The Origins of Miniature Global Positioning System-Based Navigation Systems [SP History]

For the past decade or so, the Navigation Signal Timing and Ranging Global Positioning System (NAVSTAR GPS) has been synonymous with personal navigation. We find GPS in our smartphones, tablets, cars, aircraft, and boats. But how did it get that way? The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) established the NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office (JPO) (GPS JPO) in 1973 to make the GPS a military and civilian reality [1]-[3]. However, its receivers were large and heavy and not very attractive to military and civilian personnel without vehicles. It wasn´t until the mid-1980s that miniature GPS receiver (GPSR) and inertial navigation system (INS) technologies came into being, whose architectures became the standards for both the military and commercial precise navigation markets after the 1991 Desert Storm military campaign [4].