LightSquared, which is proposing to build a nationwide wholesale LTE network in L-band satellite spectrum, announced another fix for its highly publicized interference problem with high-precision GPS receivers such as those used in agriculture, surveying and defense industries.
The company has partnered with antenna maker PCTEL, which LightSquared said has developed an antenna that will allow existing high-precision GPS users to retrofit their GPS devices to make them compatible with LightSquared's network.
LightSquared said the antenna provides high precision GPS users with another in a series of solutions to make their equipment LightSquared-compatible. Last month the company signed a deal with Javad GNSS to develop a system that can be adapted to work with high-precision GPS devices.
"PCTEL has developed GPS antenna solutions that have solved a variety of interference issues that others said were unsolvable. Their wideband antenna provides an efficient and elegant solution for thousands of high precision device users," Martin Harriman, executive vice president of ecosystem development and satellite business at LightSquared, said in a release.
LightSquared said the new antenna will be independently tested with a range of receivers at the Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in New Jersey, and that the FCC and NTIA plan to test them. It's unclear how much the antenna would cost GPS users.
LightSquared also cited a filtering component that costs $6 from Partron America as another solution to the GPS interference problem.
LightSquared has been under fire since its June report to the FCC showed that its proposed LTE network posed an interference problem to existing GPS devices. LightSquared can't operate in the band until the FCC is satisfied that interference won't be a problem.
LightSquared in recent months has made a number of concessions, including agreeing to temporarily stay out of the upper part of the spectrum that is adjacent to the GPS bands and limiting the power of its base stations.
For more:
- see this release
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