Professor's Refinements Aid GPS's Global Search
Mohinder Grewal's Book Charts Recent Advancements
Mohinder Grewal
Hundreds of millions of people around the world depend on the Global Positioning System to fly aircraft, guide ships, help rescuers, track freight, make maps and find restaurants. And it's due largely to the refinements of Mohinder Grewal, a professor of electrical engineering at Cal State Fullerton, that GPS is as useful as it is today.
The key component that makes GPS effective is the Kalman Filter, and thanks to Grewal's key (and patented) refinements, GPS is now accurate to within inches, not yards, and can even be used to land an aircraft without the aid of a pilot. "You just can't have a 10-meter error when an airplane is landing," said Grewal, explaining his passion for his work.
The newest edition of his book "Kalman Filtering: Theory and Practice Using MATLAB" grew by 175 pages to incorporate more recent advances. MATLAB - short for Matrix Laboratory - is the computer language used in the Kalman Filter. It can perform highly intensive mathematical calculations at high speed.
Executives from Boeing Co. and Thales-Raytheon Systems - including one of Grewal's former students - will join university leaders to celebrate Grewal's accomplishments at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 11, in Room 101 of the Engineering Building.
Grewal's technological expertise is held in such high regard that he will be presenting tutorials for international experts Sept. 15 and 16 as part of the Institute of Navigation Global Navigation Satellite System 2008 TechnicalMeeting in Savannah, Ga. This is the second year he has presented at the annual event, which tracks international advancements in space-based positioning, navigation and timing systems.
Photo: Available online at www.fullerton.edu/newsphotos
Media Contacts:
Mohinder Grewal, Electrical Engineering, 657-278-3874 or mgrewal@fullerton.edu
Russ L. Hudson, Public Affairs, 657-278-4007 or rhudson@fullerton.edu
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