Join NextNav experts in this must-watch discussion as they tackle the critical importance of resilient backup systems for GPS, especially in light of recent cyber incidents. Learn why timing and positioning are vital for national security and public safety, and how 5G networks and AI are enhancing reliability and resilience for mission-critical applications.
Diana Goovaerts:
We are here in the FNTV studio talking about the importance of resilient backup for national security. So Sanyogita, can you talk to me a little bit about why it's important to have a resilient backup to GPS and also what we can learn from some recent cyber incidents and outages that have occurred?
Sanyogita Shamsunder:
Yeah, GPS is everywhere. We use it all the time, mapping navigation. It's also important for timing and a lot of our critical infrastructure depends on timing from GPS, whether it be the grid, banking as well as air traffic control. There's been a lot of incidents recently that have shown that outage of GPS is a problem for us and we need something as a complement and backup. There's a 14 billion loss to the economy, impact to the economy, if GPS doesn't work. And that's why we need something to back up GPS. GPS, as important as it is, it has issues and we need something when it doesn't work.
Diana Goovaerts:
And Andrew, I know that GPS has been an issue for public safety as well. Can you talk about that?
Andrew Thiessen:
Yeah, I mean, positioning is critically important. A year after I graduated from undergrad, six firefighters, the Worcester Six, died in a fire December 3rd, 1999. I think they were within 50 feet of the door and it's because they couldn't figure out where they were and get out of the building. And so that was my baptism into why position matters for public safety. And then I spent about 15 years working in public safety with the Department of Commerce where they have public safety developed requirements for sub-meter resolution in three different dimensions. And so I think anything that backs up or augments positioning is critically important to the community.
Diana Goovaerts:
Okay. I heard you mention timing, so I want to throw this question to Gil and Chika-san. So talk to me about why timing is important and how that impacts national infrastructure and how we can strengthen that. Gil, maybe you start.
Gil Brian:
Yeah. So timing is an enabler for positioning and navigation, meaning no timing, no P&T, number one. Number two, without timing, we're not going to have any mobile infrastructure, we're not going to have any power, anything that you already mentioned. And there are many more, defense and such. There is an amazing video on YouTube from many years ago that's showing what happened without GPS for 24 hours, which is terrifying, but it's become more of reality these days.
Diana Goovaerts:
Chika-san.
Yoshioki Chika:
So all the 5G TDD systems rely on the timing, and if we lose GPS, within a few days, all the 5G will be shutting down.
Diana Goovaerts:
Oh, geez.
Yoshioki Chika:
So it's very critically important.
Diana Goovaerts:
Well, that doesn't sound good at all. So talk to me a little bit more about how 5G and AI-enhanced reliability and resilience for mission-critical applications.
Andrew Thiessen:
Well, certainly, if you walk on the show floor, we hear all about AI. Everything is AI. 6G is going to be the first AI native RAN. And so then it becomes a question of, well, what does that mean? And the moment you can start to use machine learning and artificial intelligence at the edge of the network, the kind of things that you can do in managing how spectrum works, augmenting, again, position navigation and timing, I think the sky's the limit. And so I think we're going to see some really interesting capabilities come out of that.
Sanyogita Shamsunder:
And, more importantly, also from a 5G perspective, the 5G standards incorporate something called position reference signals. And we at NextNav are utilizing the 5G capabilities, standard 5G 3-GPP capabilities to propose a terrestrial backup to GPS based on a 5G network. 5G networks are ubiquitous. I mean, they pretty much cover the entire country. And we would be using that infrastructure in our lower 900 megahertz band to build a network that not only supports and can not only deliver data, but as well as PNT. And that's a terrestrial backup that we are proposing to this. We are working with FCC for that.
Diana Goovaerts:
Any final thoughts you guys?
Yoshioki Chika:
One thing that the Japanese government also recognizes the issue of that, and they have officially started the granting the spectrum licenses, and they're coming soon.
Diana Goovaerts:
Good.
Andrew Thiessen:
Again, I just can't state the importance of both from a backup and anything we can do to augment positioning, is it affects all the different kinds of industries and different verticals that we talked about.
Sanyogita Shamsunder:
And the beauty of a 5G based solution is that it can be incorporated into consumer devices. Most consumer devices now support 5G. And if you enable this on a network and it's available on the device, it's a way to get scale using a standards based technology. And as well, you can build a system of systems for timing.
Gil Brian:
Yes. So maybe we need to mention the challenge not talking about 6G. Let's start with 5G, which is not fully deployed today. The real requirement is 100 nanoseconds in the axis between the DU and the RU. And this is not easy to achieve, definitely not on the current infrastructure. So without it, we are not going to have a real 5G with open RAN, all the nice stuff that we are planning. 6G is talking about 10 nanoseconds, which is even much more difficult to achieve. So there is a long way to go in order to be able to enable 6G for the timing perspective.
Diana Goovaerts:
So you guys heard it here first, timing and location more important than you thought. Thank you all so much for joining us today.
Sanyogita Shamsunder:
Thank you,
Gil Brian:
Thank you.