The government of India has warned domestic airlines of “consequences” if they do not use GAGAN, the state’s GPS-Aided Geo Augmented Navigation system, reports the Mumbai Mirror.
The warning came during a meeting called by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in December with all stakeholders, including the airlines. Most aircraft registered in India are still not equipped with the technology two years after its launch.
While smaller aircraft such as ATRs and Bombardiers in the Indian carriers’ fleet are already equipped with the GAGAN system, bigger planes need to be retrofitted at the airlines’ expense, including Airbus A320, A330, Boeing 737, B777 and B 787. Eight major domestic carriers — Air India, Air India Express, Jet Airways, JetLite, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, Vistara and AirAsia — have 427 such planes in service, Mumbai Mirror reports.
The National Civil Aviation Policy, announced by the government in June, makes it mandatory for all aircraft registered in India to be GAGAN-enabled by Jan. 1, 2019.
Jointly developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI), the GAGAN system was officially launched by Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju in July 2016. It is said to make airline operations more efficient and cut down costs as it reduces separation between aircraft, increases air safety and fuel efficiency.
GAGAN’s footprint extends from Africa to Australia and has expansion capability for seamless navigation services across the region. The system is inter-operable with other international satellite based tracking systems such as the WAAS (US), EGNOS (Europe) and MSAD (Japan).
The Australian Government will invest $12 million in a two-year program looking into the future of positioning technology in Australia.
The funding includes testing of satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) that can offer instant, accurate and reliable positioning technology. The improvements in positioning could provide future safety, productivity, efficiency and environmental benefits across many industries in Australia, including transport, agriculture, construction and resources.
The two-year project will test SBAS technology that has the potential to improve positioning accuracy in Australia to less than five centimeters. Currently, positioning in Australia is usually accurate to five to 10 meters. While highly accurate positioning technologies are already available in Australia, they are expensive and only available in specific areas and to niche markets.
Research has shown that the widespread adoption of improved positioning technology has the potential to generate upwards of $73 billion of value to Australia by 2030.
Federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester said the program could test the potential of SBAS technology in the four transport sectors — aviation, maritime, rail and road.
“SBAS utilizes space-based and ground-based infrastructure to improve and augment the accuracy, integrity and availability of basic GNSS signals, such as those currently provided by the USA Global Positioning System (GPS),” Chester said.
“The future use of SBAS technology was strongly supported by the aviation industry to assist in high accuracy GPS-dependent aircraft navigation. Positioning data can also be used in a range of other transport applications including maritime navigation, automated train management systems and in the future, driverless and connected cars,” he said.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan said access to more accurate data about the Australian landscape would also help unlock the potential of Northern Australia.
“This technology has potential uses in a range of sectors, including agriculture and mining, which have always played an important role in our economy, and will also be at the heart of future growth in Northern Australia,” Senator Canavan said. “Access to this type of technology can help industry and Government make informed decisions about future investments.”
The SBAS testbed will use existing national GNSS infrastructure developed by AuScope as part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. It will test two new satellite positioning technologies — next-generation SBAS and Precise Point Positioning, which provide positioning accuracies of several decimeters and five centimeters respectively.
The SBAS testbed is Australia’s first step towards joining countries such as the U.S., Russia, India, Japan and many across Europe in investing in SBAS technology and capitalizing on the link between precise positioning, productivity and innovation.
Early this year, Geoscience Australia with the Collaborative Research Centre for Spatial Information (CRCSI) will call for organizations from a number of industries including agriculture, aviation, construction, mining, maritime, rail, road, spatial and utilities to participate in the testbed.
For more information about the SBAS testbed and National Positioning Infrastructure Capability visit the Geoscience Australia website.
Raytheon reached another milestone in developing the GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, known as GPS OCX, with the completion of the factory qualification test of the Launch and Checkout System (LCS).
GPS OCX will enable dramatically increased performance and security of the GPS system that benefits millions of people worldwide.
Raytheon tested 74 OCX segment requirements at its Aurora, Colorado, factory in a cyber-hardened environment, verifying that the LCS is well on its way to meeting U.S. Air Force requirements.
