About
Locata Corporation
Locata Corporation is a privately-owned Australian company that has invented a new radio-location technology (LocataTech) that provides precise positioning in many environments where GPS is either marginal or unavailable. A network of terrestrially-based LocataLite transceivers transmits extremely well-synchronized signals. These signals form a positioning network called a LocataNet that either operates in combination with GPS (e.g. open-cut mining), or totally independent of GPS (e.g. indoors or in urban areas).
Early adopters of Locata technology include the military, open-cut mining, structural deformation and warehousing. LocataNets have the unique ability to replicate a GPS satellite constellation -locally and on the ground. For the first time, Locata-developed technology will allow any entity – mine, port, construction site, warehouses, airports, strategic infrastructure, and eventually entire cities – to determine for itself the reliability and accuracy of positioning they wish to deploy, under their own local control, and with complete autonomy. Locata calls this resource “Your own GPS”.
A LocataNet can provide independent GPS-style performance because Locata’s patented TimeLoc technology enables the LocataNet to autonomously synchronize transceivers to picosecond timing (i.e. less than a billionth of a second) without using any atomic clocks or external aids.
This is an amazing technical breakthrough and allows Locata Technology Integration (LTI) partners to deploy flexible, scalable, wide-area LocataNets that independently provide one of the “holy grails” of positioning – “ a single-point carrier-phase positioning solution” (i.e. cm-level accuracy without any external assistance). TimeLoc technology accomplishes this feat without differential corrections, atomic clocks, reference networks, data links or any of the aids needed by GPS for carrier-phase positioning.
LocataTech is the only technology in the world that can do this.
LocataTech’s combination of reliability, flexibility and accuracy promises new opportunities for the many markets where GPS-style positioning has previously been difficult, or simply impossible. In mid-2011 Locata once again extended the commercial potential of a LocataNet by demonstrating to LTI’s a world-first cm-level indoor positioning system for machine and industrial automation inside warehouses.
Today Locata has 82 granted patents on devices and systems which advance radio-location technology to new levels, and has over 160 additional patents in the pipeline.
In September 2011, at the prestigious Institute of Navigation GNSS Conference in Portland Oregon, Locata will release an Interface Control Document (ICD). This ICD is a complete technical description of the Locata transmitted signal. It will provide the basic information to allow any competent electronics manufacturers to design and build its own Locata receiver (just as the USAF’s official GPS ICD enables manufacturers to design and build GPS receivers).
The world will soon have access to Locata’s inventive technology and a brand new “Local Constellation”. Locata technology will enable a totally new method for providing Position, Navigation and Time (PNT) – all done without satellites and without atomic clocks. Locata calls this new combination of satellite+terrestrial systems “GPS 2.0”.
LocataTech is a very significant advance in radio positioning technology and it will power the next-generation of development in positioning applications and solutions.
This is a truly profound and hugely disruptive change to the GPS and PNT industry.
