In ancient texts, 40 was a magic number. It meant a "lot" or "a long time." 40 years represented the time it took for a new generation to arise. A look back at 40 years of VLDB suggests that this applies to database researchers as well -- the young researchers of the early VLDBs are now the old folks of the database world, and a new generation is creating afresh. Over this period many plateaus of "Big Data" have challenged the database community and been conquered. But there is still no free lunch -- database research is really the science of trade-offs, many of which are no different today than 40 years ago. And of course the evolution of hardware technology continues to swing the trade-off pendulum while enabling new plateaus to be reached. Todd will take a look back at customer big data plateaus of the past. He will look at where we are today, then use his crystal ball and the lessons of the past to extrapolate the next several plateaus -- how they will be the same and how will they be different. Along the way we will have a little fun with some VLDB and Teradata history.

Multipath and jamming interference affects the accuracy, availability, and continuity of global navigation satellite systems. The U.S. Global Positioning System and the Russian Global'naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) are being joined by the European Galileo and the Chinese BeiDou. An increasing number of satellites in multiple constellations enable users to use high-mask-angle antennas (HMAAs) to mitigate interference signals coming from a low-elevation angle. This paper studies the optimal antenna mask angle that maximizes the suppression of interference but still maintains the performance of a single constellation with a low-mask-angle antenna. This paper first proves a novel lower bound on the expectation of dilution of precision (DOP) and derives closed-form formulas that relate the lower bound to the antenna mask angle and the number of satellites. Then, through extensive simulations, a variety of optimal mask angles are obtained with respect to different constellation settings, different DOP metrics, and different assumptions of range accuracy. The numerical results highly agree with our theory. Both of them show that two constellations can match the performance of one constellation with a 5°-14° higher mask, and three constellations can match the performance of one constellation with an 11°-23° higher mask, depending on the DOP metric and the range error model used. The numerical results also show that using HMAAs is more beneficial to users interested in positioning accuracy than to users interested in time transfer accuracy.

GPS technology is essential for future intelligent air transportation systems such as the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) of the United States. However, observed deep and frequent amplitude fading of GPS signals due to ionospheric scintillation can be a major concern in expanding GPS-guided aviation to the equatorial area where strong scintillation is expected. Current civil GPS airborne avionics track signals at a single frequency (L1 frequency) alone because it was the only civil signal available in the frequency band for aviation applications. The first GPS Block IIF satellite was launched in May 2010. This next-generation satellite transmits a new civil signal at the L5 frequency, which can be used for air transportation. This paper investigates a possible improvement in the availability of GPS-based aircraft landing guidance down to 200 ft above the runway, which is also known as Localizer Performance with Vertical Guidance (LPV) 200, under strong ionospheric scintillation when dual-frequency signals are available. Based on the availability study, this paper proposes and justifies a GPS aviation receiver performance standard mandating fast reacquisition after a very brief signal outage due to scintillation. In order to support a temporary single-frequency operation under a single-frequency loss due to scintillation, a new vertical protection level (VPL) equation is proposed and justified. With this new performance requirement and new VPL equation in place, 99% availability of LPV-200 would be attainable, rather than 50% at the current standards, even under the severe scintillation scenarios considered in this paper.

Satellite navigation has been used for aircraft navigation for more than 50 years. In the last ten years, the capabilities of satellite navigation have been expanded to more demanding phases of flight, in particular vertical guidance down to 200 ft, thanks to the implementation of augmentation systems. In this paper, we attempt to predict the state of satellite navigation in the next 15 years. We will start by reviewing the challenges that must be addressed by satellite navigation for aircraft guidance. Then, we will describe the current techniques that enable satellite navigation for aviation and the level of performance they achieve today. This will be followed by a description of the upcoming changes to satellite navigation, which include the launch of new constellations and the introduction of new civil signals. Despite these developments, satellite navigation is inherently vulnerable to radio-frequency interference so that backup navigation systems are still necessary. Nonetheless, these improvements will have a great impact on the availability and level of service achieved by satellite navigation, in particular enabling worldwide coverage of vertical guidance.

In the 2020 time frame, the Global Positioning System (GPS) will be fully modernized, and other satellite navigation systems will be operational. With an additional layer of fault detection, these systems will provide vertical guidance worldwide. This capability will be born of three important technologies. First and foremost, avionics will receive signals on two frequencies: L1/E1 and L5/E5a. This frequency diversity will do much to obviate the impact of ionospheric storms that troubles aviation use of GPS today. Secondly, a multiplicity of data broadcasts will be available to convey integrity information from the ground to the airborne users. These will include the navigation satellites themselves, geostationary satellites, and possibly terrestrial transmitters. However, the most important change will be the most subtle. The fault monitoring burden will be split between the aircraft and the supporting ground systems in a new way relative to the fault-detection techniques used in 2008. This new integrity allocation and the associated architectures are the subject of this paper.