Next, the remaining OCX segment requirements will be qualified in a retest period, and those requiring external interfaces will be qualified onsite at Schriever Air Force Base before delivery of the overall OCX LCS in 2017.
The final phase of testing — Site Acceptance Testing — will follow the delivery of the system.
“The completion of the Factory Qualification Test proves we can meet the U.S. Air Force requirements and are on a path to delivering the OCX LCS in 2017,” said Bill Sullivan, vice president and program manager for Raytheon’s GPS OCX. “This critical system will enable the launch of the GPS III satellites, which represents the first major capability deployment in the U.S Air Force’s effort to modernize GPS.”
The Factory Qualification Test achievement builds upon other OCX milestones achieved in 2016, including:
Completion of Black Wide Area Network testing of unclassified external interfaces for GPS OCX with perfect scores on mission capability and cyber controls
100 percent requirements pass rate on Electro-Magnetic Interference testing on the OCX Monitor Station Receiver Element, or OMSRE
Successful Critical Design Review for OMSRE hardware development
Completion of the LCS component-level qualification test
Risk-reduction testing functional checkout for the OCX ground system software, demonstrating OCX’s capabilities for precision navigation and timing in a fully cyber-hardened environment
The U.S. Air Force-led GPS Modernization Program will yield new positioning, navigation and timing capabilities for U.S. military and civilian users across the globe. Developed by Raytheon under contract to the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, GPS OCX is replacing the current GPS operational control system and will support the launch of the GPS III satellites.
The new system will provide enhanced performance, the effective use of modern civil and military signals and secure information-sharing with unprecedented cyber protection.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is inviting public comments on the European Commission’s request for a waiver of licensing requirements applicable to Galileo receivers in the U.S. Comments are due Feb. 21, 2017.
If the waiver is approved, Galileo-capable receivers won’t need to be licensed in the U.S. Right now, FCC rules require that receivers operating with non-U.S. licensed space stations obtain a license.
In a letter dated Jan. 30, 2015, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration submitted a request by the European Commission for a waiver of the FCC licensing requirements to permit non-federal receive-only Earth stations — receivers — within the U.S. to operate with Galileo signals.
Interested parties can file comments on or before Feb. 21, and reply comments on or before March 23. All comments should reference IB Docket No. 17-16.
The Commerce Department has played a major role in supporting the European Commission’s waiver request. As co-chair of the GPS-Galileo Working Group on Trade and Civil Applications, the Office of Space Commerce has been discussing the FCC licensing requirement with the European Commission and assisting them with the waiver request for several years.
We have a finite number of pages to bring you each month, one might say a tightly controlled number. That number has never easily accommodated the quantity of fresh, relevant GNSS and PNT news and technical material that emerges each month. The pace of your developments is too fast with which to keep up!
2017 GPS World Receiver Survey (PDF).
This month, a case in point. Most importantly, driving the whole issue is the latest, greatest version of that long-running industry resource and guide, the GNSS Receiver Survey: 24 data-packed pages of it!
There is a major GNSS milestone to report, one which I have personally awaited since the year 2000 — and I know many others have also. When I signed on at this publication, my first assignment was getting its little sister magazine out the door: the summer 2000 issue of Galileo’s World. For four years we published that optimistic quarterly. There was plenty of content for it, but the constellation itself, and the market to support it, were slower in developing. No longer. With the Declaration of Initial Services, reported in the System of Systems section, Galileo is truly and fully open for business.
This month, we also report a momentous satnav development that is not GNSS in the traditional sense, but does come from a globally orbiting constellation. Adding signals from ranging satellites in low-Earth orbit to those from GNSS satellites in medium-Earth orbit provides just the kind of augmentation and backup that many applications critically need. The advantages come primarily in the timing realm, but there is potential for significant positioning benefits, especially once you many innovators out there get your hands on it and combine it with inertial. A true PNT powerhouse.
I haven’t even gotten to this month’s cover story yet: a technical advance in multipath mitigation that has the potential to amp the power, so to speak, of GNSS receivers in many applications. Correlator beamforming is an intriguing new development. Scientists at the Air Force Institute of Technology put it through its paces, and report good results.
At the risk of giving short shrift to any of these essential stories, not to mention the multiple new products, partnerships, application advances and technology updates that appear in smaller bites, we have opted not to omit any, but to cram them all into the one knowledge-laden issue.
