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Walter R. Fried Memorial Award for Best Paper at PLANS

This newly created award will be presented to the lead author of the best paper. The Walter Fried Award for the Best Paper is comprised of a personalized plaque for the lead author and a financial honorarium of $750 to that same person. The selection criteria includes:  technical content, innovation, importance and timeliness of the subject matter; and conciseness, clarity and completeness of the written material.  The paper must appear in the proceedings and be presented by the lead author who must be present to receive the award at the PLANS Awards Luncheon.  

Walter R. Fried

Walter Fried was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 and first resided in Cincinnati, Ohio. During World War II, he served in the U. S. Army in Europe as a translator and interpreter. After the war, Walter earned his engineering degrees at the University of Cincinnati and Ohio State University.

Walter's first professional job was at Wright Field in the then new field of airborne radar.  His next job was at the General Precision Company in New Jersey where he contributed to the development of multi-beam Doppler radar for navigation system applications. This was followed by an assignment as Chief Scientist for the F-111 avionics at the North American Autonetics Division in California where he was also involved with the beginnings of the GPS program. He then became the Technical Director at Hughes Aircraft for the Relative Navigation portion of the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS).  

In recognition of his professional engineering accomplishments, Walter was elected to be a Fellow in the IEEE in 1981 "for contributions and technical leadership in the development of Doppler radar and relative navigation systems." 

During his distinguished career, Walter generously volunteered his time to the IEEE Aerospace Electronics Systems Society (AESS) by serving on the Board of Governors for many years and coordinating the activities of the AESS Technical Panels and the Distinguished Lecturers Program of which he was also a participant. He was the AESS representative on the PLANS Executive Committee since the first conference in 1976 until his death at 75 in 1998.

Walter lectured widely throughout the world on navigation topics and was also well known internationally, for his work as a co-editor of both the 1st and 2nd editions of the important reference book, Avionics Navigation Systems.
2006 Recipient

The recipient of the 2006 Walter Fried Memorial Award for Best Paper is F. Goldenberg of the Goodrich Corporation for the paper "Geomagnetic Navigation Beyond the Magnetic Compass".

Abstract: Aerospace navigation by integration of Inertial Systems with reference to the maps of Geophysical Fields of the Earth (GFE) is a promising area which can be highly advanced utilizing tremendous industry achievements in embedded micro-processing, including memory devices capability and miniaturization. GFEs are globally observable, most of them are already well mapped in geographical system coordinates. GFEs are not vulnerable, can´t be destroyed or changed in the foreseeable future, don´t require special service, and therefore, present a solid source of navigation information. The Earth Magnetic Field (EMF) is just one GFE which comprehensively, globally mapped not only for full intensity but for all five of its components. EMF maps, models and charts, which are currently used in a wide range of commercial and military applications, mostly for directional information, are periodically updated and can be used for positioning applications.

The objective of this paper is to present the methods and apparatus suitable for navigation by GFE, as well as research on the readiness of existing mapped information of EMF for high accuracy geomagnetic navigation. This paper presents a brief review of geophysical navigation efforts in the last 50 years. Accuracy of existing EMF maps for zero-level land and equatorials is analyzed. Existing methods of EMF component mapping for different altitudes are reviewed and added by analysis of expected mapping errors. The geomagnetic methods for position and velocity determination are discussed. Dependence of EMF parameters on altitude and mapping for different altitude, including the possibility of real-time correction for daily variation, are addressed and discussed in detail.

This paper includes a description of a Geomagnetic Navigation system that utilizes the correlation principle of actual position determination by finding the best fit between geomagnetic profile measured during the flight and the corresponding profile stored in the on-board map. A Geomagnetic Navigation System, consisting of an Inertial Block, a Precision Fluxgate Magnetometer, a Bank of Geomagnetic Data and an Integrated Navigation Processor with a built-in, three-dimensional correlator is described. The paper presents a precision fluxgate magnetometer, which can be employed for EMF on-board measurement. The problems of precision measurement of EMF on an aircraft are discussed along with recommendations to make such measurement possible in the aircraft´s real environment. Therefore, the content of the current paper can be useful for the development of future navigation systems that reference the maps of EMF, other Geophysical Fields of the Earth or other planets.
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