Author: Alan Cameron

In GNSS Race, Could Galileo Be Surging into Second?

Editor’s Note: Alan Cameron is editor-in-chief and publisher of GPS World magazine. He also writes the monthly GNSS Design & Test newsletter. The views expressed are his own.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” This insight comes from the 20th-century American sage Yogi Berra. Yet predictions — hedged guesses, if you will — form the basis of nearly all new business ventures and decisions in ongoing business activities.

For surveyors in the year 2015, one of the key predictions — or guesses — to make concerns the next GNSS to come predictably and reliably online, to augment GPS where GPS alone does not fully function: under canopy, in dense urban environments, and so on. More satellites visible at more varied angles in the sky can help surmount these obstructions.

Staking the future of one’s business, in the form of new equipment acquisition, in such an environment is a bit like betting on a long-distance horse race. First one steed surges to the head of the pack, then it falls back as another charges forward. We have seen this pattern repeatedly in the growth of GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou.

Some may say that GLONASS, the Russian system, has already won the race (the first heat, at least) and currently fills the role of GPS partner in precision surveying. It does, to some extent, but its future viability is cloudy — and its past record is patchy, to say the least. It rose to full operational capability around the turn of the century, then fell very, very low in numbers as short-lived satellites expired and were not replaced at sufficient rate. Recently, GLONASS has mounted a resurgence, but that has been marred by repeated launch failures and a disturbing anomaly. It cannot be counted or confirmed a winner, yet.

I spoke yesterday with an expert and veteran professional land surveyor who expressed the opinion that the manner in which surveying is conducted will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 25. Keep in mind that the last 25 years saw enormous changes themselves, as GPS significantly transformed, upgraded and made vastly more efficient most surveying activities.

Betting on a horse race in such a rapidly changing environment becomes even more chancy.

Here’s a tip from a racetrack tout: don’t count Galileo out.

GLONASS we recounted briefly above. BeiDou recently achieved a regional operations status over Eastern Asia, but further developments there have been puzzlingly quiet for some time.

The European system has come on with agonizing slowness since the year 2000, suffering many delays and most recently what could have been a debilitating failed dual launch. But the combined strength of the European Union continues to push determinedly forward, and the program has an ambitious schedule with an eye firmly fixed on operability. And some recent research results tend — perhaps — to substantiate the claim, long pooh-poohed by those in the United States, at least, that Galileo will eventually prove “better” than GPS. Details further on.

What might a prudent yet pragmatic, forward-looking surveying firm do in this uncertain environment, where the only certainty is change, and likely to be rapid change at that? Here’s another racetrack tip: don’t make any big bets just yet, but study the field closely and continuously. In particular, watch Galileo’s performance.

A further item to be checked in Galileo’s favor: its system operators have long been in close talks with the U.S. government on many matters involving co-operation and interoperability. As recounted in a recent story concerning the Federal Communications Commission’s surprising role in this matter, the Europeans are filling out the proper forms for full accreditation within the United States. This could turn out to be important in business operations.

Back to studying the field closely: also study leading manufacturers’ offerings in this regard. They also are making bets on the future; quite possibly they have better information, and/or have done more extensive analysis of what information is available, paired with in-depth, highly technical research and development of signal characteristics and how signals from disparate GNSS can be most productively combined.

A quick scan of GPS World’s 2015 GNSS Receiver Survey shows the following key manufacturers (among others) have GPS receivers now commercially available that are Galileo-ready: Altus Positioning Systems, Ashtech, Geneq, iFEN, JAVAD GNSS, Leica Geosystems, NovAtel, NVS Technologies, Septentrio, Sprecta Precision, Spectrum, Topcon, and Trimble.

Better than GPS???

Supporters of Galileo have long raised hackles west of the Atlantic with claims that Galileo would provide better accuracy than GPS. Not! cried the faithful, and especially not when the modernized and improved, strengthened, more accurate GPS III signals are coming along just as fast if not faster than Galileo. Recently the pace of GPS III has come into question; can the Gold Standard and clear leader for 25+ years really be falling back into the pack?

σ(pr_gnd) versus elevation for Galileo E1 (dotted lines) and GPS L1 (solid lines for different smoothing constants: red (10s), green (30s), cyan (60s), purple (100s).

Let’s disregard that question for the time being, and look at some recent research, to be reported in full in the cover story of GPS World magazine’s April issue, out soon. In it, the authors (two German and one American researcher) report:

“Analysis of new Galileo signals at an experimental ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) compares noise and multipath in their performance to GPS L1 and L5. Raw noise and multipath level of the Galileo signals is shown to be smaller than those of GPS. Even after smoothing, Galileo signals perform somewhat better than GPS and are less sensitive to the smoothing time constant.”

This is all pretty arcane and a bit removed from current field of operations, as far as surveyors are concerned. But it does signal something, and it provides food for thought.

The researchers obtained their results using four JAVAD Delta receivers, all connected to Leica AR 25 choke ring antennas.

March 4, 2015
Obstacles in the Orbit Path of GPS III

The Lockheed Martin GPS III Non-Flight Satellite Testbed (GNST).

A Lockheed Martin vice president has stated that the first GPS III satellite will likely launch in 2017, not 2016 as had been projected in the most recent update.

The company is readying the first satellite for launch availability by the end of 2015, for launch as early as the end of this year, but Space News reports that Mark Valerio, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s military space business, stated in a Feb. 18 news briefing that he expects the Air Force will schedule its launch for early 2017.

The GPS III generation of modernized satellites — with new signals, added signal strength, and resistance to interference and jamming — was originally projected to begin orbiting in 2014. Technical difficulties have delayed the program. The principal issues, those with the payload, have now been resolved, according to Valerio.

Valerio expects a firmer GPS III launch announcement for 2017 in March. He expected the final launch date “will depend on the health of the existing constellation, the availability of launch slots and synchronization with the ground system.” Ultimately, the Air Force always makes the final decision on the launch date.

Lockheed Martin is contracted to build eight GPS III satellites.

Late last year, a spokesman for the Space and Missile Systems Center said that “The first GPS III launch is tentatively considered for the first half of FY17, based on booster availability and Air Force launch priorities.”

The Air Force has put out feelers for other contractors to finish out the full generation of GPS III satellites. Lockheed Martin is building eight, with an option for four more, totalling 12; a complete constellation of III-generation satellites would require 24. Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems and Northrop Grumman Aerospace are reportedly interested.

“The best thing I can do is keep marching along the plan we have,” Valerio said. “We’re certainly not afraid of the competition.” Lockheed Martin has submitted cost-cutting proposals for the current GPS III satellite design, he added.

Ground Control

The corresponding new ground system for GPS III, the Operational Control Segment (OCX), has also fallen behind schedule. Just this month, the Air Force announced that Lockheed Martin may develop an interim control capability, a set of changes implemented upon the current control segment, the Architecture Evolution Plan (AEP), as a backup.

Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation, recently stated that OCX delays have pushed back GPS III operational testing “until after at least six, and as many as eight,” satellites have been launched into orbit. “This introduces significant risk that effectiveness and suitability deficiencies in GPS III satellites will not be discovered until it is too late to prevent their introduction to the operational constellation.”

