Department of Transportation Awards $7 million for Complementary Positioning, Navigation and Timing Technologies

Washington, DC — The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) awarded contracts to nine Complementary Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) technology vendors. The primary and most recognizable PNT service supporting critical infrastructure is the Global Positioning System (GPS) utilized for all modes of transportation, including aviation, maritime, and rail. In addition to transportation applications, use of GPS is foundational through many sectors of the economy such as surveying, the financial sector, machine control, precision agriculture, science missions, and space applications. However, because GPS relies on signals broadcast from satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO), the signal strength at the receiver is low and thus vulnerable to intentional and unintentional disruptions. These awards will enable DOT to conduct real-world field tests of commercial PNT technologies to facilitate adoption into systems that depend on secure and reliable PNT services.

Awarded through the Volpe Center, in response to the Rapid Phase of the DOT Complementary PNT Action Plan, and totaling more than $7.2 million, these awards provide funding for instrumentation, testing, and evaluation of Complementary PNT technologies at field test ranges in conjunction with critical infrastructure owners and operators. The goal is to facilitate adoption of Complementary PNT technologies to improve PNT resiliency.

“DOT is impressed with the quality of the proposal responses and received more proposals than could be funded under Simplified Acquisition Procedure guidelines. DOT intends to move expeditiously to issue a Complementary PNT Rapid Phase II solicitation to expand the set of Complementary PNT technologies to be evaluated,” said DOT Chief Science Officer Dr. Robert C. Hampshire.

The Complementary PNT technologies will be fielded within six months after award at a diverse set of test range models (Federal Government-Hosted, Critical Infrastructure, and Vendor-Fielded). This diverse set of Complementary PNT technologies includes:

This effort comes at a time when occurrences of jamming and spoofing of Global Navigation Satellite Services, especially GPS, is prevalent in conflict zones, causing disruption, denial, and manipulation of PNT services, thereby increasing concerns for safety across all modes of transportation and for the security of U.S. critical infrastructure. PNT resiliency is essential to the implementation of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and award of these Complementary PNT contracts is one of many steps the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to strengthen cybersecurity and reliability of critical infrastructure applications.