Locata Corporation is a privately-owned Australian company that has invented new radio-location technology (LocataTech) that gives precise positioning in many environments where GPS is either marginal or unavailable for modern applications. A network of terrestrially-based LocataLite transceivers transmits extremely well-synchronized signals.
These signals form a positioning network called a LocataNet that 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 military, open-cut mining and warehousing markets.
LocataNets have the unique ability to replicate a GPS satellite constellation locally – 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, 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 network to autonomously synchronize transceivers to nanosecond level (i.e., one billionth of a second) without using any atomic clocks or other external aids.
This is an amazing technical breakthrough that 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 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.
Today Locata has 92 granted patents on devices and systems which advance radio-location technology to new levels, and has over 120 additional patents in the pipeline.
The world now has access to “a Local Constellation”. Locata calls this new combination of satellite+terrestrial systems “GPS 2.0”.
This is truly a profound and disruptive change to the GPS industry.