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Mayflower Demonstrates its GPS Anti-Jam
Product on Army Black Hawk Helicopter
| Burlington, MA,
June 28, 2002 - Mayflower Communications
Company, Inc. (Mayflower) today announced the successful flight testing
of its GPS anti-jam product by the U.S. Army on the UH-60 Black Hawk
helicopter. These flight tests were conducted by the Air Force 746th
Test Squadron, 46th Test Group at Holloman AFB, NM. The Mayflower GPS
anti-jam product tested by the Army is based on Mayflower's GPS
anti-jam antenna technology developed for the U.S. Army CECOM, under
the Army SBIR Small Affordable Anti-Jam GPS Antenna (SAAGA) Program. |

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| The SAAGA anti-jam technology incorporates a 4-element
antenna array
and controls the antenna array pattern to direct nulls towards the
jammers while maximizing the desired signal-to-noise power ratio. The
SAAGA product has been tested with different configurations of both
active and passive antenna arrays and with multiple military GPS
receivers. The antenna arrays used in these flight tests were developed
by Sensor Systems, Inc. of Chatsworth, CA for Mayflower under the SAAGA
program. |
The SAAGA product flight tested by the U.S. Army
replaces the old analog RF antenna control (employed in the first
generation anti-jam equipment) with digital antenna control technology.
This technology permits cost and size reduction while enhancing the
performance features of the GPS anti-jam equipment. The SAAGA product
is packaged in an AE-4 foot-print with a height of approximately 5
inches. It is designed to operate with a 4-element GPS L1/L2 antenna
array, therefore it provides the desired anti-jam capability at L1 and
L2 frequencies, under the control of the GPS receiver. The SAAGA unit
is controlled via RS-232/422 through a connector (power connector) and
is powered externally. The current design uses a nominal 28 V power
supply for vehicle operation. The SAAGA unit manages its power
consumption, and can be easily configured to operate as an adaptive
temporal filter (ATF) - minimum power consumption mode, an adaptive
spatial filter (ASF), or as an adaptive spatial-temporal filter (ASTF)
to mitigate effectively the GPS jamming threat. The recent SAAGA flight
tests utilized the Honeywell EGI (embedded GPS inertial) receiver.
These Army flight tests at Holloman AFB demonstrated the anti-jam
capability of the SAAGA technology. The flight tests identified that
the Mayflower SAAGA ant-jam technology, after some ruggedization and
additional environmental testing, can be productized and will offer an
alternative and affordable anti-jam solution to the Army Platforms.
Mayflower Communications is a privately held research
and development company with its offices in Burlington, MA. Mayflower
has been at the forefront of developing affordable GPS anti-jam
technology solutions for over 10 years to protect GPS receivers from
unintentional as well as intentional radio frequency interference
(RFI), i.e. intentional jamming. Both commercial and military GPS
receivers are known to be vulnerable to RFI. Even though the military
GPS receivers are designed to be more tolerant to jamming, the jamming
is a critical concern in military receivers because of the DoD reliance
on GPS availability in a theatre which can potentially be denied by an
adversary by fielding intentional jammers. Mayflower's R&D work in
this technology area has been funded by Mayflower and by the U.S. Air
Force, Army, GPS JPO, DARPA and the Navy.
Contact:
Pamela Stoner
(781) 359-9500 ext. 200
Mayflower Communications Company Inc.
20 Burlington Mall Road
Burlington, MA. 01803
(781) 359-9500
www.mayflowercom.com
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