Frank van Diggelen

Frank Stephen Tromp van Diggelen is a Distinguished Engineer at Google. His work concerns GPS/GNSS navigation. He helped to create some of the first GPS chips used in commercial smartphones. Van Diggelen is a fellow of the IEEE, Institute of Navigation and Royal Institute of Navigation.

Early life and education Van Diggelen was born in Cape Town to Tromp and Judith van Diggelen during the apartheid era. As a child, he became interested in engineering through making Meccano sets with his mother. He was conscripted to join the South African Navy at 18, working as a navigation officer. After another successful scholarship, he was previously the vice chair of the institute’s Satellite Division. Van Diggelen has previously held positions at the Navsys Corporation, Ashtech, Magellan Navigation and Global Locate. The course was free and available online as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). They met while at Cambridge University. Now living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the couple has two children. In his free time, van Diggelen is fond of sailing, skiing and hiking. 2015 Institute of Navigation Johannes Kepler Award "for his significant and fundamental contributions to the practical, affordable and enhanced use of satellite based navigation for consumer applications, especially for mobile handheld devices; contributions to GNSS interoperability; and dedication as a navigation educator." Made a fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation in 2018 "In recognition of his innovative contributions to the science, technology and availability of mass-market GNSS" 2021 Royal Institute of Navigation Harold Spencer Jones Medal Elevated to fellow of the IEEE in 2022 "for contributions to assisted global navigation satellite systems for consumer applications"

Publications

Van Diggelen, Frank Stephen Tromp: Hadamard weighting in robust control. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1992 Van Diggelen, Frank Stephen Tromp: A-GPS: Assisted GPS, GNSS, and SBAS. Artech House, 2009. Morton, Jade; Van Diggelen, Frank Stephen Tromp; Spilker, James; Parkinson, Bradford; Chih Lo, Sherman and Gao, Grace: Position, navigation, and timing technologies in the 21st century: integrated satellite navigation, sensor systems, and civil applications. Wiley, 2021.