Budget Blues

Don Jewell, GPS World’s contributing editor for defense, has written at length about the GPS III and OCX situations in his February newsletter column, “USAF FY16 Budget Plus $10B More, Please!”. We condensed some of his remarks, particular to the budget battle on Capitol Hill, for the Out in Front column of the March issue of the magazine, due out soon. Here is a further digest of those comments.

The 2016 President’s Budget, submitted in February, contains an Air Force requested a budget of $122.2 billion. This may be too little, too late.

On the satellite side of the house, GPS III has problems centering on development and delivery issues with a subcontractor. In this case, however, the whole satellite program is not failing, just a component, albeit an important one: the Mission Data Unit (MDU).

For GPS III+, the Air Force plans for a two-phased competition process: a Production Readiness competition for up to three firm-fixed price contracts to mature competitors’ production designs for a competition in a full and open competition for up to 22 GPS III Production SVs [satellite vehicles] with an expected award in FY17/18.

This sounds great if you need an entirely new GPS III system, which consists of, at a minimum, a new payload, satellite, launcher and ground C2 system. In fact, the government only needs an MDU. Failure to produce the MDU on time has delayed GPS III by 18 months to date.

More troubling are the government proposals to entertain other bids to finish the second half of the GPS III constellation. Such a competition or re-bid will take at least three years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars — and Lockheed Martin may well win again in the end

A significant added cost to the GPS budget concerns the need for a new ground C2 system if the total new systems approach is taken. If preliminary elements of the GPS space segment are developed without cross-checking the impact to the GPS control segment, technical, operational, budgetary and schedule impacts will be significant.

The already perturbed OCX budget likely has not considered the integration costs of a newly developed, yet-to-be-procured GPS III+ SV. OCX today is geared for the GPS III already contracted for, and it is failing to meet that challenge.

Budget constraints are tight and getting tighter, mandating the Air Force “do more with less” in every context. For GPS III SVs, this should — but by no means necessarily does — indicate developing an alternate MDU rather than buying a new block of GPS SVs.

February 25, 2015
2, 4, 6, 8 — Who Do We Appreciate?
Galileo, that’s who! For dogged determination and persistent pushing-forwardness in the face of adversity, obstacles, and the occasional technical difficulty. That there may be occasional confusion, as well, or mixed messages as to just what the future may bring, is certainly understandable. In fact, it is to be expected, given the circumstances.

Let’s review the math.

Two

Two for the two launch vehicles that Galileo may use in the near future, Soyuz Fregat and Ariane 5. The Soyuz rocket can lift two satellites of the Galileo punching weight. The Ariane 5 rocket can carry four into space.

Soyuz Fregat has a losing record so far with Galileo, being responsible for the August 2014 loosening of the first two full-operational capability (FOC) satellites into the dangerous Van Allen Belt. The first of these satellites has been successfully repositioned by the European Space Agency (ESA) into a mostly-but-not-totally useable orbit, and the second is currently en route to a similar spot.

We do not wish to say we told you so, but we will. Back on March 26, 2014, we wrote on these virtual pages, “ESA’s year-end plan calls for two more dual-satellite launches in October and December on Russian Soyuz rockets — new partners to the Galileo dance, bringing perhaps new technical connectivity issues.”

“Rockets are tricky,” said Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, after his Falcon 9 Reusable rocket exploded over Texas at roughly the same time that Soyuz Fregat mis-delivered two Galileo satellites into wrong orbits.

Musk meant tricky in actual operation, but we may also add, tricky in scheduling, in getting a cargo aboard a spacebound vehicle. Arianespace’s calendar is particularly filled with telecomm satellites impatient to be put aloft, with Ariane 5 being the preferred launcher of many. Soyuz availability, understandably, is somewhat more open.

Four

Four for the total of four Galileo satellites now orbiting and broadcasting useable signals at all times for all users. These four come from the in-orbit validation (IOV) generation.

The two added FOC satellites, no longer in a bad orbit, now in a sort-of-pretty-good orbit, should be useable at some times, for some purposes, by some people. Peter Steigenberger and André Hauschild, researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) / German Space Operations Center, wrote in this magazine in January that:

“Despite the orbit injection error, the new Galileo FOC satellite has now been successfully activated and added to the Galileo constellation. Unfortunately, the current orbit is incompatible with the standard Galileo almanac format, which may cause restrictions for some commercial receiver types.

“Nevertheless, the satellite can already be tracked by a wide range of geodetic receivers with existing firmware versions and it will, in fact, be possible to use the new satellite for diverse applications in surveying, precise positioning, and geodesy, as well as in general multi-GNSS studies. We now look forward to the activation of the second FOC satellite, which can be expected in early 2015 and will, for the first time, offer multi-frequency signals from a total of five Galileo satellites.”

If you have four fully useable satellites and two partially useable satellites, what do you have? Does six = five functionally in this case? Or perhaps 5.5?

Six

Six for the oncoming new Galileo FOC satellites to be launched in 2015, according to some schedules and some official announcements.

On a year-opening preview of operations given on Jan. 19, Thomas Reiter, Head of the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, outlined the launch schedule for Galileo in 2015. Six new FOC satellites in total:
- Galileo L4 with two on March 26
- Galileo L5 with two in September
- Galileo L6 with two in December.
Now, six satellites divided by three launch dates gives two satellites per launch. Seeming to indicate a Soyuz rocket for all three dates. Reiter did not mention any rocket by name, but this would be the inference.

That’s putting a brave face on the situation. Back in May, Russia suffered its fifth rocket launch crash in the past four years, raising serious concerns about the reliability of Russian rockets and launch procedures. Subsequently, the August Galileo launch that went so wrong was controlled by Arianespace, but it did use the Russian equipment.

It strains credulity that an omission or oversight in the system thermal analysis during stage design of a million-dollar rocket, designed to carry million-plus-dollar satellites in a 21^st-century endeavor, could permit the creation of a thermal bridge between two feed lines, causing one of them to freeze during a crucial phase of space operations — but that is what apparently happened at some point at NPO Lavochkin in Russia, and that is what ultimately caused Galileo such misfortune. All parties concerned swear that this problem has been corrected in every other Soyuz Fregat, but who knows what other anomalies lie undiscovered therein?

So putting all your 2015 money aboard Soyuzes is really rolling the marbles. Even if, as Elżbieta Bienkowska, Member of the EC in charge of Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs stated at this week’s 7th European Space Conference: EU Space Policy Confronted With the Rising Demand for Services and Applications, “We agreed to contract insurance for the next launches.”

Eight

Eight for the oncoming new Galileo FOC satellites to be launched in 2015, according to other schedules and other official announcements.

“2015 will be a crucial year for the European space industry. We have big plans,” said Maros Sefcoviv, vice-president of the EC in charge of Energy Union, earlier at the very same 7^th European Space conference, EU Space Policy Confronted With the Rising Demand for Services and Applications.

“On the biggest one, we are planning five launches, which will bring up to space 10 satellites: eight for our Galileo constellation, and two for Copernicus. This is something that will put these programs over, I would say, over the edge, in a way, to be able to offer early services from Galileo, and to develop the program of Copernicus. It would prove the resilience and competitiveness of the European space industry, and its ability to serve the businesses, and what I think is most important, to offer new kinds of services to the citizens.”

“For our flagship programs like Galileo and EGNOS, our priority must be to deliver services as soon as possible. That is why the satellites have to be delivered and operations must be ready as soon as possible.”

