NAB Show Las Vegas

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Sinclair Broadcast Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Sinclair, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBGI), and UrsaNav^®, LLC will demonstrate a complementary system that can provide precision timing upon which the U.S. economy relies in the event the Global Positioning System (GPS) is compromised or attacked.

American consumers and industries rely on GPS every day. Yet GPS is vulnerable to disruption or attack, with tremendous economic consequences. While most people understand the value of GPS primarily in terms of location and navigation, GPS also serves a critical function by providing ubiquitous and precise timing information, which is critical for the U.S. economy. A wide range of industries rely on GPS for timing, including telecommunications, electric utilities, agriculture, oil and gas, financial services, and others. One economic study suggested that GPS generated roughly $1.4 trillion in economic benefits to the private sector through 2017 in the U.S. alone¹; another study puts the economic loss from a single day of GPS failure at $1.6 billion, and the loss from a month of failure at $58.2 billion.² But GPS can be vulnerable to jamming, spoofing, or even direct foreign attacks against satellites or their ground-based infrastructure.

NAB, Sinclair, and UrsaNav will demonstrate an alternative timing capability using the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS™) and eLoran as a fully terrestrial solution to complement existing GPS services. BPS, a technology developed by NAB, is enabled by ATSC 3.0, or NextGen TV, and can readily be deployed using broadcasters’ existing infrastructure and spectrum as soon as broadcasters complete the nationwide transition to ATSC 3.0. BPS is one of many features made possible with adoption of ATSC 3.0.

eLoran is an advanced Position, Navigation, and Timing solution evolving from the long line of Loran technologies that were initially developed by the U.S. Department of Defense and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence. Together, these technologies can provide a robust alternative precision timing capability in the event of GPS being compromised. The demonstration will take place during show floor hours at Futures Park (Booth 4042) in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at NAB Show. There will also be a panel discussion with the participants at 11:45 a.m. on Saturday, April 5 in room W222-W223 as part of NAB’s Broadcast Engineering and IT Conference.

“Broadcasters have long been essential to public safety, and today we’re proving that role is more important than ever,” said NAB Executive Vice President, Technology and Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny. “Through technologies like the Broadcast Positioning System, enabled by ATSC 3.0, broadcasters can deliver a resilient solution to support America’s critical infrastructure in the face of growing threats to GPS. Combining BPS with eLoran provides a resilient, frequency diverse, and wholly terrestrial alternative to GPS. We are proud to partner with Sinclair and UrsaNav to demonstrate how broadcasters’ innovation can help safeguard the systems that keep our economy running.”

Del Parks, Sinclair’s President of Technology, said, “GPS vulnerability is a trillion-dollar problem in the U.S. economy. Broadcasters can use their existing infrastructure and spectrum to solve this problem. We are excited to demonstrate how BPS can help secure the U.S. economy if broadcasters can move forward with a complete and expeditious transition to ATSC 3.0.”

“We should ask ourselves why China and Russia continue to operate and upgrade Loran systems that interoperate with their own Global Navigation Satellite Systems, BeiDou and GLONASS, and why other nations in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are doing so as well,” said Charles Schue, UrsaNav’s CEO. “The answer is easy: eLoran provides a sovereign and survivable terrestrial PNT solution wirelessly over continent-wide areas that ensures the safety and security of citizens and infrastructure when GPS/GNSS is not available or trustworthy. eLoran and BPS are proven technologies that operate within already licensed spectrum. When paired, they provide a layered PNT alternative to metropolitan and remote users.”

Source: BUSINESS WIRE