Boat Us Trying To Help

[kloudie1]

This was discussed before but here is the BOAT US letter from yesterday.. This is looking pretty serious..:

July 12, 2011

Dear BoatU.S. Member,

As a result of a new proposal to use radio bandwidth right next to the existing GPS service, the future reliability of the GPS system across the United States is now in question. We encourage you to contact the FCC during a short 30-day public comment period, to help them understand the public’s need for continued, reliable GPS signals for safe navigation on boats, in cars, and for so many other daily uses.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION


Background: Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave conditional approval to a private company, LightSquared, to begin a nationwide broadband service adjacent to the radio spectrum used for GPS. After concerns from user groups (including BoatU.S.), the FCC required significant testing and a report for potential conflicts with aviation, cellular, navigation, and four other GPS uses before this proposal could move forward. In that June 30th report the navigation sub-team concluded “that all phases of the LightSquared deployment plan will result in widespread harmful interference to GPS signals and service and that mitigation is not possible.”

For more information: www.BoatUS.com/gov

In 2010 the US Coast Guard shut down Loran, leaving mariners using electronic navigation to rely solely on GPS. Now, this fast-moving threat to GPS could pull the plug on our ability to safel navigate within the U.S. Public comments on LightSquared’s proposal will be taken until Saturday, July 30, 2011. Following that, the FCC will make a determination on what this private company can do with this vital public resource.

We ask that you take a minute today, as a boater and a citizen, to request that the FCC reject the proposed LightSquared plan to deploy a private nationwide broadband service that can cripple the nation’s GPS systems. Because it is not easy to find your way through the FCC’s comment web forms, we suggest you follow the link below. Our software will help you easily construct a letter, which will be electronically delivered to your Members of Congress and BoatU.S. We will then print your letter and hand deliver it to the FCC before they close on Friday, July 29th.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION

 

[jfmid]

I sent it in but do these mass email things really work? Do the elected people ever read them or see them? I dont know and realize that not sending one in is surely not going to help so I guess it cant hurt.
I hope that smarter people than me really look into this and make sure they dont mess up the system.

 

[Stu Jackson]

I sent it in but do these mass email things really work?

Don't know if ya don't try. If I can spend twenty minutes typing about autopilots, I can spend twenty more minutes doing this.

It's important.

Dear [recipient name was inserted here], Senator, Rep, FCC You must reconsider the conditional approval for LightSquared, I write to ask you to preserve the integrity of the nation's GPS system. As a representative of over 600 members of our Association and over 2,000 registrants to our Forum, I urge you to carefully reconsider actions that would be questionable to the integrity of the only quality electronic navigation system available to boaters, hikers and automobile users. The SAFETY issues involved are colossal. While BoatUS represents a vast array and quantity of boaters, think of the other citizens who depend on seamless navigational information. The potential hazard to navigation for both recreational as well as professional mariners should not be compromised. Please resist this corporate intrusion into public safety. Sincerely, Stu Jackson, Catalina 34 International Association Secretary

 

[Tim R.]

I sent mine in.

 

[jimford2158]

I sent mine and yes they do respond, my Representative has helped me with a problem and also listened and repaired abuse to the Food Stamp program that I witnessed at a Walmart. Namely a recipient returning 2 carts full of all kinds of food, including frozen, so that she could get a cash refund. She had purchased the food with food stamps. Sometimes the gov't does work. But try reading "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. A real eye opener. By the way, I have my GPS hooked in to my marine radio so that it can report my coordinates on the emergency channel in case of a mishap. And I have a chart program on my laptop that shows the current position of my boat by using the GPS. This is really something that they don't need to mess with.

 

[rpwillia]

Is this much ado about nothing?

If you read about the GPS signal, and as many of us know the signal levels are very low. This is due to the fact that they use separate frequency bands for multiple channels. On top of the Frequency Division Multiplexing, the signal is also combined with a pseudo random code as well as undergoing a phase shift. What this really means is that we can use lower power signals and discriminate between between the GPS signals themselves as well as any interference. If noise were too high on any given channel the most that would happen is your receiver would be unable to detect that given signal and would continue looking for another satellite on a separate channel. If there is interference and your receiver can still see the signal, correlate on the phase shift, and the correlate on the pseudo random code then life is good. I believe they are also using some type of error detection and correction coding if the signal is decoded and determined to have errors.

