2008 Kershner Award

Presented to: Dr. A.J. Van Dierendonck

Citation: For his work on inertial and multi-sensor navigation and referencing systems.

Dr. Van Dierendonck's contributions to navigation are many and varied, and they span a period of over 40 years. He has made numerous and significant contributions to the development of GPS and its augmentations. He was the manager for the Phase I GPS Control Segment design, led the initial design of the GPS broadcast navigation message, and was a significant contributor to the development of the RTCM differential GPS correction message standard which is still widely used.

Since 1989, Dr. Van Dierendonck has been a self-employed GPS consultant with AJ Systems, and is the senior general partner with GPS Silicon Valley. He is the co-inventor of narrow correlator technology, which is now an industry standard in GPS receivers for multipath navigation. He also worked on the navigation payload for the Inmarsat-3 geostationary satellites, the first satellites used for SBASs such as WAAS and EGNOS. Dr. Van Dierendonck co-chaired a working group within RTCA that developed the signal structure and message formats used today by operational SBASs. He was a major contributor to the design of the GPS L5 signal, which will be broadcast from the GPS Block IIF and later satellites. He also led the design of SBAS L5 signals, which are currently broadcast by WAAS.

He is the author of numerous technical papers and two major textbooks. He is a two time ION Burka Award winner, and has also been the recipient of the ION's Kepler and Thurlow Awards. He is an ION and IEEE Fellow and is in the USAF's GPS Hall of Fame.

The PLANS Executive Committee is proud to recognize the outstanding achievements of Dr. A.J. Van Dierendonck.