Contract Engineering Origin

Our company began in 1979 as a contract engineering firm called Applied Electronic Consultants. At that time, our focus was on monitoring applications for the medical field. Our customers were primarily medical companies, and our engineering efforts were directed toward contract product development work. Medical monitoring requires a great deal of signal conditioning and processing, and these early product development efforts helped hone skills that would prove to be essential to our growth and future. Our company had only a handful of employees, and we operated out of a small office on the East side of Madison.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

During the late 1980’s our engineering development work moved beyond medical applications to include wireless devices and a new Loran technology. At this time, we began to apply newly emerging digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to our product development efforts. One of our company’s founders was a private pilot and Loran user, and it wasn’t long before we realized that we could develop a Loran technology well beyond products that were then available. Even at the beginning, it was clear that we could evolve our core Loran technology to provide tremendous performance advantages in aviation, marine, and terrestrial navigation applications and for other uses such as time and frequency generation.

The late 80's was also a time when we started to leverage our wireless and DSP expertise and to develop wireless products for our customer base. We performed engineering product design work, and then turned the requisite technical materials over to our contractual partner so they could manufacture the products. This period marked the start of Locus' unique knowledge base - the core competency that continues to be our primary source of growth today.

A New Name, a New Direction

In 1990, Dr. G. Linn Roth became president, and the company was renamed Locus, Incorporated. A "locus" is a set of points that satisfies certain requirements (e.g. a position), so Locus, Incorporated seemed an appropriate name for a company designing navigation, positioning, and wireless products. While we continued to concentrate on our DSP and wireless expertise, with a new name and a new leader came a new direction. We began by not only designing wireless products, but also by producing and supporting those products for our customers. At this time, Locus was partially owned by Plexus, Inc. (PLXS on the NASDAQ), a large contract electronics manufacturer, so we already had an appropriate partner identified. These Locus-designed products were marketed under our customers' names, and covered an incredibly diverse range of applications such as: differential GPS receivers/modulators; hand-held utility meter reading systems; radio frequency identification tags; a keyless entry system; and a unique spread spectrum radio system for freight trains.

In addition to gaining RF experience in frequencies spanning 100kHz to 2.4 GHz, Locus developed special, invaluable knowledge in the production and support of RF products during these programs. Today, there are thousands of the highest quality, most reliable wireless products in use that Locus designed, produced, and supports - but you might never know it, because our contract partners' names are on those products! As just one indication of Locus' quality, Motorola has recently rated Locus support as "Excellent," and provided us with 100% quality ratings.

A Bright Future For Loran

Today, Locus is focusing 100% of its resources on Loran technology, which is now called “eLoran.” Over the last several years, many nations have made important decisions to migrate away from a sole-means Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) approach to critical infrastructure operations. In turn, eLoran rapidly evolved into a modern system providing unprecedented capabilities as a GNSS backup.

Over the last several years, the DOT has continually maintained that the Loran decision was to be based on the outcome of the recent technical and economic evaluations, and if Loran met those criteria, it would be endorsed as part of the Nation's long-term radionavigation mix. The DOT has now acknowledged that eLoran meets the necessary requirements for inclusion in the US long-term radionavigation mix, and we look forward to a positive Loran policy statement in the near term.

The last several years have brought a tremendous interest in eLoran’s potential, and the realization of this potential will have major implications in two areas. First, there will be an expansion of eLoran systems internationally. More areas of the world will be covered by eLoran, and eLoran will be used for more applications in those areas (e.g. the use of precise timing signals from the new UK transmitter). Second, there will be an intense period of integrated eLoran/GNSS user equipment development, as evidenced by GPS/Loran integration work already underway for aviation, marine, and timing applications.

The growth of eLoran will provide users and nations with integrated systems offering unprecedented performance in multiple applications. More importantly, these integrated systems will result in safer users, stronger infrastructures, and more secure nations.