We may not be the New York Times, nor can we approach that venerable publication’s mission, reproduced here. But we have our own — All the News That Fits!
Letter to the Editor
My November column began with Jimi Hendrix, drifted into GPS jamming, touched on a mock presidential plebiscite conducted during ION GNSS+, and concluded by reverting to Hendrix’s Purple Haze: “The real [election] results may already be known by the time you read this … Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?”
Brian in Oklahoma sent me a four-word email in response. “The end of time,” he wrote.
A strategic alliance announced on Dec. 15 between Orolia and Satelles includes product development and go-to-market activities of positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions provided by the Iridium satellite constellation, independent of GPS/GNSS signals. The companies intend to provide PNT solutions to military, defense, government and commercial customers worldwide.
Orolia, the parent of GNSS-active companies Spectracom and Spectratime, among others, has formed a strategic alliance, including an equity investment, with Satelles Inc. to develop, market and sell PNT solutions based on Satelles’ satellite time and location (STL) signal technology.
STL is a unique space-based PNT technology that provides location and timing data independent from traditional GPS and other GNSS satellite signals. By using STL, Orolia’s Spectracom and McMurdo solutions will, according to the company, be less susceptible to vulnerabilities such as spoofing, interference and jamming that are associated with GPS/GNSS.
Based on the low-Earth orbit (LEO) Iridium satellite constellation, STL signals are up to 1,000 times stronger than GPS/GNSS; this signal strength, due in part to the constellation’s closer proximity to users, helps to prevent jamming and enables signal reach into buildings and other difficult locations. STL’s additional cryptographic security also ensures performance, productivity and security.
For further background on Iridium, see GPS World’s June 2016 Defense PNT column, “Iridium and GPS revisited: A new PNT solution on the horizon?” Projected applications and use cases include energy/utility grids, enterprise data networks including financial systems, maritime/aviation navigation, fleet/asset tracking management, search and rescue, and data center management.
Many highly sensitive military, defense, government and commercial applications and operations require accurate and reliable PNT data. Today, these applications rely on signals from GPS/GNSS satellites. There are instances, however, where GPS/GNSS signal strength and security are not sufficient and prone to signal disruption. For these cases, the companies jointly state, STL can be used as a secure signal of opportunity to complement GPS/GNSS, making the applications more accurate and secure, and less prone to interference and attack.
“There is a growing need for precise and robust positioning, navigation and timing information especially in business-critical, high-risk and life-saving operations,” said Jean-Yves Courtois, Orolia CEO. “By augmenting Orolia’s GPS/GNSS-based solutions with Satelles’ STL technology, we will have the industry’s first essentially fail-safe, resilient PNT solution. This breakthrough offering will be ideal for mission-critical applications in which the smallest discrepancy in PNT data accuracy, availability and stability can produce a network outage, a system crash or a loss of life.”
Signal strength, availability
The technical advantages provided by adding ranging satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to the GNSS satellites in medium-Earth orbit (MEO) were explored in a 2012 Institute of Navigation paper by Per Enge, Bert Ferrell, David Whelan, Greg Gutt and David Lawrence. GPS World plans to publish an updated version of that paper, with key new material on current STL performance statistics, in an upcoming issue.
Briefly, the paper concluded that “Due to their proximity, signals received from LEO are approximately 30 dB stronger than the signals from MEO. Indeed, we show data collected inside an industrial-strength metal storage container. The power of a LEO signal received inside the container is approximately equal to the power of a GPS signal received under the open sky. On the other hand, LEO proximity also dictates that only a few Iridium satellites are in view of the ground-based user. We show typical examples where six to 11 GPS satellites are joined by one or two LEO satellites.”
The authors then examine the effect of the swift mean motion of LEO satellites, analyzing the ability to whiten multipath based on the rapid motion of the line-of-sight vectors from the user to the LEO satellites. In sharp contrast to MEO, the LEO satellites attenuate errors due to multipath solely based on satellite motion, and do not require user motion. They also analyze Doppler-based positioningvusing the rapid mean motion of the LEO satellites. The Doppler shift projects onto the line-of-sight vectors from the user to the LEO satellites. Over 100 or 200 seconds, this projection is a sharp function of the user location, and this connection enables Doppler-based positioning similar to the Transit satellite system. The authors’ analysis shows that position accuracies of 5 meters can be based on noncoherent code tracking of the LEO plus GPS signals.