If you look at LightSquared documents they are using a particular version of Long Term Evolution which uses similar techniques to GPS but goes a lot further. They are probably using QPSK-64, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) which uses unique pseudo random codes to encode different parts of the signals (typically the code stream is split into multiple pieces) which are transmitted at lower bit rates using spread spectrum (e.g. the different pieces are transmitted on different frequencies) and many times using Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) the different parts of the signal are sent over different paths and then everything is decoded and reassembled and checked for errors. This will make you head hurt if you think about it too much, but the big reason they are doing this is to be as spectrally efficient as possible. Spectral efficiency is really important as they are advertising 100Mbits of service (e.g. your porn or facebook notifications download really fast!) and so spectral efficiency = $$$. One other reason they do all of this is so they can put cells next to each other and if you can drop the power down you can put your cell towers much closer to each other which again increases their spectral efficiency which again = $$$.

They do note on their web site they are working with rural folks to make sure GPS works (http://www.lightsquared.com/press-r...-to-ensure-lightsquared-and-gps-co-existence/). The big problem I see there is they have a couple of politicians advising them and we know how that goes. If this goes through the best thing we can do is be aware and if we have problems with GPS where there was none before we will need to ride the FCC to get them to turn their power down. The downside for that situation will be if you are a LightSquared subscriber you may not be able to have you GPS while you download you porn at the same time.

 

[Tim R.]

If you read about the GPS signal, and as many of us know the signal levels are very low. This is due to the fact that they use separate frequency bands for multiple channels. On top of the Frequency Division Multiplexing, the signal is also combined with a pseudo random code as well as undergoing a phase shift. What this really means is that we can use lower power signals and discriminate between between the GPS signals themselves as well as any interference. If noise were too high on any given channel the most that would happen is your receiver would be unable to detect that given signal and would continue looking for another satellite on a separate channel. If there is interference and your receiver can still see the signal, correlate on the phase shift, and the correlate on the pseudo random code then life is good. I believe they are also using some type of error detection and correction coding if the signal is decoded and determined to have errors.

If you look at LightSquared documents they are using a particular version of Long Term Evolution which uses similar techniques to GPS but goes a lot further. They are probably using QPSK-64, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) which uses unique pseudo random codes to encode different parts of the signals (typically the code stream is split into multiple pieces) which are transmitted at lower bit rates using spread spectrum (e.g. the different pieces are transmitted on different frequencies) and many times using Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) the different parts of the signal are sent over different paths and then everything is decoded and reassembled and checked for errors. This will make you head hurt if you think about it too much, but the big reason they are doing this is to be as spectrally efficient as possible. Spectral efficiency is really important as they are advertising 100Mbits of service (e.g. your porn or facebook notifications download really fast!) and so spectral efficiency = $$$. One other reason they do all of this is so they can put cells next to each other and if you can drop the power down you can put your cell towers much closer to each other which again increases their spectral efficiency which again = $$$.

Thanks Ray, now my head hurts

 

[Stu Jackson]

...as they are advertising 100Mbits of service (e.g. your porn or facebook notifications download really fast!) and so spectral efficiency = $$$. One other reason they do all of this is so they can put cells next to each other and if you can drop the power down you can put your cell towers much closer to each other which again increases their spectral efficiency which again = $$$.

My head doesn't hurt about this. It's simple: $$ for the corporation at the expense of what is now a pretty simple issue. They wanna piggyback, using "a couple of politicians" on the back of signals, when they might just as well have simply not intruded on the ones that GPS uses.

What's so hard to understand?

 

[Bill1565]

If you read about the GPS signal, and as many of us know the signal levels are very low. This is due to the fact that they use separate frequency bands for multiple channels. On top of the Frequency Division Multiplexing, the signal is also combined with a pseudo random code as well as undergoing a phase shift. What this really means is that we can use lower power signals and discriminate between between the GPS signals themselves as well as any interference. If noise were too high on any given channel the most that would happen is your receiver would be unable to detect that given signal and would continue looking for another satellite on a separate channel. If there is interference and your receiver can still see the signal, correlate on the phase shift, and the correlate on the pseudo random code then life is good. I believe they are also using some type of error detection and correction coding if the signal is decoded and determined to have errors.

I think I recall that the FCC ran tests and that there was in fact interference.

I filled out the Boat US form, modified the letter and forwarded th B US link to the admiral. Darn, knew I was making a mistake when i gave the loran to a museum.