Gov Invest £155m to Improve UK Wireless and Satellite Navigation Signals

The UK government, which have long been looking at alternative ways of delivering accurate Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) solutions to complement GPS (Global Positioning System) – supporting everything from mobile (4G/5G) signals to in-car Sat Nav, has today invested £155m boost the country’s resilience in this critical field.

“Almost all of modern society relies on PNT. One example would be the satellite navigation services that help us get from A to B, but these all-important services go much further than that. Another important use is timing signals – without which mobile phones and even stock markets could not function properly,” said the announcement.

However, as vital as PNT is to society and the economy, recent years have revealed growing threats posed by the jamming or spoofing of such services by hostile states and organisations. Not to mention the impact from natural events, such as solar flares from the sun.

The new investment will thus support a programme of work to boost the resilience of UK PNT – including initial work that would provide a PNT solution that is independent of signals from satellites, making it harder to jam or spoof. The key projects being supported are as follows.

The £155m Funding Allocations

➤ £71 million to begin work on a UK National Enhanced Long-Range Navigation (eLoran) programme, providing PNT across land, air and sea that is independent of signals from satellites, and hard to jam or spoof.  

➤ £68 million for further development of the National Timing Centre programme. The National Timing Centre is being delivered by the National Physical Laboratory, to develop the UK’s first nationally-distributed time infrastructure. As well as boosting resilience, it could help with innovative new uses of technologies like 5G, satellite communications, and self-driving vehicles.

➤ £13 million for work on a UK Global Navigation Satellite Systems interference monitoring programme. This will deliver a world-leading capability for the UK to monitor and react to threats to our PNT signals, like jamming and spoofing.

➤ £3 million for the Space Based Time Transfer R&D programme. This will develop the technology required to deliver global timing systems independent of GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems.

The news comes after the Government agreed to closer work with both the US and France around PNT resilience, as part of September’s UK-US Technology Prosperity Deal, and July’s UK-France Summit.

Science Minister, Lord Vallance, said:

“Having resilient and enduring access to Position, Navigation and Timing Services is a critical part of life in today’s world, and a major plank in the UK’s national security. So many of the things we take for granted every day, from using our phones to planning a journey, simply couldn’t happen without it.

The UK is a leader in this field, but in an uncertain world we cannot be complacent. The funding we are announcing today will ultimately help protect Britain from the risks posed to PNT, from both accidental outages and hostile acts, safeguarding everyone’s wealth and wellbeing.”

It’s worth pointing out that a number of satellite broadband networks in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), such as Starlink, OneWeb (Eutelsat) and Amazon Leo, have previously proposed that their own constellations could be used to help support GPS with PNT solutions. At one point the government even seemed to be backing OneWeb’s network to deliver this, although that will largely depend upon the design and ability to launch their future GEN2 spacecraft. But by the sounds of it we may see more than one GPS alternative in the future, and not all of those will be space-based.