FA864924P0420

Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) Phase II

Tightly Coupled Integration of the Field Ops Remote Tracker (FORT) Inertial Tracking Module with a COTS GPS Receiver to create an extremely EW resilient Tracking Device

The Ukrainian and Israeli wars have emphatically clarified that EW directed at GPS vulnerabilities will be a persistent part of battlefield calculus. As weapon platforms shrink in size and cost and are able to grow in numerical advantage as a result of this SWaP-c transformation, the only viable defense that is effective on a consistent and economical basis is EW, where large swaths of air space can be covered by just a few EW installations. On the other hand kinetic mitigation can not only miss the threat, but costs far more in operation and can also cause inadvertent collateral damage. Because of such battle-proven efficacy, EW will inevitably receive the manpower and financial investment to continue evolving into ever more sophisticated and difficult to detect, mitigate and defeat methods and technologies. The proposed device delivers unprecedented fully self-contained GPS-denied tracking capability using only magnetometers, accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a pressure sensor. With PNI Sensor's sensor fusion algorithms and Edge AI/ML models, its tracking performance surpasses that of an inertial navigation system based upon tactical grade gyroscopes and accelerometers but does so using only COTS consumer-grade MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes. Therefore, it enjoys the benefits of extremely low SWaP (< 1 cubic inch and <100mW in operation). Combining the FORT with a commercial GPS unit using a very tightly coupled approach would enable both EW-proof location as well as more generally accurate and reliable positioning performance of the GPS receiver even when GPS is fully available. Signal processing would not have to be solely constrained to RF signals (except for rudimentary pose information provided by inertial sensors in some existing systems), but can pull location, velocity and pose into increasing the efficacy of the GPS filter substantially.

The goal of phase II is to continue the R&D efforts initiated in Phase I. Funding is based on the results achieved in Phase I and the scientific and technical merit and commercial potential of the project proposed in Phase II.

AFX244-DPCSO1

F2D-10437

X24.4

Meghan Scott