2005 Fellow

Presented to: Anthony S. Abbott

Citation: For his significant lifetime contributions to the art and science of navigation and his leadership and technical innovations in the development of GPS user equipment and integrated systems.

Anthony S. Abbott is a principal engineer in the navigation division of The Aerospace Corporation, supporting the GPS Joint Program Office in advanced antijam technology research and development as well as advanced user equipment architecture. Throughout his four-decade career, Mr. Abbott has been at the cutting edge of advanced navigation technology to improve capability, accuracy and robustness. His contributions began in the 60's supporting the GN&C of the Apollo Program at North American Aviation. Mr. Abbott had the honor of training several of the original Apollo astronauts in on-orbit navigation operations.

Later at The Aerospace Corporation, among many contributions on several classified space programs, he was a contributor to the original System 621B, which later became GPS.

With his belief in the future of satellite navigation, he then accepted a position at Magnavox to run the navigation systems engineering organization for the Phase I GPS program. In this capacity, Mr. Abbott was in charge of all analytical aspects of the requirements, design, integration, laboratory and field test as well as the post test analysis of the GPS Phase I user equipment and other integrated navigation systems.

In the early 80's, Mr. Abbott joined Northrop where he made major contributions to the gravity compensation theory and implementation on the B-2 to achieve levels of inertial navigation accuracy that were previously unobtainable. Mr. Abbott also was the chief analyst for the B-2 Stellar-Inertial navigation subsystem, including the integration of GPS as a navigation aid and the total systems design of the B-2 GPS Aided Targeting System that was successfully used in several conflicts.

More recently, he rejoined Aerospace and among many other pursuits, has been one of the primary advocates of a new philosophy to integrate raw GPS measurements with raw IMU measurements to produce a blended solution with many advantages, among which is improved antijam performance. He has a patent for one approach to what he has called Ultra-Tight GPS / IMU Coupling.

Mr. Abbott has a BSEE from California Berkeley and an MSEE from USC in system science. He also holds five U.S. patents and one international patent, with two patents pending. In 1997 he was a co-recipient of the Engineers' Council Merit Award for his contributions to the B-2 GATS/GAM program.