Now, if you have eight satellites to go up in three launches, that would mean one of them has to go with four aboard. Thus, an Ariane 5 Galileo launch this year after all? Or possibly four Soyuz launches, although one more launch date could just just as hard to come by as a launch vehicle.

Hard to tell. Very hard to tell. Extremely hard to tell, from the outside.

Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it, goes the dictum. Those who do study GNSS history, in this case, are likely only to repeat past pronouncements without any perceptible advance in clarity.

Way, way back in March 2013, an EC program manager told GPS World, “Then, in 2014 [after four FOC satellites were to rise in 2013, which did not happen] we will see three Soyuz launches of two satellites each. We do not have the precise launch dates yet, but they are likely to be in April, June, and September. In December 2014, we expect to have the first launch using the Ariane 5 launcher, which is capable of deploying four satellites in one go. This means that by the end of 2014 Galileo will have deployed 18 satellites in orbit.”

Now, the target has moved several times since then, and the schedule has slid accordingly.

“In 2015, there will be two Ariane 5 launches, one in the middle of the year, one at the end, each carrying four satellites.”

Six or Eight?

Either number this year, we would surely appreciate. To return to Ms. Bienkowska, she left a little fudge room in her presentation: “We aim to launch at least six satellites this year.”

Well, at least we are all moving forward. Resolutely.

——————————–

I am indebted to Tim Reynolds, GPS World’s Brussels-based European correspondent, and to Peter de Selding, Paris bureau chief of SpaceNews, for their assistance in gathering diverse intelligence on this topic. Tim Reynolds will have an up-to-date view of this and other Galileo developments when we publish the next issue of the EAGER* newsletter at the end of March. Subscribe for free.

* The European GNSS and Earth Observation Report
January 29, 2015
The System: First Galileo FOC Satellite on the Air

Will Be Employable for Surveying, Precise Positioning, and Geodesy

By Peter Steigenberger and André Hauschild, German Aerospace Center (DLR) / German Space Operations Center

The first Full Operational Capability (FOC) Galileo satellite started transmitting L-band navigation signals on November 29, 2014. Based on data collected by a global network of GNSS tracking stations of the Cooperative Network for GNSS Observation (CONGO) and the Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) of the International GNSS Service (IGS), we determined that an E1 signal with pseudorandom noise code (PRN) E18 was first tracked at the station LLAG (La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands) at 06:08 UTC. A few moments later, the satellite’s transmissions were also tracked at other MGEX stations including the E5a, E5b, and E5 AltBOC signals. Based on the computed satellite visibility at various tracking stations, the satellite could be positively identified as GSAT0201, also known as Galileo FOC-FM1 or Galileo 5 with COSPAR ID 2014-050A and NORAD ID 40128.

FIGURE 1 shows the carrier-to-noise-density ratio (C/N₀) of the E18 signals tracked at the CONGO/MGEX station SIN1 (Singapore, using a Trimble NetR9 receiver with a Leica AR25.3 antenna). We selected the signals from this station for analysis due to an E18 pass occurring close to the zenith and covering almost the full range of elevation angles. The E5a and E5b signals (S5X and S7X RINEX identifiers) show very similar performance, whereas the C/N₀ values of the E1 signal are 1–2 dB-Hz higher. The C/N₀ values of the E5 AltBOC signal (S8X) reach 60 dB-Hz at high elevation angles, which is about 6 dB-Hz higher than the other signals.

Figure 1. Galileo E18 carrier-to-noise-density ratio for the CONGO/MGEX station SIN1 (Singapore).

The first pair of Galileo FOC spacecraft was launched on August 22 with a Soyuz launcher from the Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guyana. Due to a malfunction of the Fregat upper stage, the satellites were injected into elliptical orbits with an inclination of about 49° instead of near circular orbits with 55° inclination. In November, the perigee of the first FOC satellite was raised by about 3,500 kilometers by a series of 11 maneuvers with a corresponding reduction in orbit eccentricity from 0.23 to 0.16.

E18 has been included in the precise orbit and clock solutions of the MGEX analysis center at Technische Universität München (TUM) in Munich, Germany, since December 5. FIGURE 2 shows the detrended estimates of the active Galileo E18 clock for December 7. The presence of a pronounced quadratic term as well the large drift of 33.9 microseconds per day indicate that the active clock is a rubidium atomic frequency standard rather than a more precise passive hydrogen maser. The FOC satellites carry two of each kind of clock.

Figure 2. Galileo E18 clock estimates for December 7, 2014, with respect to the hydrogen maser at the Ottawa IGS station (NRC1) after removing an offset and drift (blue) or a second order polynomial (red).

The TUM orbit and clock product allows researchers to again compute dual-frequency positioning solutions using only Galileo observations, as the In-Orbit Validation satellite E20 has not transmitted an E5 signal since May, when a power anomaly left the satellite with the capability to only transmit an E1 signal. Furthermore, E20 currently does not transmit a navigation message.

TABLE 1 shows the scatter of single-point positioning using pseudorange (code) observations from the MGEX station MAS1 (Maspalomas, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands) for a Galileo-only, a GPS-only, and a combined Galileo+GPS solution for December 6. At an elevation cut-off angle of 10°, four Galileo satellites were visible from 10:15 until 12:25 UTC (see FIGURE 3). The GPS-only solution covers the same time interval. The start time is not limited by the cut-off angle but an E18 transmission outage from 3:45–10:15 UTC.

TABLE 1. Single point positioning results for the MGEX station MAS1 (Maspalomas) for December 6, 2014.

Figure 3. Galileo visibility at the MGEX station MAS1 (Maspalomas) on December 6, 2014. The time period considered in the single-point positioning is indicated by vertical lines.

We used an ionosphere-free linear combination of Galileo E1 and E5 AltBOC code observations and GPS L1 and L2 code observations with a 30-second sampling interval. As the Galileo-only solution suffered from position dilution of precision (PDOP) values of up to 830, a total of 32 epochs with PDOP values greater than 25 were excluded. The geometry of the remaining epochs is still pretty unfavorable. At a mean PDOP value of 7.4, the standalone position solution exhibits a 3D standard deviation (STD) error of 3.4 meters. Use of the Galileo satellites in a combined GPS+ Galileo solution improves the positioning performance. In particular, the height component benefits from the inclusion of the four Galileo satellites with a standard deviation improvement of 25 percent.

Despite the orbit injection error, the new Galileo FOC satellite has now been successfully activated and added to the Galileo constellation. Unfortunately, the current orbit is incompatible with the standard Galileo almanac format, which may cause restrictions for some commercial receiver types.

Nevertheless, the satellite can already be tracked by a wide range of geodetic receivers with existing firmware versions and it will, in fact, be possible to use the new satellite for diverse applications in surveying, precise positioning, and geodesy, as well as in general multi-GNSS studies. We now look forward to the activation of the second FOC satellite, which can be expected in early 2015 and will, for the first time, offer multi-frequency signals from a total of five Galileo satellites.

Sanctions Delay GLONASS-K2

According to Nikolai Testoyedov, the CEO of Information Satellite Systems Reshetnev, manufacturer of the GLONASS satellites, the company will now produce nine GLONASS-K1 satellites.

“For a smooth transition to a multi-functional group and due to issues with the very complex GLONASS-K2 satellites, we decided to continue with the GLONASS-K1 intermediate range of satellites, and we are preparing for the launch of nine units of this series,” he said.

