2010 Kepler Award

Presented to: Dr. Todd Walter

Citation: For his contributions to space based augmentation systems and the education of the next generation of navigation engineers

Dr. Walter has an extensive history of significant contributions to the field of satellite navigation. He has developed many of the safety analyses used by the wide area augmentation system (WAAS) including the design of the algorithm to bound errors caused by the ionosphere. He continues to serve as a leading system engineer for WAAS. Additionally, Dr. Walter is recognized for his role in early prototyping of WAAS and the creation of an end-to-end demonstration of the system in operation. This demonstration included validation of the user algorithm for WAAS. This effort coded the entire airborne algorithm including the message unpacking, differential correction application, and protection level calculation. This algorithm was later licensed to SiRF and today operated in more than 30 million non-aviation receivers. He is also recognized as a gifted educator and has co-advised some 20 PhD. Students who have all benefited from Dr. Walter's generosity and intellect.

More recently, Dr. Walter has turned his attention to the multi-frequency future of satellite navigation for aviation. He is central to this development at RTCA and Eurocae. He is a member of the International Interoperability Working Group coordinating with Europe, Japan, and India on the implementation of space based augmentation systems. In addition, he is one of the technical leaders of L5 planning for WAAS, and the GNSS Evolutionary Architecture Study that contemplates the best use of multiple-constellation navigation for aviation in the 2025 timeframe.