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Fabless Silicon Photonics for Advanced Solutions in Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (FAST-PNT)

The project

FAST-PNT defines and develops a fabless technology platform, based on silicon photonics, for advanced positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions for avionics, space systems and new small autonomous vehicles.

"Fabless" means the chips are designed in-house and their fabrication is entrusted to specialised external foundries, using standard processes available at commercial foundries: an approach that supports reproducibility and scalability.

Why it matters

Knowing position, navigation and timing with precision is the basis of any autonomous system. Today this function depends largely on satellite navigation systems (GNSS), whose signal can be degraded, jammed or temporarily unavailable, for example in orbit, underwater or in shielded areas. On-board instruments are therefore needed to help maintain continuity of navigation when the GNSS signal is absent, degraded, jammed or temporarily unavailable.

Overall objective

The overall objective is to design and validate, mainly in a laboratory environment, the architecture of a miniaturised GNSS/INS system that combines an inertial unit based on photonic chips and a time reference integrated in photonic technology. The project is not limited to building individual devices: it aims to define specifications, models, design flows and interfaces that make the platform reusable, repeatable and scalable across future product families. The ambition is to combine professional-grade performance with a size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) compatible with very small platforms.

Organisations involved