Navigation and Positioning System: Opportunities and Obstacles

Topic Information

Dear Colleagues,

Navigation and positioning systems are tools that play a key role in many applications, e.g., by supporting transport, logistics, telecommunications, military operations, and many others. The best known GNSS (global navigation satellite system) technology is the American GPS, but other systems such as the European Galileo, Russian GLONASS, and Chinese BeiDou are also active.

GNSSs has a very wide applications, e.g., precise positioning, which is crucial for autonomous vehicles, drones, traffic management, and the development of smart cities. In addition, they support precision agriculture, rescue operations, and space exploration. Furthermore, advanced GNSS signal processing plays an important role in earthquake and tsunami warnings. With the development of technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, navigation systems are becoming more accurate and reliable.

Alongside these numerous advantages are also challenges, like problems of signal interference, cyber attacks, limited accessibility in confined spaces, or jamming, which require innovative solutions.

The future of navigation lies in the development of alternative technologies such as inertial systems, quantum navigation, and IoT networks, which can improve positioning reliability and accuracy.

Prof. Dr. Kamil Maciuk
Dr. Paulina Lewińska
Prof. Dr. Artur Krawczyk
Topic Editors

Keywords

Participating Journals

Journal Name	Impact Factor	CiteScore	Launched Year	First Decision (median)	APC
Electronics electronics	2.6	6.1	2012	16.8 Days	CHF 2400	Submit
Geomatics geomatics	2.8	5.1	2021	20 Days	CHF 1000	Submit
Energies energies	3.2	7.3	2008	16.2 Days	CHF 2600	Submit
Sensors sensors	3.5	8.2	2001	19.7 Days	CHF 2600	Submit
Drones drones	4.8	7.4	2017	20.1 Days	CHF 2600	Submit

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Open AccessArticle

Long-Term Stability Improvements of the Miniature Atomic Clock Through Enhanced Thermal Environmental Control

by Emily Gokie, Jon Omaraie and Thejesh N. Bandi

Sensors 2025, 25(18), 5817; https://doi.org/10.3390/s25185817 - 18 Sep 2025

Viewed by 747

Abstract

Advancement of compact atomic clocks has centered on reducing footprint and power consumption. Such developments come at the cost of the clock’s stability performance. Various commercial and military applications demand reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements but desire an enhanced stability performance [...] Read more.

Advancement of compact atomic clocks has centered on reducing footprint and power consumption. Such developments come at the cost of the clock’s stability performance. Various commercial and military applications demand reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements but desire an enhanced stability performance beyond what is achieved with the lower-profile standards, such as Microchip’s chip-scale atomic clock (CSAC) or miniature atomic clock (MAC). Furthermore, a high-performing space-rated clock will enhance small satellite missions by providing capability for alternate PNT, one-way radiometric ranging, and eventual lunar PNT purposes. The MAC is a strong candidate as it has modest SWaP parameters. Enhanced performance improvement to the MAC, particularly in the medium to long-term stability over a day and beyond will strengthen its candidacy as an on-board clock in small satellite missions and other ground-based applications. In this work, using external thermal control methods, we demonstrate an improvement of the MAC performance by at least a factor of five, showing a superior stability of σ_y = 4.2 × 10⁻¹³ compared to the best-performing miniaturized standard on the market for averaging intervals of τ > 10⁴ s up to 4 days. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Navigation and Positioning System: Opportunities and Obstacles)

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