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Ronald R Hatch

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Ronald R. Hatch
Ronald R. Hatch
Born(1938-12-28)December 28, 1938
Freedom, Oklahoma, United States
DiedSeptember 2019
ResidenceTorrance, CA, United States
NationalityUSA
Alma materSeattle Pacific University
Known forHatch filter, Modified Lorentz Ether Theory, Relativity, GPS
Scientific career
FieldsSatellite navigation, GPS, Relativity
InstitutionsJohns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Boeing, Magnavox, NavCom Technology

Ronald Ray "Ron" Hatch (28 December 1938 – September 2019) was an American satellite-navigation engineer and relativity critic. Over a career of more than fifty years he became one of the principal algorithm designers of the Global Positioning System — the carrier-smoothing technique universally known as the Hatch filter bears his name — and he served as President of the Institute of Navigation, which also elected him a Fellow and gave him both its Kepler and Thurlow awards.

Hatch is unusual among the researchers documented on this wiki in that his dissent came not from outside the establishment but from the very centre of it. He argued, in his 1992 book Escape from Einstein and in a long series of conference papers, that the operational data of the GPS constellation — a system he helped build and knew as intimately as anyone alive — provides evidence against both special and general relativity rather than the confirmation it is routinely cited as offering. In their place he developed a Modified Lorentz Ether Theory (MLET), an ether gauge theory retaining absolute simultaneity while allowing clocks to run at different rates.

Biography

Early life and education

Hatch was born on 28 December 1938 in Freedom, Oklahoma. He worked as an electronic technician at Boeing from 1956 while studying, and took his B.S. in mathematics and physics from Seattle Pacific College (now Seattle Pacific University) in 1962. During 1961–62 he worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce at the U.S. Science Exhibit of the Seattle World's Fair.

Navigation career

Hatch joined the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in 1962, at the time the home of the Transit satellite navigation programme, moving to Boeing's Advanced Systems Group in 1965 and to the Magnavox Marine Systems Division in 1970, where he served as Principal Scientist. After a period as an independent GPS consultant from 1993, he joined Jim Litton, K. T. Woo and Jalal Alisobhani in 1994 to found what became NavCom Technology, Inc. NavCom was acquired by John Deere in 1999, and Hatch went on to serve as Deere's Director of Navigation Systems Engineering, applying high-precision GPS to precision agriculture. He later returned to private consulting.

He sat on the U.S. National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board for eight years.

Death

Hatch died unexpectedly in September 2019, several days after a medical procedure. Tributes from the navigation community described him as exceptionally humble and approachable; one colleague wrote that he "infected us with a love of GPS and his incurable smile and wit," and another that he was "one of the most humble and down to earth people you could ever hope to meet or work with."

Work in satellite navigation

The Hatch filter

In a 1982 paper, "The Synergism of GPS Code and Carrier Measurements," presented at the Third International Geodetic Symposium on Satellite Doppler Positioning at New Mexico State University, Hatch set out a method for using the precise but ambiguous carrier-phase observable to smooth the unambiguous but noisy code pseudorange. The technique — carrier-smoothed code, or phase-smoothed code — became a standard component of GNSS receivers worldwide and is universally called the Hatch filter. It remains an active subject of refinement in the literature, with published variants addressing its known susceptibility to divergence under ionospheric variation.

Other contributions

Hatch worked extensively on carrier-phase integer ambiguity resolution, including three-frequency and geometry-free techniques, on multipath mitigation, on real-time kinematic (RTK) and wide-area differential methods, and on the specifications for the Local Area Augmentation System. He was granted 26 patents as inventor or co-inventor, listed below, spanning magnetic compass calibration in the 1980s through to combined local-RTK and global carrier-phase positioning in 2010.

Criticism of relativity

The GPS argument

Hatch's central contention was that the Global Positioning System is routinely misrepresented as a confirmation of relativity. He argued that the way the constellation is actually operated — with a common coordinate time maintained across all satellites and a single Earth-centred inertial frame — reflects an absolute simultaneity that special relativity denies, and that several observed clock and signal behaviours fit a Lorentzian ether interpretation more naturally than an Einsteinian one. He set out the case in "Relativity and GPS," parts I and II, in Galilean Electrodynamics V6 N3 (1995), pp. 51–57 and V6 N4 (1995), pp. 73–78, and returned to it repeatedly in conference papers over the following fifteen years.

In 2002 he published, with Ruyong Wang, a direct response to Neil Ashby's widely cited "Relativity and the Global Positioning System," proposing a crucial experiment on the constancy of the speed of light using GPS. In 2010 he argued in "Using GPS to Refute the Equivalence Principle" that GPS observations bear directly against the equivalence principle itself.

Modified Lorentz Ether Theory

The positive alternative Hatch offered, developed in Escape from Einstein and refined in later papers, is a Modified Lorentz Ether Theory — an ether gauge theory. Its distinguishing features are a return to absolute simultaneity, with clocks nonetheless permitted to run at different rates; the replacement of the Lorentz transformations by gauge transformations; a unification of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces; an account of the source of inertia; and a physical mechanism said to underlie the equivalence principle. In later work he extended the framework into a revised theory of gravity, and applied it to the anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft, the flatness problem and the physics of black holes.

