SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Luminous Cyber Corp. (https://luminouscyber.com/) today announced it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Air Force. The funding, provided through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s AFWERX program, will help Luminous Cyber roll out its secure geolocation solution, Location Information System (LIS), as a highly resilient, cost-effective and secure alternative to global positioning system (GPS)/global navigation satellite system (GNSS) targeting stringent aerospace requirements for assured position, navigation and timing (A-PNT).
“The lives of millions of travelers and hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce depend on the fragile GPS/GNSS infrastructure, so our geolocation solutions deliver Assured PNT in an entirely secure and robust way,” said Dr. Charles Barry, chief executive officer and founder, Luminous Cyber. “Essentially all modern assets are network connected, so our technology leverages existing network connections and mobile networks to fulfill our customers’ challenging accuracy requirements without being subject to typical GPS/GNSS failure modes. We make sure that people and things can get to where they need to be, accurately and on time. Our secure geolocation technology already is commercially deployed and ready today to adapt for exacting requirements such as found across the U.S. Air Force.”
With national security, commerce and varied ways of life increasingly dependent on GPS/GNSS, the reliability of the technology has come under increased scrutiny.1 In order to better account for outages, blocking, jamming or spoofing of GPS/GNSS caused by unintentional or intentional actors, space weather, geographical obstructions, etc., the U.S. Air Force has taken a global leadership role in exploring robust alternatives to GPS/GNSS. The AFWERX Phase 1 SBIR funding will enable Luminous Cyber to introduce federal agencies to its secure geolocation solutions for evaluation and trial.
Luminous Cyber’s LIS combines state-of-the-art “time difference of arrival” (TDOA) algorithms with ultra-advanced artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and network analytics to provide highly accurate position and time in GPS/GNSS-denied environments. Running on low-cost commercial, off-the-shelf servers and existing network interfaces, LIS is not susceptible to the failures to which GPS/GNSS is prone. Real-time dashboards show visibility of all assets in motion, with three-dimensional position, velocity and trajectory. Luminous Cyber’s technology is already integrated into a Fortune 500 enterprise software company’s data-protection platform to provide user location confirmation without the need for GPS.
About SBIR
The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs represent the nation’s largest source of early stage research and development funding for small businesses. The programs are administered by the SBA in collaboration with 11 federal agencies that collectively supported more than $4 billion a year in federal research and development funding. For more information on SBIR, visit https://www.sbir.gov.
About AFWERX
AFWERX is the Air Force's team of innovators who encourage and facilitate connections across industry, academia, and military to create transformative opportunities and foster a culture of innovation. Our mission is to solve problems and enhance the effectiveness of the service by enabling thoughtful, deliberate, ground-up innovation. We do this with an approach that combines startup urgency with the largest pool of motivated talent in the world to uncover opportunities to improve Air Force capabilities, connect and engage the right stakeholders, and facilitate outcomes. AFWERX was established in 2017 by the Secretary of the Air Force and reports to the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. For more information on AFWERX, visit https://www.afwerx.af.mil/.
About Luminous Cyber Corp.
Luminous Cyber delivers robust and resilient, commercially available geolocation solutions for cybersecurity and assured position, navigation and timing (A-PNT). “Unspoofable,” redundantly self-checkable and robust to denial of services, Luminous Cyber’s solutions are secure and resilient by design and leverage existing network connections and edge assets such as drones, 5G/Wi-Fi base stations, phones, personal digital assistants and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. Learn more at https://luminouscyber.com/.
