A Long History of Excellence
TOA Systems, Inc. (TOA) is located
in Melbourne, Florida and was
founded in 2002 with the mission of developing, manufacturing, selling
and supporting lightning location and warning sensors and systems.
The senior staff members of TOA are
the very same individuals who in
1983 developed, patented and marketed the first time-of-arrival
technology Lightning Location Systems (LLS). TOA's founder and
CEO, Dr. Rodney B. Bent, as well as its Chief Engineer, Mr. Thomas A
Rodby, are recognized as the men who pioneered the development of the
Time-of-Arrival technology for use in lightning location
applications. Their equipment was the first to be installed
across the USA in order to establish a national lightning detection
network. The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) subsequently
awarded a contract to acquire the data from this network. This
lightning location system, know typically as LPATS, for Lightning
Position & Tracking System, was also installed in 16 countries
around the world and today forms the network which covers Australia.
TOA Systems, Inc. carries the
technological mission forward -
proprietary time-of-arrival techniques are being applied to the
development of the Advanced Lightning Positioning System (ALPS) next
generation precision lighting location system, a system which takes
fullest advantage of the current state-of-the-art in signal and data
processing and GPS timing techniques. We are focused on bringing
higher performance, lower cost LLS solutions to the market, and to
radically reducing Life Cycle Costs by utilizing Off-the-Shelf (OTS)
technologies wherever possible.
Integration of a planned series of
modular sensing and processing
enhancements will assure the ALPS performance will define the
state-of-the-art in LLS technology for the years to come.