He recalled the original plan was to launch two K1 satellites and then move to GLONASS-K2 satellites.

“In the beginning, really, we wanted after the two GLONASS-K1 satellites No. 11 and 12, to go for the launch of more advanced GLONASS-K2 devices. But, unfortunately, the plans had to be adjusted somewhat because of the sanctions restricting the delivery of radiation-resistant electronic components from the West. We have to put a hold on the in-depth development of technical and technological documentation and that delays us in terms of moving ahead by at least a year or two,” he said.

Reported by the Russian magazine Vestnik GLONASS, and relayed by Richard Langley’s CANSPACE listserv.

GNSS Mandates Would Violate Trade Agreements

A U.S. government representative stated at an international satnav forum that mandating use of specific GNSS services for applications such as air-traffic control, freight shipments, emergency calling, and road tolling could violate the terms of World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that many nations, including all six GNSS providers, have signed.

Regional mandates already exist for GLONASS in Russia and BeiDou in China, and have been suggested and extensively discussed in Europe, as a way of stimulating the market adoption of Galileo receiver chipsets, thus recouping some of the massive public investment in the satnav system.

The presentation occurred during the Ninth Meeting of the International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ICG), held Nov. 10–14, 2014, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Jason Kim, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Commerce, stated that the United States and the European Union already enjoy a productive dialog on GNSS trade issues under the 2004 U.S.-EU Agreement on GPS-Galileo Cooperation. In that agreement, both parties agreed to consult before establishing GNSS standards, certification requirements, regulations, mandates; affirmed their non-discriminatory approach with respect to GNSS trade; and established a working group to consider non-discrimination and other trade related issues.

Finally, the United States and the European Union recognized and reiterated in 2004 their commitments to WTO rules including those governing technical barriers to trade, specifically, that there would be no goods discrimination based on non-tariff measures such as regulations, standards, testing, or certification.

Kim made the remarks in the course of his presentation titled “GNSS Market Access.” He told GPS World that his presentation was directed less at the European Union, which has been conscientious of its WTO commitments, and more towards the rest of the ICG members, including non-provider nations that may be asked by GNSS providers to mandate specific systems.

“To promote adoption of their systems,” Kim stated, “GNSS providers are considering/implementing equipage mandates for various applications: aviation, motor-carrier and HAZMAT vehicle tracking, car accident reporting (eCall/ERA-GLONASS), and emergency phone calls (E112).

“The United States recommends technology-neutral, performance-based standards,” Kim continued, giving as example the U.S. E911 rules that specify a required positioning accuracy and then allow wireless carriers to choose the best technical solutions according to their lights.

The U.S. government presentation at ICG revealed particular concern that regulations under consideration could adversely affect the sales of U.S. GPS-enabled hardware in many industry sectors. All members of the WTO, including the six GNSS providers on the ICG, are bound to a range of trade agreements designed to promote open-market access, all cited in the Prague ICG presentation: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The United States, Europe, Japan, and 12 others are also parties to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA).

European Commission officials have publicly and recently stated that they are considering how to stimulate Galileo use, in particular through regulatory measures requiring that navigation equipment be installed on aircraft, automobiles, and other platforms.

“Requiring specific systems arbitrarily prevents or penalizes imports of goods having perfectly functional GNSS capability,” said Kim. “WTO members must comply with TBT obligations in setting technical regulations.”

He concluded his presentation by requesting that the ICG Providers’ Forum add GNSS market access to its future agenda for discussion, and consider developing a new principle on market access for future adoption.

January 1, 2015
Out in Front: All-Day, Everywhere for All
We appear incompletely before you this month. A funny thing happened on the way to the presses: we discovered that we had more content than pages in which to squeeze it. “All the news that fits to print,” the motto of the New York Times, can in this instance not be ours. All the news just won’t fit!

First to feel the axe, lamentably, was Innovation, an article on the Python receiver; you will see it in February. Also pushed to the near future is reporting on the recent Stanford PNT Symposium; it appears in the December GNSS Design & Test e-newsletter, see the website if you don’t yet subscribe. Herewith, an ultra-brief account of a presentation by Greg Turetzky, Intel. The reporters identified this paper and one on BeiDou as “harbingers of change in the industry.”

The Turetzky paper, “Ubiquitous Location: Challenges and Opportunities of Enabling All-day, Everywhere Location for All Mobile Platforms,” laid out the phenomenal growth of location-based services and the implications for design requirements in GNSS-wireless at the user device and silicon levels. The compound annual growth rate of GNSS devices will continue, from its current 22 percent level to a robust 9 percent for the years 2016–2022, and heading for seven billion installed units by 2022.

From Greg Turetzky’s Ubiquitous Location paper, presented at Stanford PNT Symposium.

Cutting to the chase, the design challenges for GNSS are to:
- Take advantage of smaller geometries to achieve higher clock speeds, more memory, lower active power and smaller size, while reducing standby power from leakage;
- Incorporate new methodologies in chip and system design; integrate multiple radios on a single die to reduce cost and size;
- Integrate multiple radio sources into a single location solution;
- Bring together a disparate value chain.
The technology roadmaps embrace most modalities of positioning: GNSS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, and SBAS, and cross most platforms, including wearables. “We think that another, unemphasized challenge,” reporters Litton and Langenstein note, “is in the increasing density of these units with the current specifications on out-of-band emissions and the spectrum sharing and spectrum management factors in the ubiquity of the devices.”

Tune in to our free webinar Receiver Design for the Future, with Greg Turetzky of Stanford speaking on Ubiquitous Location, scheduled for Jan. 15 (1 p.m. EST/ 10 a.m. PST/ 6 p.m. GMT). Register today!
January 1, 2015
An Early Gift from — and for — Galileo

They said it wasn’t possible — well to be frank, I said it wasn’t possible – but one of the two “misplaced” Galileo satellites, plucky Doresa, has delivered an early Christmas present to the European GNSS community by providing a first fix on Tuesday, December 9. The signal was received at the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands and at the Galileo In-Orbit-Validation (IOV) test station at Redu in Belgium. Doresa teamed with the remaining three functioning Galileo IOV satellites to provide a Galileo positioning data first fix with horizontal accuracy better than two metres.

Since then fixes have also been performed using Galileo’s Public Regulated Service (PRS), the civilian encrypted highest-precision signal and one of the constellation’s unique selling points.

The satellite had transmitted its first navigation signal in space on November 29, following its attainment of a safer, more stable, and more circular orbit with the perigee some 3,500 kilometres higher than its original placement.

Doresa’s salvage has been a slow and steady journey since it was placed, with sister satellite Melina, into a fairly useless orbit in August following a launch anomaly. The original orbit, with a 26,000-kilometer apogee and a 13,800-kilometer perigee, prevented their use for navigation services because they were too low during part of their orbit to sense the horizon and correctly determine their own position. They were also getting a daily dose of radiation from the Van Allen belts.

Elevation

The elevation of the satellite started in late October and involved 11 firings of Doresa’s on-board thrusters. The craft now has only 15 kilos left from its original 65 kilo fuel payload but, given the fact that normally Galileo satellites are not required to make regular orbital manoeuvres, ESA engineers estimate this should be enough for a good 12 years of operation in the new orbit.

