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The development of modular open system architecture (MOSA) approaches for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems is a critical need. Most current PNT solutions are stovepipe systems which are designed for a specific set of sensors. A number of open architectures have gained traction recently in the DoD, including FACE, OMS, VICTORY, and many others. However, most of these architectures are focused on open data exchange between sensors and systems, but not on making a modular PNT sensor fusion solution. PNT Operating System (pntOS) seeks to fill that gap.

We present pntOS, a Government-owned open architecture for building PNT estimators that integrates seamlessly with other open architectures targeting related problems. The pntOS MOSA is designed to allow isolated development of plugins for navigation filter algorithms, sensor integration strategies, integrity approaches, and network buses. Critically, a developer who is a domain expert in a particular field (e.g. radar signal processing) can write a plugin incorporating their field of knowledge into pntOS in isolation, without needing to understand any other part of pntOS.

Once a set of plugins has been developed, any particular plugin can be easily swapped with another plugin, allowing for rapid trade-space analysis and reconfiguration of systems at minimal cost. The pntOS MOSA is designed to support integration into embedded real-time systems, post-processed analysis, and Monte-Carlo simulations. It is also designed to allow the development of both Government-owned and vendor proprietary closed-source plugins, facilitating different vendors to provide components of the overall system.

In addition to the pntOS MOSA itself, Government-owned reference implementation of pntOS plugins provide a baseline implementation of pntOS. These plugins are developed using the Viper Library, which is a from-scratch implementation of the AFIT Scorpion Software Suite and is designed for real-time embedded applications. The Viper plugins provide a baseline implementation of pntOS which can be replaced by more advanced plugins built by the community.

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pntOS Information Sheet

pntOS is an open source, government-owned
plugin architecture for building integrated PNT
sensor fusion applications for all operational
environments.....


pntOS vs Scorpion

Reference guide for pntOS vs  SCORPION feature comparison. 


Scorpion White Paper

Abstract—There is a great need to decrease our reliance on GPS by utilizing novel complementary navigation sensors...