This paper also discusses the broadcast of UTC time to sites with known locations, describing experimental results with absolute time accuracies of one microsecond. The broadcast of high-accuracy frequency from LEO would enable a high-accuracy hot clock to replace the relatively low-quality oscillator in GNSS receivers, allowing longer coherent and non-coherent averaging times and improving the sensitivity of GNSS receivers by several decibels. Many other navigation applications would benefit from one LEO satellite in view, the authors assert.
Market view from operator’s CEO
“We are a manufacturer and integrator of timing equipment,” Orolia CEO Jean-Yves Courtois told GPS World. Orolia is the parent company of GPS/GNSS product and service providers Spectracom, McMurdo and Spectratime. “This new STL service is not fully commercialized yet, but it’s operational and it can be tested. Receivers are available and can be integrated into our equipment.
“The timing signal is very accurate and close enough to GPS for most timing applications, although the positioning accuracy is lower than what GPS users are accustomed to. It is an augmentation for timing primarily, and secondarily for positioning,” Courtois continued.
“In terms of timing accuracy, it provides on the order of tenths of microseconds in accuracy, and this covers a lot of timing applications. This is an ideal timing backup or augmentation of GPS. In positioning it’s closer to 50 meters or more, much better for fixed objects than for mobile objects. The faster the vehicle, the lower the positioning accuracy. It’s not directly usable for GPS applications that require a few meters’ accuracy, but it can be associated with inertial navigation for much better results.
“The STL signal penetrates buildings well, it has unique features, and it performs at a high level. The signal is encrypted, so you have to subscribe to a service to receive a key, allowing access to the signal. Applications are developing based on equipment that will be STL-enabled. For the user it will be transparent. The user will have a different antenna.
“We are also active in tracking and emergency location devices, where this is also of interest. It has some authentication capability, to guarantee that the person who accesses the signal is in the location that he pretends to be.
“For customers to be able to use this service, there is some integration work to be done, some dedicated STL receivers to integrate into our current hardware set up, and software modifications. We are ready to work with government and defense organizations and other new clients. Our basic interest is to add some robustness to our equipment for our current customers, and then of course to develop new customers worldwide.”
Grab It’n’Go Drive-By Shopping
Four years ago, retail giant Amazon, a leader in the elimination of human interaction, started to explore what shopping would look like if you could walk into a store, grab what you want, and leave. In early December, the company rolled out its new vision: Amazon Go.
Currently in private beta testing in Seattle and scheduled to open to the public in early 2017, the system employs a fusion of sensor technologies including RFID to detect when a shopper takes an item from the shelf, sync the data to the shopper’s handheld device, sense when the shopper leaves the store area, then charge all collected items to the shopper’s Amazon account. No muss, no fuss.
The company is keeping a tight lid on exactly how its system works, but earlier patent filings give some description of the confluence of sensor data.
“In some implementations, data from other input devices may be used to assist in determining the identity of items picked and/or placed in inventory locations. For example, if it is determined that an item is placed into an inventory location, in addition to image analysis, a weight of the item may be determined based on data received from a scale, pressure sensor, load cell, etc., located at the inventory location. … By combining multiple inputs, a higher confidence score can be generated increasing the probability that the identified item matches the item actually picked from the inventory location and/or placed at the inventory location.”
Vidal Ashkenazi, founder and CEO of Nottingham Scientific Ltd (NSL), has been awarded an OBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours List for Services to Science.
An OBE is a Queen’s honor given to an individual for a major role in any activity such as business, charity or the public sector. OBE stands for Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
“I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded an OBE,” Ashkenazi said. “However, even more importantly, at long last this award recognizes the contribution of scientists and technologists to society in terms of satellite positioning, navigation and timing.
Vidal has been involved with the geodetic aspects of positioning by using satellites from the earliest days. In 1976 he was invited by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey (NGS) to assist with the development of geodetic coordinate systems, the framework that is still used today by satellite navigation (satnav) and mapping systems.