The next stage will be to repeat this manoeuvre with the second Full Operational Capability (FOC) satellite, Melina, according to a plan to get that into a similar orbit by the New Year. Pending tests of their positioning, navigation, and timing payloads, the two spacecraft are then likely to be able to contribute to the future Galileo navigation constellation. This was confirmed by Didier Faivre, ESA’s director for navigation, during the agency’s ministerial council meeting on December 2 in Luxembourg.

This end result is the best possible scenario given where the satellites were left after launch and is a considerable triumph for ESA’s mission control teams and flight engineers. Doresa is now able to use its Earth sensor continuously and keep its antennae orientated towards the Earth. Despite more than a month’s exposure to the Van Allen radiation, testing so far has shown no ill effects.

“The very good geometry of the satellites in the sky relative to the receivers helped us to achieve this result, plus the signal strength of the fifth satellite,” explained Gustavo Lopez Risueno, coordinating the receiver team at the Navigation Laboratory in ESA’s ESTEC technical centre.

The satellite signals should be usable immediately, in combination with additional navigation message information provided through ground networks, with mass market receivers. In fact the ESTEC Navigation Laboratory, working in conjunction with the European Commission and the European GNSS Agency (GSA), have already performed position fixes with both Galileo and GPS satellites using only navigation-assistance information.

With some adjustments to the Galileo network’s ground infrastructure, it looks like Doresa and Melina will be able to carry out most of the roles they were originally designed to do. They are the first of 22 Galileo FOC satellites to be built by OHB and launched by ESA over the next few years.

Toasted antennae

More good news. The problem with Galileo’s fourth IOV satellite, named Sif, that took it out of action at the end of May seems to have been characterised and — again — indicates that the satellite is not a complete loss to the constellation. While Sif’s E5 and E6 frequency bands are definitively blown, the satellite’s E1 Open Service band should be capable of broadcast.

The problem appears to have been a defective antennae. The four IOV satellites utilise one antennae design, while the FOC satellites have a different design. Fortunately there is no sign of a similar issue with the three other IOV craft, but they have been operating on reduced power as a precaution while the root cause of Sif’s failure is determined. ESA is currently fail-testing an example of the culprit antennae in the laboratory to see if the failure mode can be characterised.

“One of the possible root causes links the problem with the power emitted by the antenna. When we know more we’ll decide what to do with the other three. Since this event occurred in May and June, no more issues have arisen,” Faivre said.

Agreement

This is all a remarkable turnaround and good news for the wider European GNSS community and those stakeholders who have invested in the Galileo programme and its burgeoning application industry. Let’s hope the good fortune continues through 2015.

The administrative side of things is certainly moving on with the signing in October of an agreement which delegates a range of exploitation tasks for Galileo from the European Commission to the GSA, providing a framework and budget for the development of services and operations through to 2021.The signing of the agreement is an initial step towards the full Galileo Exploitation Phase. Current planning calls for this exploitation phase to be progressively rolled out from 2015, with full operability scheduled for 2020.

“With Galileo, we aim to provide a tangible service to European citizens, and this Delegation Agreement ensures we have the tools and funding necessary to achieve this,” said GSA Executive Director Carlo des Dorides. The agreement was signed by Daniel Calleja Crespo of the European Commission and des Dorides. The document specifically sets the actions to be implemented, the amount of funding provided, and the conditions for the overall management.

Innovation

In the same month, the First Satellite Masters Conference took place in Berlin on October 23 and 24. The conference encompassed the 2014 edition of the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC). The event was a great showcase for the innovation, skill, and passion of the entrepreneurs, usually young, who are building the satellite application market in Europe.

For example, the winner of the GSA special prize at ESNC 2014 is developing Galileo modules for the Google Ara modular smartphone concept, a potential game-changer for positioning in the mobile-phone market. Ara uses interchangeable modules to deliver a smartphone that can be whatever a user wants it to be, complete with first- and third-party components including sensors, cameras, radio antennas, and more. Consumers will be able to order them as of January 2015.
Google developers believe an Ara smartphone will last multiple years, much longer than current hardware, since it won’t be obsolete nearly as quickly. Further, Ara could open the smartphone market to billions of new users across the globe.

I spoke with Giovanni Vecchione of Deimos Space, who received the € 40 000 GSA/ESNC prize during the awards ceremony at Deutsche Telekom’s magnificent headquarters in the German capital.

“With a traditional chip structure, all of a smartphone’s functions are currently combined into a single component, which makes it difficult to add or change a function,” explained Giovanni. “With a modular structure, you have the option to simply switch out a component, meaning a smartphone’s capabilities can be easily enhanced.”

Vecchione’s innovation is to use another of Galileo’s unique selling points: the E5 broadband signal. While mass market smartphones will use the E1 signal, the availability of high-end phones offering enhanced accuracy through the use of the E5 signal will appeal to many users. A second module will implement an external antenna interface. Together these developments could deliver an ARA phone offering high precision (centimetre-level accuracy) positioning and multipath-resistant solutions.

Wishing you all a very peaceful and prosperous New Year and hoping Santa has your coordinates accurately entered in his sleigh satnav!

A bientôt, as they say in these parts.

December 19, 2014
GNSS Frontiers: BeiDou and Ubiquitous Location
BeiDou Signals, Future Receiver Design Highlighted at Stanford PNT Symposium

By James D. Litton and Tom Langenstein

James L. Litton

The Stanford Center for Position, Navigation and Time conducted its eighth symposium on PNT in October 2014. These symposia have always been a superb two (this year three) days of excellent presentations, ranging over the entire domain of PNT, including policy factors as well as technical ones.

This year the first day featured student speakers, either from Stanford or the students of former Stanford students who are now faculty at other universities. The conference is by invitation only; sponsors include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and other companies involved with GNSS. This essay highlights two presentations that struck us as harbingers of change in the industry: Greg Turetzky’s paper on ubiquitous location, and Minquan Lu’s and Zheng Yao’s paper on new signal structures for BeiDou.

Brad Parkinson gave a keynote address mixing challenges and opportunities from the frontiers of policy formation. David Last did not fail to amuse with his lighthearted and satirical commentary on navigation and society at dinner. Many others gave noteworthy presentations, and all of the presentation slides can be found online.

Tom Langenstein

Both papers that we selected for this article have very broad scope with considerable strategic significance in GNSS design and applications. It seems a little impertinent, as well as superficial, to try to convey their essence in fewer than 2,000 words, but the material presented is available elsewhere, too.

New Signal Structures for BeiDou

Professors Mingquan Lu and Zheng Yao of Tsinghua University laid out in clear and detailed fashion the motivations for BeiDou’s choosing to introduce new signals for the Phase III global system, analyses of alternative modulations, and the results of bench testing in service to the desired properties (interoperability, acquisition and tracking thresholds, receiver complexity, in-band interference, and so on).

They emphasized one non-technical or operational motivation: independent proprietary designs for patent protection. No declaration of policy intention was made; however, the direction was clear, even though the authors are university professors and not government officials.

Some of this work has been published elsewhere in IEEE Transactions by the same authors and has a substantial history, reflecting the lessons learned from the predecessor system designs and very thorough analysis, simulation and bench testing. Space does not allow extensive citation, but the key drivers for the designs and the results are summarized below. The preferred modulations chosen or synthesized are quadrature multiplexed binary offset carrier (QMBOC) for B1C and asymmetric constant envelope-binary offset carrier (ACE-BOC).

