U.S. Patent for GPS-based Measurement of Roll Rate and Roll Angle of Spinning Platforms Issued to Mayflower Communications Company, Inc.

Dr. Upadhyay is founder and CEO of Mayflower Communications Company, Inc.  (Mayflower), a privately-held company, located in Burlington, MA.  Mayflower’s business focus is in Military GPS (Global Positioning System) user equipment and Military wireless communication radios.  The company is a recognized technology leader in radio frequency interference (RFI) protection of spread spectrum signals, such as GPS and 3G cellular wireless signals.

Dr. Upadhyay has over 30 years of experience in developing wireless technology, equipment and components.  He began his engineering career at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas where he was responsible for the development of the first hand held GPS receiver.  Subsequently Dr. Upadhyay worked at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA where he was a Group Leader.

Dr. Upadhyay founded Mayflower Communications in 1986 where he has provided technical and management leadership in advancing cutting edge technologies and developing wireless navigation and communications products.  Dr. Upadhyay’s technology leadership at Mayflower has resulted in the company being designated by the Air Force GPS Wing as a “Military SAASM Receiver Developer” – the only small business to receive the designation by the government.

In March 2000, Dr. Upadhyay founded Envoy Networks, Inc., a VC-funded 3G cellular wireless infrastructure company.  He served as the President and CEO of Envoy, which was acquired by Texas Instruments in February 2002.

Dr. Upadhyay has published over 20 technical articles and journal papers and has written a chapter in a book published by Academic Press (see attached biography). Dr. Upadhyay is co-inventor of four (4) patents awarded by the U.S. Patent & Trademark office.

What motivated you to start Mayflower Communications?

Beginning at Texas Instruments and then working at Draper Laboratory, I have spent most of my professional career developing and advancing GPS technology and products. We knew even then, about 25 years ago, that GPS is cool technology; even though it was first developed for the Department of Defense, it could have a tremendous commercial market. I guess our prediction was right.. Mayflower was founded, more than 20 years ago, to further develop and commercialize GPS technology.

What is main mission of this company?

The primary mission of the company is to advance wireless navigation and communication system technology for both the government and commercial market. We found our first technology niche in radio frequency interference protection of GPS and other wireless communication radios. This interference could be unintentional from another friendly radio or intentional from an adversary. In either case, the interference must be mitigated in order for the radio to work.

The company has come flying though the many ups and downs of the financial world. What is the secret to its success?

Part of Mayflower’s success is attributable to maintaining technical innovation over the years and the other part is a tribute to its conservative financial management philosophy. One basic tenet of our success is to keep the customer’s interest first , even if it costs more in short term.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who may be thinking of starting a company ? Is this the right or wrong time to do this?

There is no good or bad time for an entrepreneur. The only requirement to start a company is having a compelling business idea that one understands and believes in, and is uniquely suited to carry-out. The rest happens.

What areas in the field of communications would you consider as ripe for new companies?

Not counting the dot-com bubble, third generation(3G) cellular wireless communications was a very hot idea in early 2000 – probably ahead of its time.  Several companies in this market segment were started and some are still doing well.   3G is being deployed now and the market share is expected to grow worldwide.   Communication technologies that offer better capacity for a given spectrum, cognitive radios that sense the environment and configure accordingly, communication technologies that extend battery life are some examples of what may be coming.

You have been an active member of the Democractic Party. Why do you think it is important to take an active role in American Politics?

Whether one takes active interest in politics or not, we are all effected by the policies our government chooses to adopt. This is true when one is concerned about privacy, access to health care, or oversight and regulation of financial markets. The latest hot topic is congressional renewal of Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program which has been very successful and now other interested parties want a piece of the action. I like to think that taking active interest in American politics is part of being a good citizen and therefore, I encourage everyone to do so.

 What advice do you have for youngsters who may think of running for office?

Do it for good reason.  Running for office is like being an entrepreneur – one should have a compelling reason and belief to do so – make a difference in average citizen’s life.  It is very tough but it could also be very rewarding.

Thank you for you time

Thank you

Upon conclusion of the initial development phase of the Navy Small Antenna System (SAS) program, the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare System Center Pacific, (SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific) in San Diego announced on December 1, 2008 that it has selected Mayflower Communications Company, Inc., of Burlington, MA to continue the development of a high-performance GPS Anti-Jam solution for Rotary Wing Platforms through Phase 2, the critical design phase. Mayflower is proud to be one of the two contractors selected for Phase 2 of this program by the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy made this decision based on the performance of the SAS contractors in Phase 1 and available funding.

Mayflower’s SAS Anti-Jam solution builds upon GPS anti-jam technology developed over decades of dedicated research and development and experience in miniaturization of electronics. The Mayflower SAS solution will advance the state-of-the-art in GPS anti-jam protection technology for space constrained rotary wing platforms. The SAS Development Program is planned to run in four phases culminating in production-ready flight qualified hardware.

SAN DIEGO – The Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO).Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) has awarded six Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contracts to develop technologies and capabilities planned for transition into the JTRS tactical wireless communications and networking family of acquisition programs. Leveraging the agility and creativity of small businesses, JPEO JTRS is seeking to support the development of the U.S. industrial base in the emerging field of Software Defined Radios (SDRs), in addition to obtaining cost-effective, cutting-edge products to address Department of Defense requirements.

The objective of this Navy-funded program is to enable and promote efficient implementation of secure voice communications using the latest networked voice related commercial technologies.

This Phase II program consists of advanced research and engineering development that leads to the delivery of a modular software package that can be ported and demonstrated on JTRS platforms, thus enabling the potential deployment in tactical networks of a Secure Voice over IP (SVoIP) application. This software package referred to as the Secure Voice Core Technology (SVCT) incorporates the Variable Data Rate (VDR) voice encoder developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). In addition to the NRL VDR, SVCT package incorporates all the key enabling technologies required for the efficient implementation of the SVoIP-VDR application. These include in addition to the required IP-based call signaling protocols and voice frame processing two essential components, namely: (1) an adaptive VDR rate control scheme and (2) a protocol header compression scheme. In the Phase II we will develop the SVCT package software to run on an advanced handheld radio platform being developed at Mayflower Communications under an Army sponsored SBIR Phase II program known as “MIMO for Energy-Aware Distributed Mobile Wireless Systems (MEADoWS)”.

The successful completion of a modular Secure Voice Core Technology (SVCT) software development so that it can be ported and demonstrated on JTRS platforms and its integration in a SVoIP-VDR demonstration will provide the Navy the capability to prove the feasibility and significance of using a variable data rate voice encoder, the NRL VDR encoder, and other VoIP related technologies, in tactical IP-based networks. Absence of such technologies may render the approach to provide tactical secure VoIP totally unviable. This Navy “owned” and “controlled” solution for the SVoIP-VDR would be an important tool to demonstrate this capability to other military branches. With that, a potential common SVoIP approach could emerge across many military and government users. In addition to the obvious Government needs for secure voice applications, many aspects of the solution would have tremendous commercial impact in the emerging wireless VoIP services.