New quantum magnetic navigation system to replace aircraft GPS

• Civil airline safety is under threat as satellite positioning system signals are routinely blocked around China, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, across the Middle East and other parts of the world
• New experimental alternative to GPS shows the earth’s magnetic field can do the job just as well and with great accuracy
• An on-board black-box system fitted with quantum magnetometers, lasers and a single GPU chip exceeds required commercial navigation accuracy standards, 1,200% of the time
• Airbus and Google companies co-operating to commercialise the breakthrough

In Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, Acubed, the Airbus innovation lab, is working with a Google company, AI and quantum specialist SandboxAQ, to develop AQNav, an alternative to today’s most ubiquitous global positioning system (GPS) as incidents of GPS jamming and spoofing increase and threaten airline safety. Via a toaster-size black box that houses an AI-powered quantum magnetic navigation system on a single graphics processing unit (GPU) chip, the experimental new solution exploits the Earth’s magnetic field, does not rely on satellites and can provide real-time aircraft positioning data without any reference to GPS. 

That ability pertains even during a period of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) denial when a receiver is unable to determine its position, navigation or time due to deliberate signal blocking or accidental interference. GNSS denial environments are increasingly common, particularly in and around war zones, such as Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Iran and Israel, China and parts of the Middle East. It’s a hazard that flight crews of commercial, civil jetliners now face on an almost daily basis.

 As reported by the Quantum Insider, in a series of more than 150 test flights covering the US, Acubed and SandboxAQ successfully demonstrated that AQNav can achieve real-time aircraft positioning without GPS, even under conditions of GNSS denial and interference. What’s more, the tests exceeded commercial navigation accuracy standards and achieved full compliance with Required Navigation Performance 2, (RNP2) the navigation specification used for en-route oceanic and remote continental airspace where there is limited or no ground-based navigation infrastructure. It requires a navigation accuracy of 2 nautical miles to be achieved for at least 95% of the flight time.

The successful trials were made possible by recent breakthroughs in quantum magnetic navigation (magnav). AQNav uses advanced quantum magnetometers to read magnetic anomalies in the Earth’s crust. It then relies on large quantitative models (LQMs) to filter out electromagnetic interference and precisely determine an aircraft’s position without recourse to satellite signals. 

An analogue answer to a digital problem

AQNav was tested using publicly available magnetic maps aboard a standard Beechcraft Baron 5 aircraft rather than a specially compensated geosurvey platform. The plane was modified only to accommodate the additional AQNav instrumentation. No extensive electromagnetic shielding or specialised noise isolation was used. All sensors were positioned inside the aircraft, powered by AQNav’s software to deliver a clean magnetic signal. Also, for all the test flights, AQNav researchers used the publicly available North American magnetic anomaly map, which covers the US, Canada, parts of Mexico, and surrounding oceanic regions.

The tests covered diverse, operationally relevant routes between 200 airports across the entire continental US without filtering, based on magnetic anomaly strength, magnetic map quality, or favourable geomagnetic gradients. The new technology also removed real-world interference generated by the aircraft itself, including electromagnetic, vibrational, and other airframe-induced noise. 

Inside the on-board black box, a laser fires a photon (the fundamental particle of light) at an electron (a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge), which forces the electron to absorb the photon. When the laser turns off, that electron reverts to its “ground state”, and releases the photon it has absorbed. As it is released, the photon emanates a unique signature based on the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field at that particular location.

Every square metre of our planet has a unique magnetic signature based on the specific way charged iron particles in the earth’s molten core magnetise the minerals in its crust. AQNav racks that signature, feeds it into an AI algorithm that runs on the aforementioned single GPU, compares the signature to existing magnetic signature maps, and returns an exact location. 

In the tests, the AQNav technology outperformed the inertial navigation system without GNSS 100% of the time. What’s more, in this determinedly digital age, the quantum sensing device is, by way of a refreshing change, completely analogue. It does not in any way rely on digital signals. That means it is inherently unjammable and unspoofable as the information is generated entirely from the onboard device that exploits magnetic signatures from the earth itself – and these cannot be faked.

– Martyn Warwick, Editor in Chief, TelecomTV