ION GNSS 2010 Awards
The Institute of Navigation’s (ION) Satellite Division awarded Ali Broumandan of the University of Calgary its Bradford W. Parkinson Award at the ION GNSS Conference last month in Portland, Oregon. Dr Todd Walter received the Johannes Kepler Award for his contributions to space-based augmentation systems.
The Bradford W. Parkinson Award is granted annually to recognise an outstanding graduate student in the field of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), and is presented in honour of Bradford W. Parkinson for his leadership in establishing the US Global Positioning System and for his work on behalf of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation. Any graduate student who is a member of the ION and is completing a degree program with an emphasis in GNSS technology, applications, or policy is eligible for the award.
The Kepler Award recognizes and honours an individual for sustained and significant contributions to the development of satellite navigation. It is the highest honour bestowed by the ION's Satellite Division.
Mr Broumandan was recognised for graduate student excellence in Global Navigation Satellite Systems in his thesis "Enhanced Narrowband Signal Detection and Estimation with a Synthetic Antenna Array for Location Application".
Dr Walter has an extensive history of significant contributions to the field of satellite navigation. He has developed many of the safety analyses used by the wide area augmentation system (WAAS) including the design of the algorithm to bound errors caused by the ionosphere. He continues to serve as a leading system engineer for WAAS. Additionally, Dr Walter is recognised for his role in early prototyping of WAAS and the creation of an end-to-end demonstration of the system in operation. This demonstration included validation of the user algorithm for WAAS. This effort coded the entire airborne algorithm including the message unpacking, differential correction application and protection level calculation. He is also recognised as a gifted educator and has co-advised some 20 PhD students who have all benefited from Dr Walter's generosity and intellect.
