Dramatic increases in computing power and a greater appreciation of GPS’s vulnerability to multi-path, blockage and jamming, has served to drive interest in receiver architectures that push the theoretical limits of performance. The demands for higher navigation accuracy and integrity, in both the civilian and the military sectors, have further accelerated these developments. Through our studies of the performance limitations of radio-navigation systems TISI staff have developed and patented the Integrated Demodulation/Navigation (IDN) architecture. This fundamental breakthrough is the basis for a wide range of high performance GPS and beacon-based tracking systems.

The founder of TISI, Dr. James Sennott, is an internationally recognized technologist and consultant in the field of satellite positioning. He has been involved with GPS satellite positioning since its inception. Dr. Sennott realized that existing signal tracking architectures were impaired by improperly formulated satellite-to-satellite waveform independence assumptions. He discovered a new technique to enhance weak and multi-path corrupted GPS signals known as Integrated Demodulation/Navigation (IDN). This estimation method optimally processes correlator outputs in the pre-detection domain. Applying to both aided and un-aided C/A and P/Y code designs (including single and multiple antenna variants) IDN offers substantial performance benefits in jamming, blockage, multi-path, and high dynamics environments.

From 1996 until 2003 TISI carried out the prototype and product development activities from its offices in Bloomington, Illinois.  In 2003 TISI relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida where all the prototype and product development activities are still being carried out.  TISI obtained much of its development funding through Phase I and Phase II SBIR contracts. With this support, TISI has built prototype civilian receivers incorporating IDN technology, and has conducted comparative tests against commercial receivers. Currently IDN is being integrated into next-generation military GPS receivers.

The basic IDN technology also enhances wireless infrastructure capacity, and terrestrial tracking system accuracy. TISI is also actively broadening its product development for these markets.