The principal deficiencies cited of the earlier-proposed BeiDou Phase III signals (circa 2010-ICG) were given as:
- no independent intellectual property rights; thus, a big patent risk
- signal performance needs to be improved
- more flexible receiving modes and more varied application scenarios should be considered.
The principal requirements for BeiDou Open Service signals were cited as:
- independent intellectual property rights
- better compatibility and interoperability with GPS and Galileo
- smooth transition from Phase II to Phase III
- improved performance
Separate requirements were stated for the B1C and B2 signals, as follows:

B1C: (QMBOC)
- compatibility with other signals of the same carrier frequency
- better interoperability with GPS L1 and Galileo E1 signals
- better ranging accuracy (than GPS C/A and BeiDou Phase II B1(I))
- receiving mode diversity for different receivers (low-end and high-end)
- independent Intellectual property rights
B2C: (ACE-BOC)
- multiplexed B2a and B2b into a constant envelope signal
- better interoperability with the GPS L5 and GALILEO E5 signals
- high ranging accuracy
- in-band interference-resistant ability (MAI, DME, TACAN, Near-far effect, etc.)
- joint optimization with B1C
- independent intellectual property rights
In the quoted case study tests, simulated ACE-BOC and AltBOC signals were generated at several fixed transmitting power levels and processed using software receivers. For each given transmit power level, the ACE-BOC was allotted three times power for the pilot channel over that of the data channel while the AltBOC allocated equal amount of power for both the pilot and the data channel, that is, 3:1 for ACE-BOC and 1:1 for AltBOC.

The resulting tracking performance of the ACE-BOC is more robust than that of the AltBOC.

Table 1, taken from the presentation, provides an overview of the signals.

Table 1. New signal structures proposed for BeiDou.

The compatibility properties of the new signals, if adopted, which seems quite likely, are desirable. The implicit intellectual property aspects of the development, both in motivation and in differential design of a signal structure which seems to be claimed as novel have a defensive basis, apparently, in earlier assertions of proprietary designs. It will be interesting to see whether similar international negotiations follow, or perhaps already have. The paper was well received and stimulated considerable hallway comment.

Ubiquitous Location

Turetzky’s paper laid out the phenomenal growth of location-based services and the implications of such growth for design requirements in GNSS-wireless at the user device level and at the silicon level. On growth (from various quoted sources):
- The compound annual growth rate of GNSS devices will continue, from its current 22 percent level to a robust 9 percent for the years 2016-2022; heading for seven billion installed units by 2022.
- The cumulative core revenue in the decade 2012-2022 will be 46 percent in LBS portable and wearable devices and 47+ percent in vehicles.
- There will be many billions of installations of indoor location technologies by 2018, in virtually every venue imaginable.
Some of the design implications of the requirements driving the growth in indoor location are:
- Always Located, or continuous location. For this case, the energy dissipated per day (16 hours) and signal availability (100 percent) are the featured specification and the secondary specification, respectively. These specifications, in turn, require hybrid constellations and minimal standby power consumption.
- The scaling down to very small (14 nanometer) dimensions enables much faster switching speeds, search rates and lower power dissipation in active modes and more complex algorithms, but at the expense of leakage current, which adversely affects standby power, an increasingly important factor.
Thus, for GNSS design, the challenges are to:
- Take advantage of benefits of smaller geometries to achieve higher clock speeds, more memory, lower active power and smaller size, while greatly reducing standby power from leakage;
- Incorporate new methodologies at chip and system design level; Integrate multiple radios on a single die to reduce cost and size without creating interference to a very sensitive GNSS radio;
- Integrate multiple radio sources into a single location solution;
- Bring together a disparate value chain;
Turetzky outlined a vision for his employer, Intel, to be a leader in all aspects of these revolutionary developments. The technology roadmaps embrace most modalities of positioning: GNSS, Bluetooth, WI-Fi, cellular, and SBAS, and cross most platforms, including wearables. We think that another, unemphasized challenge is in the increasing density of these units with the current specifications on out-of-band-emissions and the spectrum sharing and spectrum management factors in the ubiquity of the devices.

From Greg Turetzky’s Ubiquitous Location paper, presented at Stanford PNT Symposium.

Tune in to our free webinar Receiver Design for the Future, with Greg Turetzky of Stanford speaking on Ubiquitous Location, scheduled for Jan. 15 (1 p.m. EST/ 10 a.m. PST/ 6 p.m. GMT). Register today!

Both papers represented the dynamism of our industry and its diversity of technologies and practitioners and the service to that industry provided by the remarkably consistent excellence of this symposium.

James D. Litton heads the Litton Consulting Group and previously played key executive roles at NavCom Technology and Magnavox.

Tom Langenstein is executive director of the Stanford Center for Position, Navigation, and Time, and deputy program manager of the Gravity Probe-B project.
December 18, 2014
The System: eLoran Operational on Eastern UK Coast

Bridge of the Galatea, a GLA vessel that carries a eLoran receiver and conducted tests of the new system. Photo: GLA

Back-up to Vulnerable GPS Signals Required for Busy Shipping Lanes

The General Lighthouse Authorities (GLAs) of the UK and Ireland announced October 31 the initial operational capability of UK maritime eLoran. Seven differential reference stations now provide additional position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information via low-frequency pulses to ships fitted with eLoran receivers. The service will help ensure they can navigate safely in the event of GPS failure in one of the busiest shipping regions in the world, with expected annual traffic of 200,000 vessels by 2020.

Ships carry 95 percent of UK trade, accounting for its strongly expressed concerns regarding GPS vulnerability to jamming and spoofing, and the leadership role it has taken in eLoran research and testing. The UK is the first country in the world to deploy the technology along its coastline, thronged with both passenger and cargo services. Deployment involved replacing the existing radio receiver equipment in two prototype reference stations at Dover and Harwich, and the creation of five new reference stations in the Thames, Humber, Middlesbrough, and Firth of Forth and Aberdeen in Scotland, on the North Sea where oil-laden vessels come from deep-sea drilling rigs.

Entirely independent of GPS, eLoran can provide navigation information for vessels as well as the timing data necessary to maintain the power grid, cell phones, financial networks, and the Internet in the event of an outage. Unlike space-based navigation, eLoran signals can also reach inside buildings, underground, and underwater.

Captain Ian McNaught, deputy master of Trinity House, commented, “eLoran provides a signal around 1 million times more powerful than those from satellite signals, providing resilience from interference and attack. The achievement of initial operational capability for the system at Dover and along the east coast of the UK is a significant milestone, providing for improved safety aboard appropriately equipped vessels. The maritime industry would now benefit from the installation of eLoran receivers on more vessels to take advantage of improved navigational safety.”

“Telecoms, finance, energy, and other industries, which are subject to significant issues caused by the loss of timing signal provided by GPS, are recommended to take advantage of the enhanced reliability now available to address the over-dependence of key national infrastructure on vulnerable satellite systems,” McNaught said.

eLoran technology is based on longwave radio signals and is independent and complementary to GPS.

Several other nations are consulting with the UK GLAs on eLoran. South Korea wants to establish an eLoran alliance with the UK while it pursues its own rollout of differential eLoran reference stations and new eLoran transmitters based on the latest technology. In 2012, South Korea was the victim of a 16-day GPS jamming attack by North Korea.

