GPS-independent positioning and location assurance
iDvera's Advanced Location Intelligence System (ALIS) provides physics-native positioning when satellite signals fail, are jammed, or cannot be trusted. It runs on sensors already in your platforms and devices. No new beacons or transmitters required.
This recording compares a standard map that requires GPS with ALIS running on device sensors after satellite location is disabled.
Where ALIS operates
GPS-denied UAS navigation for autonomous platforms operating in contested or degraded airspace.
Drone missions → Defense & governmentAlternative PNT and location assurance for defense, federal, and public-safety operations in contested areas.
Government missions → TechnologyPhysics-based positioning from onboard sensors. No new local beacons or transmitters required.
How ALIS works →Tell us about your platform and operating environment. We will show you what the same method looks like on your hardware.
The threat
June 2026 reporting on research that traces repeated, continent-scale GPS interference events to space-based sources, expanding the threat beyond ground jammers.
Ars Technica · Jun 2026 Read → AviationEuropean aviation authorities published a joint plan for safe operations during GNSS interference, then convened operators in July 2026 to put the measures to work.
EASA / EUROCONTROL · Mar 2026 Read → Maritime & geopoliticsGPS spoofing against commercial shipping surged sharply as military operations intensified, with vessels receiving falsified position data across the Middle East.
WIRED · Mar 2026 Read → National securityAdversaries are weaponizing GPS vulnerabilities, turning a cornerstone of modern infrastructure into a strategic liability across defense and critical systems.
The Hill · Feb 2026 Read → DefenseIn a Taiwan scenario, China's layered PNT approach could outmatch America's GPS-dependent forces. Experts call for a "system-of-systems" resilience strategy.
Breaking Defense · Jan 2026 Read → Autonomous vehiclesA robotaxi drove onto Phoenix light-rail tracks, forcing a passenger to flee as trains approached. Its navigation failed to recognize new rail infrastructure.
Futurism · Jan 2026 Read → Critical infrastructureFrom airport disruptions to vulnerable power grids, GPS interference threatens vital networks - and experts warn the economic risks are vastly underestimated.
Washington Post · Dec 2025 Read → Defense & securityAs jamming and spoofing become routine in contested regions, U.S. defense leaders are turning to physics-based navigation as a resilient alternative to GPS.
WSJ · 2025 Read → AviationGPS jamming and spoofing now hit more than 1,500 flights a day, turning navigation interference into a routine safety and operations risk for airlines.
Honeywell Aerospace · Nov 2025 Read → AviationIn the first four months of 2025, Sweden logged nearly 123,000 GPS jamming or spoofing incidents - April alone disrupted more than a quarter of flights.
Foreign Policy · Oct 2025 Read → MaritimeIn just 11 days, more than 12,000 GPS spoofing incidents were recorded worldwide, with 97% of affected ships suddenly "jumping" onto land and into false ports.
Windward AI · Oct 2025 Read → Aviation & geopoliticsA U.N. aviation resolution condemned repeated satellite-navigation interference in the Baltic region after numerous GPS incidents affecting commercial aircraft.
Reuters · 2025 Read → Industry alertMajor aviation groups formally warned U.S. agencies that GPS interference is becoming a direct, systemic threat to aviation and maritime safety.
AeroTime · Sep 2025 Read → Global threatThousands of planes and ships hit by GPS jamming and spoofing, with experts warning of cascading impacts on infrastructure, logistics and communications.
WIRED · 2024 Read →Related research: GPS-denied UAS navigation, alternative PNT and RF trust, and location assurance for critical infrastructure.
"By integrating physics-based modeling with artificial intelligence, iDvera sets a new standard of trusted location intelligence that is resilient, verifiable, and secure. ATI is proud to support iDvera as they develop their technology and expand their impact across mission-critical applications."
Austin Technology Incubator
Foundation for Infrastructure Resiliency
The University of Texas System
How ALIS works
Most location systems assume GPS, Wi-Fi or cell towers are telling the truth. When those signals are jammed, spoofed, blocked or just wrong, everything built on top of them fails. ALIS starts from physics instead - using the physical world as its reference frame and fusing it with sensor data your platforms already produce.
ALIS treats the physical world as the starting point, not an afterthought. If a claimed location would require the laws of nature to be wrong, ALIS treats it as suspect - regardless of what GPS, Wi-Fi or the app says.
ALIS works with sensors that already exist in modern platforms and gets stronger as you add channels. It can run on a baseline sensor set alone, or pull in additional signals to refine position and stability - one engine, plug-in channels.
When the sensor evidence is strong enough, ALIS returns a position and an uncertainty estimate. When the evidence is weak, outdated, or conflicting, it flags the limit and withholds a position it cannot support.
