NextNav announced a new award from the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) to conduct real-world field tests of its 3D PNT technologies to provide PNT information to meet critical infrastructure needs when GPS service is not available and/or degraded due environmental, unintentional, and/or intentional disruptions. As a part of this project, the U.S. DOT will test NextNav?s 3D PNT technology, a terrestrial solution that delivers PNT as a complement and backup to GPS. This award comes from the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and is a part of its Complementary PNT Action Plan.

According to the DOT, these awards will facilitate adoption into systems that depend on secure and reliable PNT services. This new award from the U.S. DOT comes as NextNav is petitioning the FCC to reconfigure the lower 900 MHz spectrum band (902-928 MHz) to optimize its use for a terrestrial complement and backup to GPS as well as additional spectrum for 5G broadband.