A Matter of Stewardship
Located just outside Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, our office in Dayton, Ohio has a history that predates its origin by more than two decades.
Our Dayton site co-leads met at the Air Force Institute of Technology and earned international recognition as professors and leading researchers in defense-focused autonomy and navigation technology. Their expertise in complementary positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) and vision for fielding operational, integrated solutions through the modular open systems approach (MOSA) aligned perfectly with IS4S, leading to the establishment of our Dayton site.
What we do is a matter of stewardship: developing open software and systems for the benefit of the nation and the collective strength of the defense community.
Integrated Solutions
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Precision Time
Software Defined Timing
Timing Integrity & Fusion
Navigation
Advanced Complementary PNT
Sensor Fusion Algorithm Development
Radio Frequency (RF) Signal Processing
Rapid PNT Prototyping
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Stochastic Estimation & Modeling
Sensor Fusion Algorithm Development
Embedded Software Development
Assured Software (DO-178C/MIL-HDBK-516)
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Plugin-Based Software Architectures
PNT Sensor Fusion Modular Architectures
Standardized PNT Messaging
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Cloud Hosted Solutions (Azure, AWS, & Others)
On-Premises Hosted Solutions (Ad Hoc Solutions)
NIST 800-171 Compliant Environments
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Mission-Critical Software
Assured Software (DO-178C/MIL-HDBK-516)
Apply Modular Open Systems Approaches (MOSAs) to Safety Critical Environments
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Autonomy Modular Architectures
Feedback Control
Our Work
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PNT Modular Architectures
Our modular system architectures enable cooperative development of PNT sensor fusion systems with multiple organizations, allowing for lower cost of development and rapid modification of deployed systems. By standardizing the sensor interface, sensor fusion interface, and application programming interface (API) of the sensor fusion software itself, sensors and algorithms developed by different vendors can be rapidly integrated into a single system.
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![A man in an IS4S-branded polo working on a piece of circuitry-looking hardware.]()
Rapid PNT Prototyping
We have extensive experience in developing testbed platforms which allow for the maturation and validation of science and technology (S&T) concepts, with a focus on enabling rapid experimentation, tradespace analysis, and transitioning theoretical solutions into working prototypes at a high technology readiness level (TRL). Our testbeds are designed to prove out anything from pure software solutions to working hardware prototypes, with a particular focus on PNT systems with novel sensor suites.
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Advanced Complementary PNT
Our team understands that in order to ensure the resilience of a PNT solution it is often necessary to incorporate complementary PNT approaches into systems that utilize standard GPS/inertial navigation system (INS) solutions. We have extensive experience in a wide variety of approaches including vision navigation, magnetic field navigation, navigation using signals of opportunity, baronav, terrain aided navigation, and between-aircraft relative navigation.
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Assured Precision Time / Software Defined Timing
Robust and resilient precision time is increasingly important for both Department of Defense (DoD) and civil infrastructure. IS4S has developed a precision timing architecture called software defined timing which enables fusion of multiple clocks and time sources, as well as advanced integrity algorithms that are not possible with a classic GPS-disciplined oscillator system. This is an open architecture approach with swappable and customizable components.
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Mission-Critical Software
We are leading the development of mission-critical software that is designed to meet airworthiness requirements for operational systems. Using open systems approaches such as pntOS and ASPN, this software is designed to be adaptive to changing requirements and threats. This is achieved by breaking down the problem into isolated components that can be inserted or swapped out to effect changes with minimal impact on the rest of the software.
Our Products
Open. Modular. Pluggable.
pntOS is a publicly available open-source plugin architecture for building integrated PNT sensor fusion applications for all operational environments. Designed for cost, schedule, and performance efficiencies, pntOS features standard message formats and plugins that are individually swappable.
We developed pntOS as a fully open system architecture. To access and download pntOS, visit pntOS.com.
A Pure Python pntOS Implementation Designed for Rapid Prototyping
Cobra is a PNT sensor fusion solution, built as a Python implementation of the pntOS modular open system architecture (MOSA) approach.
Cobra is designed specifically to support the science and technology (S&T) community, focusing on simplicity of design to lower the barrier to entry and enable easier adoption of pntOS. To access and download Cobra, visit cobra-pnt.com.
Your Community-Developed PNT Standard
ASPN is a community-developed data standard that ensures consistent usage and interoperability of PNT estimators across different systems, sources, and users. Modular PNT system designs rely on ASPN for architectural flexibility which enables faster technology refresh and reduces development costs.
Collaborate with ASPN users across US government, industry, and academia. To access and download ASPN, visit ASPN.us.
Timing Fusion System
Timing Fusion System is a unique precision time integrity instrument that receives one or more sources of precision time as inputs and generates one or more precision timing outputs. This approach allows for true fusion of clock inputs and enables advanced timing integrity approaches to be implemented in a way that is not possible with a GPS-disciplined oscillator.
Contact our team for information about the software defined timing approach and purchasing a Timing Fusion System.
Dayton Leadership
John Raquet, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President
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Dr. John Raquet is an internationally recognized PNT expert and retired United States Air Force (USAF) officer who co-founded the IS4S Dayton site after serving 21 years as a faculty member at the Air Force Institute of Technology.
During his academic tenure, John founded the Autonomy & Navigation Technology (ANT) Center and supervised the research of 58 M.S. and 16 Ph.D. students. He has published over 200 navigation-related conference and journal papers and taught more than 80 short courses. John was a Fulbright Scholar at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland (2010), served as president of the Institute of Navigation (ION) from 2017-2019, is an ION fellow, and was recently awarded the prestigious Johannes Kepler Award.
John has been a pioneer in many complementary (non-GPS) PNT techniques, laying much of the early groundwork in vision-based navigation, navigation using signals of opportunity, magnetic field-based navigation, and baro-based map-matching navigation (baronav). He also has extensive experience in GPS error mitigation, GPS signal processing, sensor fusion, precision time processing, and integrity algorithms.
John oversees Dayton operations in his role as a site co-lead.
Kyle Kauffman, Ph.D.
Vice President
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Dr. Kyle Kauffman co-founded the IS4S Dayton site after serving 12 years in the government, commercial, and academic sectors. Kyle has two decades of experience in software development, half of which is dedicated to developing modular open architectures for embedded systems.
As a research assistant professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology, Kyle gained expertise in the development of PNT systems, open autonomy architectures, sensor exploitation and fusion algorithms, modular open software/hardware architecture designs, multi-vehicle LPI/LPD comm systems, radar signal processing approaches, and radar analog front-end designs. He also led the development of Scorpion, an open architecture for sensor fusion currently in use across the Department of Defense (DoD).
In the private sector, Kyle gained expertise on software development, numerical linear algebra analysis, network security, design patterns, computational efficiency optimization, massively parallel system design, and real-time systems. He is currently serving as the chief architect of pntOS, a modular open system architecture (MOSA) for complementary PNT.
Kyle oversees Dayton engineering in his role as a site co-lead.
Dayton Careers
Join us in our mission to solve complex problems of national importance in an environment where doing the right thing is more important than profit, and in a company fully owned and operated by ethical, motivated employees.
Check out our active job openings to apply!
Contact Us
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Dayton Site Address
4200 Col Glenn Hwy
Suite 700
Beavercreek, OH 45431
CAGE: 8FZS9