Full operational capability covering all major UK ports is expected by 2019.

Galileo Roving High

The fifth Galileo navigation satellite, one of two left in the wrong orbit in August, made a series of November maneuvers as a prelude to its health being confirmed. The aim was to raise the lowest point of its orbit — its perigee — to reduce the radiation exposure from the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth, as well as to put it into a more useful orbit for navigation purposes.

Should the two-week operation prove successful, the sixth Galileo satellite will follow the same route, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Galileo pair, launched together on a Soyuz rocket on August 22, ended up in an elongated orbit traveling out to 25,900 kilometers (km) above Earth and back down to 13,713 km. The target orbit was a purely circular one at an altitude of 23,222 km. Also, the orbits are angled relative to the Equator less than originally planned.

The two satellites have only enough fuel to lift their altitude by about 4,000 km — insufficient to correct their orbits entirely. But the move will take the fifth satellite into a more circular orbit than before, with a higher perigee of 17,339 km.

“The new orbit will fly over the same location every 20 days,” said Daniel Navarro-Reyes, ESA Galileo mission analyst. “The standard Galileo repeat pattern is every 10 days, so achieving this will synchronize the ground track with the rest of the Galileo satellites.”

“In addition, from a user receiver point of view, the revised orbit will reduce the variation in signal levels, reduce the Doppler shift of the signal, and increase the satellite’s visibility,” Navarro-Reyes said. “For the satellite, reducing its radiation exposure in the Van Allen radiation belts will protect it from further exposure to charged particles. The orbit will also allow Galileo’s Earth Sensor to hold a stable direction for the satellite’s main antenna to point at Earth. Right now, when the satellite dips to its lowest point, Earth appears so large that the sensor is unusable. The satellite relies on gyroscopes alone, degrading its attitude precision.”

The recovery is being overseen from the Galileo Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, with the assistance of ESA’s Space Operations Centre, ESOC, in Darmstadt, Germany. France’s CNES space agency is providing additional ground stations so that contact can be maintained with the satellite as needed, ESA said.

Welcome IIF-8

The U.S. Air Force launched the eighth GPS IIF satellite on October 29, aboard an Atlas V 401 rocket. With this new arrival on orbit, only four more Block IIF satellites remain to be placed aloft. Three are in storage awaiting launch, and one is in production.

The Boeing-built GPS IIF-8 (SVN-69/PRN-03) will replace SVN-51 in the E plane slot 1. SVN-51 will be re-phased from E1 to an auxiliary node at E7 somewhere around SVN-54 currently on station at E4, according to the Air Force Second Space Operations Squadron (2 SOPS). SVN-38/PRN-08 will be taken out of the operational constellation prior to SVN-69 payload initialization and sent to Launch, Anomaly Resolution and Disposal Operations (LADO). PRN-08 will be assigned initially to SVN-49 and set to test.

SVN-51 will remain in an auxiliary node once it completes its re-phase journey. The SVN-51 re-phase will take about six months after the initial burn occurs.

December 1, 2014
GNSS System Mandates Would Violate International Trade Agreements

A U.S. government representative stated at an international satnav forum that mandating use of specific GNSS services for applications such as air-traffic control, freight shipments, emergency calling, and road tolling could violate the terms of World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements that many nations, including all six GNSS providers, have signed. Regional mandates already exist for Glonass in Russia and Beidou in China, and have been suggested and extensively discussed in Europe, as a way of stimulating the market adoption of Galileo receiver chipsets, thus recouping some of the massive public investment in the satnav system.

The presentation occurred during the 9th Meeting of the International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ICG), November 10–14 in Prague, the Czech Republic.

Jason Kim, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Commerce, stated that the United States and EU already enjoy a productive dialogue on GNSS trade issues under the 2004 U.S.-EU Agreement on GPS-Galileo Cooperation. In that agreement, both parties agreed to consult before establishing GNSS standards, certification requirements, regulations, mandates; affirmed their non-discriminatory approach with respect to GNSS trade; and established a working group to consider non-discrimination and other trade related issues. Finally, the United States and the European Union recognized and reiterated in 2004 their commitments to WTO rules including those governing technical barriers to trade (TBT), specifically, that there would be no goods discrimination based on non-tariff measures such as regulations, standards, testing, or certification.

Kim made the remarks in the course of his presentation titled “GNSS Market Access.” He told GPS World that his presentation was directed less at the European Union, which has been conscientious of its WTO commitments, and more towards the rest of the ICG members, including non-provider nations that may be asked by GNSS providers to mandate specific systems..

“To promote adoption of their systems,” Kim stated, “GNSS providers are considering/implementing equipage mandates for various applications: aviation, motor-carrier and HAZMAT vehicle tracking, car accident reporting (eCall/ERA-GLONASS), and emergency phone calls (E112).

“The United States recommends technology-neutral, performance-based standards,” Kim continued, giving as example the U.S. E911 rules that specify a required positioning accuracy and then allow wireless carriers to choose the best technical solutions according to their lights.

The U.S. government presentation at ICG revealed particular concern that regulations under consideration could adversely affect the sales of U.S. GPS-enabled hardware in many industry sectors. All members of the WTO, to include the six GNSS providers on the ICG, are bound to a range of trade agreements designed to promote open market access, all cited in the Prague ICG presentation: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The United States, Europe, Japan, and 12 others are also parties to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA).

European Commission officials have publicly and recently stated that they are considering how to stimulate Galileo use, in particular through regulatory measures requiring that navigation equipment be installed on aircraft, automobiles, and other platforms.

“Requiring specific systems arbitrarily prevents or penalizes imports of goods having perfectly functional GNSS capability,” said Kim. “WTO members must comply with TBT obligations in setting technical regulations.”

He concluded his presentation by requesting that the ICG Providers’ Forum add GNSS market access to its future agenda for discussion, and consider developing a new principle on market access for future adoption.

The ICG, an organization established in 2005 under the umbrella of the United Nations to discuss GNSS to benefit people around the world, “promotes voluntary cooperation on matters of mutual interest related to civil satellite-based positioning, navigation, timing, and value-added services. The ICG contributes to the sustainable development of the world. Among the core missions of the ICG are to encourage coordination among providers of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), regional systems, and augmentations in order to ensure greater compatibility, interoperability, and transparency, and to promote the introduction and utilization of these services and their future enhancements, including in developing countries, through assistance, if necessary, with the integration into their infrastructures. The ICG also serves to assist GNSS users with their development plans and applications, by encouraging coordination and serving as a focal point for information exchange.”

November 26, 2014
Out in Front: My Heart in My Sleeve

The next time I see Paris, I will be swinging down the boulevard in a brand new set of threads. An elegant, location-enabled set of threads that will take me by the sleeve and lead me through the City of Light.

This wearable experiment goes by the name — of course it does — Navigate, a new line of city-specific, location-enhanced apparel. Either plug or Bluetooth the jacket (the press materials are not clear on this point) into your smartphone, download the appropriate city guide with walking tour, and start your adventure. Stash the phone in the pocket of the houndstooth jacket with red felt collar flips, no further need to look at it. Vibrations along left or right arm tell you when to turn; their frequency, intensity, and placement vary to indicate soft turn, merge, or hard turn.

