John Betz

John BetzDr. John W. Betz is MITRE Fellow Emeritus at The MITRE Corporation. He has been with MITRE since 1989, and before that worked at The Analytical Sciences Corporation and RCA Corporation. He has also been adjunct professor at Northeastern University. Since 1997 he has primarily worked on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) with emphasis on satellite-based navigation and timing (satnav).

Dr. Betz was a member of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) from 2004 to 2012, serving as its chairman from 2008 to 2011, leading 52 accomplished engineers and scientists who advise the Air Force senior leadership. He has also served the Defense Science Board.

Dr. Betz led the team of scientists and engineers designing the modulation and acquisition of the M-code signal, the modernized GPS military signal. He developed the binary offset carrier (BOC) spreading modulation, and models for predicting its performance. He also contributed to the design of the GPS L1C civil signal, developing the Multiplexed BOC (MBOC) concept and the time-multiplexed BOC (TMBOC) spreading modulation used for L1C.

Dr. Betz was a lead technical contributor to the U.S. delegation in negotiations with the European Community concerning GPS and Galileo, leading to the 2004 Agreement between the U.S. and European Community. He also has been a key member of technical working groups between the U.S. and Europe, Japan, the Russian Federation, China, and India, leading to other nations' adoption of civil signals compatible and interoperable with GPS. His recent work focuses on making navigation and timing more robust and resilient for military and critical infrastructure applications.

Dr. Betz received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester in 1976, and a M.S. (1979) and Ph.D. (1984), both in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University. He is co-inventor on four patents or patent applications, and authored Engineering Satellite-Based Navigation and Timing: Global Navigation Satellite Systems, Signals, and Receivers (Wiley-IEEE Press, 2015), along with more than 60 other publications including book chapters, journal articles, and conference papers. He has received numerous national and international awards, including Fellow of the Institute of Navigation, Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, Life Fellow of the IEEE, and has been inducted into the GPS Hall of Fame.