Kirk Montgomery’s scientific contributions

This paper covers the current status and future plans of the modernized LORAN system. Special focus is placed on the enhanced LORAN system in North America and Europe. These modernized systems have new capabilities that allow them to serve as sources of precise time and frequency that can meet the needs of telecommunication and power industry users. The paper discusses recent technological developments in LORAN time and frequency equipment, at both the transmission and receiving sites. It presents and discusses results from recent field tests that demonstrate the current timing capabilities of the modernized LORAN System. It also describes future changes planned for eLORAN that will further improve its accuracy and performance.

Precision timing and time interval (PTTI) capabilities are becoming more commonplace throughout the world. The increasing demand for and use of precise time comes with a potentially increasing risk of over-reliance on a single timing source. In addition, many precise time applications are considered "critical," in that service disruption could result in severe consequences. The Global Positioning System (GPS) provides PTTI services that meet or exceed most user requirements, at increasingly lower cost. It is important to ensure that critical PTTI services are maintained during periods of disruption or loss of the GPS signal. This paper presents key findings, conclusions, and recommendations from a Timing Criticality analysis of the impact of loss of GPS time and frequency on important sectors of U.S. society. The focus in this paper is on civil and commercial sectors, including telecommunications and electric power. The goal of the analysis was to assess the consequences of disruption of GPS time on applications critical to the safety, security or economic well-being of the United States. For each sector, assessments of timing requirements and of the performance impact under representative GPS outage scenarios were conducted. The corollary goal was to determine the benefits and costs of backup systems - including modernized Loran - that mitigate the impact of the GPS disruption. The timing criticality analysis extends and updates prior work, in particular the DOT/Volpe Center and Homeland Security Institute (HSI) GPS vulnerability studies, and the HSI timing criticality study.