Oh, I love the colorful clothes she wears, and the way the sunlight plays upon her hair . . . I’m pickin’ up good vibrations, oom bop bop, she’s giving me excitations, oom bop bop.

Good, good, good, good vibrations.

“How we can ease the stress of navigating an unfamiliar path without interfering with the experience of discovering a new place?” asks Billie Whitehouse, design director of Wearable Experiments. “No longer do you need to hunch over a map or smartphone. Now you can experience fill-the-blank-here as a traveler rather than a tourist.”

Not interfering with the experience of discovering a new place: that caught my attention. In my misspent youth, I traversed the upper Amazon, the Andean highlands, and the Galapagos Islands unencumbered by a camera. To my lasting regret. I thought the device lifted to my eyes would interfere with my discovery and experience. Now I see my error. Instead of subtracting a layer of technology from my travel trunk, I should have added one. That GPS did not exist at that time, except as a gleam in young Col. Parkinson’s eye, perhaps absolves the fault in this case.

“The skin is a vastly underutilized form of communication,” says Wear:Ex technical director Ben Moir. “Haptic vibrations are built into a full physical language, allowing the technology to communicate critical information. Technology doesn’t need to be invasive or obtrusive. It should be designed with the human at the center.”

From signals in space to the surface of my skin. It doesn’t get much more human-centric than that.

Je me baladais sur l’avenue,

Le coeur ouvert à l’inconnu.

Also read GPS World’s December cover story on GNSS chip architecture for wearables, “The Fashion Demands of Always-On.”

November 24, 2014
Out in Front: Of Rats, the Mind, World Series, and Truth

My colleague Janice Partyka wrote a provocative blog in the Wireless/LBS Insider on discovery of the brain’s inner GPS, which won three scientists a Nobel Prize for medicine. The piece struck me so forcefully in the hippocampus, locus of my location sensibility, that I was tempted to place it here verbatim. That would not justify me, however, in drawing my pay, so I add my two cents worth. Literally. Two cents worth.

Partyka’s theme: “How does our brain understand where our body is in space, and navigate us from home to work?” She wrote that one scientist found “a type of nerve cell in the brain’s hippocampus, our short-term memory storage bin, was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. As a rat ran through a maze, a particular sequence of individual neurons fired. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was positioned elsewhere. O’Keefe concluded that these ‘place cells’ formed a map of the room.

“When the rats slept, the same sequences of place cells that were fired earlier in the day fired again. Researchers think that this replay helps to transfer the rat’s memory of the maze from the hippocampus into long-term storage. Place cells also attach to memories of a particular location. When sitting at a table, a person or maybe even a rat might remember a pizza that was eaten at that spot.

“Many decades later, the Mosers discovered another component of the brain’s positioning system. They identified ‘grid cells,’ which are thought to act like a dead-reckoning system and generate a coordinate system to allow for precise positioning and pathfinding. The grid cells create a location to put place cells and organize position locations. Rats running around an open floor (hopefully not mine), will fire neurons that map out a grid of equilateral triangles that serve as a spatial map. Grid cells can function in complete darkness, without visual cues. Together, place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.

“While place and grid cells were first discovered in rats, studies using brain imaging indicate that they also occur in humans.”

As I sit here in mid-October listening to the World Series (for some deeply buried irrationality, sleeping in the Americana of my mind, I believe that baseball is better on radio than on TV), I visualize the athletes lunging and spearing and leaping about the field of play, barely having to look because they know the cells and grids of it so well. They just react to the ball and — smack! — it arrives in the first baseman’s glove. And what of the pitcher, who knows the strike zone so totally, so certainly, so inwardly, at 60 feet’s distance from his outstretched arm, that he can navigate a small spheroid precisely, on a curved path no less, to its lower left corner?

Technology enhances our sense of location, as we in particular know so well. But technology can be fooled, perhaps more easily than the brain. Could the brain be convinced that its body was speeding towards Libya when in reality it placidly cruised northward in mid-Adriatic? Imagine how your brain would fare against the spoofer in this issue’s cover story.

November 1, 2014
Galileo: A Constellation of One?

Matters sit not well with Galileo, the European GNSS. Only one of six currently orbiting satellites can be said to be truly and fully operational. With these troubles augmented by persistent uncertainties regarding the fitness of Soyuz rockets, despite a recent inquiry panel that identified a root cause of the August launch failure, the European Commission has nixed an upcoming December launch. The European Space Agency will have to wait until February 2015 to see if the skies clear by then for the next opportunity to place two new satellites into orbit.

Hard-charging veteran investigative reporter Richard Langley has learned from his eastern listening post in New Brunswick that “E11 and E12 [launched three years ago] exhibit ongoing problems with the onboard clocks. E20 [launched two years ago] has experienced power-supply problems and, following a brief outage, is now broadcasting on E1 only and with a reduced power. The latest two satellites [rose August 22 of this year] are in irregular orbits and will likely not form part of the final constellation. This leaves E19 [born October 12, 2012] as the only fully operational satellite operating within specifications.

“So, strictly speaking, only one of the currently orbiting satellites is fully operational. However, for most (E1/L1-only, single-point) users, four of the six satellites are currently quite useable. Moreover, preliminary studies suggest that, once on line, the latest two satellites will be perfectly usable, despite the irregular orbits. And, as we have heard, there will be attempts to make the orbits somewhat more circular.”

Langley cites “knowledgeable researchers” as his sources.

The initial quartet of in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites — E11, E12, E19, and E20 — constructed by Astrium GmbH and Thales Alenia Space have experienced a range of difficulties outlined above. The decision to cancel the next scheduled launch in December of the newest duo of full operational capability (FOC) satellites, manufactured by a consortium led by OHB AG, comes on the heels of a completed inquiry that blamed a “design ambiguity” of the Soyuz rocket’s Fregat stage for the too-low orbits of Satellites 5 and 6, but left several lingering doubts about other Soyuz issues that were uncovered and must be corrected.

The situation is complicated by further unresolved issues aboard the two FOC satellites themselves. They each failed to deploy one of their two solar arrays on the first try. After several days of effort and re-orientation of the satellites by ground controllers, the arrays were successfully unfolded, but the cause of the initial failure remains unknown. “There is no conclusion on a root cause,” stated one official. “Was it a consequence of the bad orbit, or is there an issue with the solar array deployment mechanism? We cannot yet say for sure.”

As for their incorrect orbit, getting them into their originally planned paths around the Earth is impossible. They simply do not have enough fuel onboard. ESA does, however, plan to raise the perigees of the satellites to get them out of the Van Allen radiation belt, which could severely damage the satellites. The agency also envisions reducing the maximum Doppler frequency shift from 9.6 kHz to at least 6.8 kHz to allow receivers to easily acquire and track the satellites but leave enough hydrazine for future station-keeping. Spokespersons hold out hope that the satellites may yet be usable somehow, someday, after some adjustment measures are taken: a rephasing, a special almanac, perhaps other adjustments.

Overall, a disheartening picture, with some pessimists concluding that “2013 and 2014 have been lost.” The recent slip of full operational capability declaration from 2018 to 2020 may have to be revised yet again. However, lessons learned, etcetera. Galileo has had its ups and down. Advocates may draw comfort from the wisdom imparted by 19^th-century German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” That which does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

October 29, 2014