Author
Dana Goward
Reading timea
00:31
Date
May 31, 2024
The Baltic, Ukraine, and the Middle East may be hotbeds of GPS interference that can hamper UAV operations, but these are not the only places in the world where it is happening.
It also happened in San Diego at the premier event for UAV operators— the XPOTENTIAL 2024 conference of the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).
AUVSI is the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of uncrewed systems and robotics. Members present included corporations and professionals from more than 60 countries involved in industry, government and academia and work in the defense, civil and commercial markets.
Among conference attendees were Franck and Trevor Boynton of NavtechGPS, a small Northern Virginia company specializing in GPS products and related services. One of their services is locating devices that are interfering with GPS reception.
“In our work around the country we have found a wide variety of devices interfering with GPS,” said Franck Boynton. “It’s a lot more common than you think. We found truckers with jammers interfering with port operations, for example,” he said. “But accidental interference is an even bigger problem. Most of the time we find it is just some malfunctioning equipment making the radio noise.”
Dana Goward