New global positioning and tracking technology found local support last week as a Windham-based company earned a grant to create a lab that will eventually be turned over to the University of Maine system.

CrossRate Technology LLC received more than $794,000 from the Maine Technology Asset Fund as part of $30 million recently awarded to 14 applicants across Maine.

According to company founder and president Zach Conover, the money will be used to create a lab for development and testing of position, navigation and timing devices. In four years the company plans to transfer the lab to the University of Maine in Orono.

Conover, 31, founded the company with his childhood friend, Mike Leathem, in 2004 and recently relocated their operations from Standish to Windham. The company, which employs six people full-time, is working to improve reliability of Global Positioning Systems. By combining GPS technology with advanced Loran technology, Conover said they can create redundancy and avoid gaps in service.

Loran technology is a land-based system that uses low frequency radio signals to determine location. GPS technology determines positioning through the use of high frequency signals to satellites. Loran technology does not exist everywhere in the world, but is not limited to the United States either.

While many companies have worked to improve accuracy of GPS technology over the last 20 years, Conover said CrossRate is one of only two companies working to combine GPS and Loran to provide location information as close to 100 percent of the time as possible. The company plans for a commercial release in the fall, Conover said.

“We make GPS better,” Conover said, adding that there is a broad market for the new technology, including homeland security and cell phone providers. The economic engine of the United States is tied into information about position and timing, Conover said.

Conover started the company after serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. The idea began as a school project while Conover was completing the executive masters in business administration program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. The business plan placed third in the university’s business plan competition.

The grant awards were the first of two rounds from the Maine Technology Asset Fund. In November 2007 voters approved $50 million in bond funds to help businesses and research organizations develop new technologies.

“This grant is critically important, not only to help CrossRate but to help the state of Maine,” Conover said.