2006 Fellow

Presented to: Dr. John W. Betz

Citation: For significant contributions to GNSS Modernization.

Dr. John W. Betz is a fellow of The MITRE Corporation, supporting the GPS Joint Program Office in various ways including systems engineering, signal design, and international negotiations. In 1997, he began work in support of early studies to design a modernized GPS military signal and was selected to lead the Modulation and Acquisition Design Team of scientists and engineers. The resulting signal, now called the M-code signal, is being implemented on Block IIR-M and later satellites. As part of this work, he developed the binary offset carrier modulation used for M-code signal, assessed its benefits in terms of performance and compatibility, and subsequently proposed its use for modernized civil signals. Dr. Betz also developed the punctured acquisition aid used for M-code signal to speed signal acquisition without requiring a separate acquisition signal. He was the catalyst and systems engineer for developing the -DirAc integrated circuit for direct acquisition of the M-code signal.

With a co-author, he developed a generalized theory for predicting code tracking accuracy of arbitrary spreading modulations in non-white Gaussian noise and a lower bound on code tracking accuracy in non-white Gaussian noise. He popularized the use of root-mean square bandwidth to quantify potential code tracking performance and also generalized existing predictions of code tracking accuracy for conventional modulations in white noise.

Dr. Betz has contributed to recent work in developing a simple analytical approach for evaluating intrasystem and intersystem radio frequency interference and popularized the application of spectral separation coefficients for this purpose. He has helped apply this approach in bilateral discussions between the United States and the European Community for GPS-Galileo work, and between the United States and Japan for GPS-QZSS work.

He has been a member of the U.S. delegation in technical negotiations and working groups leading to the U.S.-E.U. Agreement on GPS and Galileo signed in June 2004 and continues to support these activities.

More recently he has contributed to the design of the modernized L1 civil signal called L1C and, since 2004, has been a member of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

He was co-recipient of MITRE's President's Award for Outstanding Achievement for work on GPS modernization. He was co-recipient of The Institute of Navigation's Samuel M. Burka Award. In 2004, he received the MITRE President's Award for Outstanding Achievement and the U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award for work on the U.S./E.U. negotiations on GPS and Galileo.