2003 Fellow

Presented to: Dr. Pratap Misra

Citation: For his significant contributions to the field of satellite navigation in the areas of GLONASS, clock-aiding, cycle ambiguity resolution and education.

Dr. Pratap Misra is one of the leading Western experts on the Russian satellite navigation system, GLONASS. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory where he is a senior staff member, Dr. Misra established a sophisticated laboratory to monitor the performance of GLONASS and assess its applicability to civil aviation navigation. His laboratory has been the primary civil source of GLONASS information in the United States. Dr. Misra is also recognized for his ground-breaking research on the combined use of GPS and GLONASS. He developed a technique for transforming the coordinates of GLONASS to those of GPS and combining the measurements of both systems for the purpose of receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM). Dr. Misra lends his GLONASS expertise to the RTCA and the Institute of Navigation, and to other professional groups with interests in GLONASS.

Dr. Misra's work on civil aviation also led to important work on clock-aiding in satellite navigation receivers for which he has been awarded two U.S. patents. Dr. Misra's work on GLONASS also led to an interest in fast cycle ambiguity resolution. His work also yielded new ambiguity resolution algorithms that enable single-epoch resolution using GPS alone. Dr. Misra's contributions to GPS education include co-authorship of a special issue of the IEEE proceedings published in January 1999 and co-authorship of The Global Positioning System: Signals, Measurements and Performance—a text book on GPS navigation directed to those with an undergraduate degree in the physical sciences or engineering.

A long-time member of the ION, he has served as chair of the GPS-GLONASS Interoperability Working Group (1996 to 1999), and as program chair and general chair of the ION National Technical Meetings in 2001 and 2002, respectively. He currently serves as secretary of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation. Dr. Misra received his Ph.D. in engineering sciences from the University of California at San Diego in 1973.