Comparison
Where each approach gets its position, and what it depends on.
| What matters | GPS / GNSS | Wi-Fi positioning | Cellular / 5G positioning | ALIS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Position reference | Satellite radio signals. | Access-point ranging or mapped radio observations. | Measurements from radio-network infrastructure. | Onboard physical measurements and stored geophysical reference data. |
| Ongoing GNSS reception | Required for satellite-based updates. | Not required for Wi-Fi-only positioning. | Not required for network-only positioning. | Not used in the navigation solution after initialization. |
| Local positioning infrastructure | No local beacons for standalone GNSS; augmentation may add dependencies. | Requires suitable access points and reference information. | Requires suitable network coverage and deployment. | No beacons or network infrastructure. Uses onboard sensors and stored reference data. |
| Indoor / below-ground use | Signal blockage can limit or prevent reception. | Possible where supported infrastructure is available. | Depends on coverage, network configuration and method. | Demonstrated indoors, including parking garages and basements. No installed infrastructure. |
| GNSS interference | Outcome depends on receiver protections and interference conditions. | Does not use satellite ranging in a Wi-Fi-only solution. | Does not use satellite ranging in a network-only solution. | After initialization, GNSS is not in the navigation solution, so jamming or spoofing has no satellite signal in it to corrupt. |
| Uncertainty and acceptance | Receiver and augmentation dependent. | Implementation dependent. | Implementation dependent. | Reports uncertainty with every position and withholds acceptance when evidence is weak. |
| Performance claims | Report for the tested receiver and environment. | Report for the tested device and deployment. | Report for the tested network and configuration. | Results reported against a synchronized reference and shared under NDA. |
Qualitative comparison of representative configurations. ALIS provides position, not a timing service.
We will walk your team through the physics-native approach, integration paths, and what a pilot looks like on your platform.
Drones and UAS
ALIS gives unmanned aircraft a second navigation source. It estimates position from onboard sensors and stored geophysical references, reports how far that position can be trusted, and hands both to the autopilot you already fly.
Operating modes
Add ALIS as an independent second source alongside GNSS, or make it the source the aircraft actually flies on.
ALIS runs alongside GNSS as an independent second navigation source. GNSS is kept out of the ALIS solution, so a GNSS problem does not carry into ALIS, and you can see when the two disagree.
In flight, the autopilot hands navigation over to ALIS. The aircraft keeps flying its route on ALIS position while Cube / ArduPilot continues to handle stabilization and motor control.
Integration
ALIS is a navigation input, not a replacement autopilot. There is no new flight stack to adopt and no beacons to install.
ALIS delivers position and uncertainty through the external-navigation path ArduPilot already supports.
Hand over from GNSS to ALIS and back during flight, commanded by the pilot or triggered automatically.
When the supporting evidence is thin, ALIS says so instead of reporting a confident wrong position.
Magnetic, inertial and pressure measurements matched against geophysical reference data carried on the aircraft.
ArduPilot references: external navigation and source transitions.
Evaluation
Every ALIS evaluation is scored against an independent reference on the six measures that decide whether a navigation source can be trusted in flight. Full results are available under NDA.
Measured difference from the evaluation reference, with its full distribution.
The confidence region ALIS reports, and how often the true position falls inside it.
How often an accepted position is available across the flight.
Uninterrupted accepted intervals and the longest continuous run.
How closely the aircraft holds its commanded route on ALIS navigation.
The verified interval flown with no GNSS aiding in the solution.
Next step
We walk your team through the approach, integration path and results to date.
Airframe, sensors, operating area and the acceptance requirements that matter to your mission.
A joint evaluation on your platform, with the data reviewed side by side.
Bring your platform and operating conditions. We will share results under NDA and plan an evaluation that fits your mission.
Mission areas
iDvera goes deep in the markets where a wrong position carries real consequences. Drones, defense and government lead our focus today. The same engine is also being prepared for infrastructure, logistics, identity and financial operations.
Unmanned systems are only as reliable as their position source - and GPS is the first thing an adversary takes away. ALIS gives UAS, UGV and autonomous platforms a physics-native position derived from onboard sensors and the physical environment, so missions continue when satellite navigation is jammed, spoofed or simply unavailable.
Defense, federal and public-safety teams operate indoors, underground, in urban canyons and in contested areas where GPS is unreliable, denied or actively hostile. ALIS provides a position and a confidence score that hold up in GPS-denied environments - supporting command-and-control, accountability, mission planning and after-action review.
Energy grids, water systems and industrial facilities increasingly face GPS jamming, spoofing and outages where safety and uptime matter most. ALIS provides GPS-independent positioning for crews and assets, so OT teams can see where work is really happening and cross-check it against the physical world.
