey-grade inertial systems.
- Conduct stockpile reliability evaluations, shelf-life extension, in-theater maintenance, acceptance testing and long-term viability of the PNT equipment for reduced cost and maximum effectiveness.
NTA personnel are subject matter experts in understanding and analyzing threats to Global Positioning System (GPS) for the U.S. Army.
- Evaluate systems at test events with live-sky signal transmissions.
- Develop and configure hardware-in-the-loop simulators to characterize threat effects on systems, and evaluates the improvements offered by threat mitigations.
- Demonstrate the ability to rapidly integrate, test and inform customers about emerging technologies.
- Leverage a multi-disciplinary expertise that covers software, firmware and hardware.
As subject matter experts in the area of GPS degraded/denied environments, NTA offers solutions using complementary navigation architectures to mitigate the threat and ensure mission success.
- Assess a system’s vulnerable threat classes.
- Determine principal contributors to a system’s vulnerability.
- Assess potential autonomous measurements for ensuring integrity.
- Determine potential peripheral sensors for improving robustness.
- Leverage available measurements, sensors and noise characteristics.
Join Our World-class Team
Employees are provided with challenging hands-on technical work and are rewarded for outstanding work ethic and professional excellence. These factors combine to create a very desirable work environment at NTA.