Collaborations on this wiki

Hatch worked with several other researchers documented here. He co-authored "Mass Variation in Relation to the GPS" (2000) with Tom Van Flandern, and joined Michael H Brill, Thomas E Phipps and Van Flandern on "Properties of Geodesics" (2008), which addressed the apparent conflict between GPS evidence and general relativity. His 2002 comment on Ashby was written with Ruyong Wang.

Catastrophism

Two decades before Escape from Einstein, Hatch co-authored The Long Day of Joshua and Six Other Catastrophes: A Unified Theory of Catastrophism (Pacific Meridian Publishing, Seattle, 1973) with Donald W. Patten and Loren C. Steinhauer. The book proposes that until the eighth century BC the orbits of Earth and Mars brought the two planets into repeated close approach, and seeks to account for a series of Old Testament catastrophe narratives — among them the long day of Joshua and the destruction of the Assyrian host — as consequences of these encounters.

Awards and professional offices

  • 2001–2002: President of the Institute of Navigation
  • 2000: Thomas L. Thurlow Award of the Institute of Navigation, for "outstanding contribution to the science of navigation"
  • 2000: Fellow of the Institute of Navigation
  • 1998–2000: Chair of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation
  • 1995: Who's Who in the World
  • 1994: Johannes Kepler Award of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation, for "sustained and significant contributions to satellite navigation"

Articles

  • "Civilian GPS: The Benefits of Three Frequencies," GPS Solutions, V3, N4, pp. 1-9 (Apr 2000) (with Jaewoo Jung, Per Enge and Boris Pervan).
  • "The Synergism of GPS Code and Carrier Measurements," Proceedings of the Third International Geodetic Symposium on Satellite Doppler Positioning, New Mexico State University, 8–12 February 1982, pp. 1213–1231. (The origin of the Hatch filter.)
  • "Relativity and GPS," parts I and II, Galilean Electrodynamics V6 N3 (1995), pp. 51–57; V6 N4 (1995), pp. 73–78.

Employment

  • 1996-Present: NavCom Technology, Inc/ purchased by Deere in 1999. Senior Research Engineer)
  • 1993-1995: GPS Consultant
  • 1970-1993: Magnavox Marine Systems Division
  • 1965-1970: Boeing Advanced Systems Group
  • 1962-1965: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
  • 1961-1962: U.S. Dept. of Commerce — U.S. Science Exhibit, Seattle World's Fair
  • 1956-1961: Boeing (Electronic Technician)

Education

  • 1957-1962: B.S. Math and Physics, Seattle Pacific College

Patents: (Inventor or Co-inventor of 26)

  • 7679555 - Mar 16 2010 - Navigation receiver and method for combined use of a standard RTK system and global carrier-phase differential positioning system
  • 7633437 - Dec 15 2009 - Method for using three GPS frequencies to resolve whole-cycle carrier-phase ambiguitie
  • 7511661 - Mar 31 2009 - Method for combined use of a local positioning system, a local RTK system, and a regional, wide-area or global carrier-phase positioning system
  • 7427950 - Sep 23 2008 - Method for increasing the reliability of position information when transitioning from a regional, wide-area, or global carrier-phase differential navigation (WADGPS) to a local real-time kinematic navigation system
  • 7248211 - Jul 24 2007 - Moving reference receiver for RTK navigation
  • 7212155 - May 01 2007 - GPS navigation using successive differences of carrier-phase measurements
  • 7119741 - Oct 10 2006 - Method for combined use of a local RTK system and a regional, wide-area, or global carrier-phase positioning system
  • 7117417 - Oct 03 2006 - Method for generating clock corrections for a wide-area or global differential GPS system
  • 7071870 - Jul 04 2006 - Method for combined use of local positioning system and a global positioning system
  • 6934632 - Aug 23 2005 - Method for using three GPS frequencies to resolve carrier-phase integer ambiguities
  • 6864836 - Mar 08 2005 - Method for receiver autonomous integrity monitoring and fault detection and elimination
  • 6753810 - Jun 22 2004 - Fast ambiguity resolution for real time kinematic survey and navigation
  • 6603803 - Aug 05 2003 - Global positioning system receiver for monitoring the satellite transmissions and for reducing the effects of multipath error on coded signals and carrier phase measurements
  • 6347113 - Feb 12 2002 - Global positioning system receiver for monitoring the satellite transmissions and for reducing the effects of multipath error
  • 6163567 - Dec 19 2000 - Method and apparatus for code synchronization in a global positioning system receiver
  • 6023489 - Feb 08 2000 - Method and apparatus for code synchronization in a global positioning system receiver
  • 6014610 - Jan 11 2000 - Navigation System and Method
  • 5926113 - Jul 20 1999 - Automatic determination of traffic signal preemption using differential GPS
  • 5764184 - Jun 09 1998 - Method and system for post-processing differential global positioning system satellite positional data
  • 5471217 - Nov 28 1995 - Method and apparatus for smoothing code measurements in a global positioning system receiver
  • 5177489 - Jan 05 1993 - Pseudolite-aided method for precision kinematic positioning
  • 5072227 - Dec 10 1991 - Method and apparatus for precision attitude determination
  • 4963889 - Oct 16 1990 - Method and apparatus for precision attitude determination and kinematic positioning
  • 4812991 - Mar 14 1989 - Method for precision dynamic differential positioning
  • 4797841 - Jan 10 1989 - Method and apparatus for automatic calibration of magnetic compass
  • 4611293 - Sep 09 1986 - Method and apparatus for automatic calibration of magnetic compass

Abstracts

Books

Media

External links

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