Also serving
The same physics-native position assurance extends to industries where fraud, safety and compliance depend on knowing where things really are.
Location-backed carrier verification, double-broker detection and audit-ready chain-of-custody for high-value freight.
A sensor-derived location factor for zero-trust access, workforce presence verification and anomaly detection.
Physics-native location signals for KYC/KYB, AML workflows and high-value transaction attestation.
Fine-grained indoor positioning for inventory, AGVs and personnel safety - using the environment itself.
If any of this matches what you're seeing on the ground, we should talk.
Research
Papers and briefs from the iDvera team on location assurance for defense, autonomy, identity and infrastructure.
Why navigation and authentication must become physics-anchored - and how ALIS addresses the integrity problem RF-first architectures cannot solve.
For defense, autonomy and critical infrastructure evaluators Read the paper →
Why coordinate truth should not be an act of faith - the quiet failure mode in high-consequence systems.
For defense and critical infrastructure leadersModern systems fail because they act on positions that should not have been trusted. ALIS treats location as a claim, not a fact.
The foundational paper on physics-anchored location trustWhy the next wave of digital trust will rely on physical signatures, not just satellite signals and IP addresses.
For security, logistics and infrastructure stakeholdersPatterns for incorporating location assurance alongside identity, device health and behavior.
For CISOs and identity architectsHow location assurance supports emergency response and continuity planning.
For infrastructure partnersTreating physics-native context as a first-class feature in AI policy engines.
For AI governance architectsPress
The SBDC's Quarter 2 Legislative Update spotlights Greg Steinberg, founder of iDvera and inventor of ALIS. Driven by the belief that trusted positioning shouldn't depend on signals that can be jammed, spoofed or lost, Greg began developing ALIS full-time in 2022 - and the newsletter highlights a major milestone: ALIS determining position on a standard iPhone with GPS, Wi-Fi, cellular and Location Services completely disabled at the system level.
Quarter 2 Legislative Update
Omaha's KMTV features co-founder Stephen Kaniewski in a segment on Nebraska's growing startup ecosystem. Stephen explains how ALIS determines location with "no cell towers, no satellites, no wifi" - and says iDvera will hire Nebraskans to work in Nebraska, giving graduates a reason to stay.
By Mary Nelson · KMTV
Watch the segment →
After five years leading Valmont Industries, Stephen Kaniewski chose a startup tackling one of the hardest problems in modern infrastructure - knowing where things actually are. He joined iDvera as a co-founder to bring Fortune 500 operational depth to physics-native location assurance.
By Lev Gringauz · Silicon Prairie News
Read the story →Company
iDvera exists because our founder watched a "trusted" location story fall apart. While consulting for a SaaS company, he was asked to quietly validate two new hires who were supposed to be based in Chicago. Their schedules looked identical, they were often offline at odd hours - and every digital signal (VPN, device checks, IP-based location) still said "Chicago."
One day both accounts briefly came online without the usual VPN, revealing they weren't in Chicago, they weren't within CONUS as required, and they weren't even two people - it was one individual posing as two employees from overseas.
That experience raised a simple question existing tools couldn't answer reliably: "How do you know someone is where they say they are?" iDvera was started to answer it. Greg, the founder and inventor of ALIS, spent several years developing the physics-native technology behind the system. As it matured, his father Dr. Samuel Steinberg joined as co-founder, and in 2025 Stephen Kaniewski, former CEO of Valmont Industries, joined as co-founder - bringing deep experience in industrial infrastructure, global operations and customer relationships.
Today the team is evolving ALIS into both a verification layer and a positioning capability that operates even when GPS and common wireless signals are missing, jammed or untrustworthy - so "where" can stand as a signal organizations can actually trust.
Covering GPS-independent positioning, physics-native location assurance and related methods underpinning the ALIS system.
Our founder serves as a Department of Defense Subject Matter Expert for Position, Navigation, and Timing - direct insight into defense-grade location assurance requirements.
Affiliated with the Austin Technology Incubator and the Foundation for Infrastructure Resiliency.
For investors and partners
ALIS is built on patented methods for GPS-independent positioning and location assurance. Defense and critical infrastructure lead the focus. The same engine extends to logistics, identity, and financial operations where location is a trust signal. Request a briefing.
Contact
Tell us about your platform and operating environment and we'll show you how ALIS applies - from GPS-denied drone navigation to position assurance for government operations.
Where trusted, physics-native location adds the most value to your mission.
How ALIS plugs into your existing platforms and sensors.
Integration options, deployment models and how we can work together.
iDvera