Ashkenazi was an academic at the University of Nottingham from 1965 to 1998, and the founding director of the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy, one of the leading space geodesy research institutes in the world. He supervised around 50 doctoral (Ph.D.) students, many of whom now occupy senior positions in universities and industry around the world.
In the late 1990s, Ashkenazi became aware that, although GPS was designed and developed as a military system, its main advantage to the U.S. was economic. This was the message he delivered when he was invited in 2003 to address the Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels, and hence the need for the European Union to have its own satellite navigation system. Europe’s Galileo system entered into service in December 2016.
Following his academic career, Ashkenazi founded Nottingham Scientific Ltd (NSL) to commercialize the innovation and expertise developed and Nottingham and other UK universities.
Vidal Ashkenazi, who has doctorates in philosophy and physical science from Oxford University, is a member of a large number of professional organizations, and has received distinction awards from several of them, most notably the Royal Institute of Navigation.
He has published several hundred papers in professional journals, and acted as a consultant to a large number of government and commercial organizations in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Vidal Ashkenazi is a recognized figure on the international scene of conferences and congresses, to which he is invited regularly either to deliver keynote presentations or to organize and chair round-table panel discussions.
He is also a long-standing member of the GPS World Editorial Advisory Board.
At a Dec. 15 ceremony in Brussels titled “Galileo Goes Live,” two high officials of the European Commission issued the Galileo Initial Services Declaration.
The declaration means that the Galileo satellites and ground infrastructure are now operationally ready. These signals will be highly accurate but not available all the time, since the constellation is not yet complete and users cannot always count on four satellites being visible at one time at all points on the Earth.
Galileo Goes Live! ceremony in Brussels: European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, responsible for the Energy Union, and Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska, responsible for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, count down to hit the “Go” button. Photo: Galileo
Simultaneously, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) awarded the Galileo Service Operator (GSOp) contract, with a value of up to 1.5 billion euros, to Spaceopal, a joint venture between Telespazio and the German Space Agency (DLR).
The Galileo constellation currently consists of 18 satellites in orbit. However, two of these are in an orbit not totally useful for positioning and navigation. Four more, launched in November, may or may not have completed their on-orbit testing (a series of notice advisory to Galileo users or NAGUs has appeared relating to the flag status of each satellite; see details at the end of this story) but have not yet been integrated to the operational constellation. This is expected to take place in spring 2017.
During the initial phase, the first Galileo signals will be used in combination with other satellite navigation systems, like GPS. In coming years, new satellites will be launched to enlarge the constellation, gradually improving Galileo availability worldwide. The constellation is expected to be complete by 2020 when Galileo will reach full operational capacity (FOC) of 30 satellites: 24 satellites plus six orbital spares, intended to prevent any interruption in service.
Paul Verhoef, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, stated, “Today’s announcement marks the transition from a test system to one that is operational. Still, much work remains to be done. The entire constellation needs to be deployed, the ground infrastructure needs to be completed, and the overall system needs to be tested and verified.
“In addition, together with the commission we have started work on the second generation, and this is likely to be a long but rewarding adventure.”
Galileo Initial Services are managed by the GSA. The overall Galileo programme is run by the European Commission, which has handed over responsibility for the deployment of the system and technical support to operational tasks to the ESA.
Operator Contract. The GSOp contract runs for 10 years and covers operation and maintenance of the Galileo satellite system and its committed performance level: in particular, the operations and control of the system, the logistics and maintenance of the systems, and infrastructure as well as the user support services.
“With its emphasis on service performance, this contract will shape the future of Galileo. We look forward to building a strong partnership with Spaceopal as Galileo moves towards full operational capability under the responsibility of the GSA from January 2017,” said GSA Executive Director Carlo des Dorides.
Under GSA management, the contract awarded to Spaceopal specifically includes:
Secure operations of Galileo from two mission control centres (GCC), located in Germany and Italy, and the European GNSS Service Centre (GSC) for user support services in Spain;
Management of the Galileo Data Distribution Network (GDDN);
Integrated logistics support and maintenance for the entire space and ground infrastructure;
Monitoring of the system performance;
Support for the completion of the Galileo infrastructure and associated launches.
Spaceopal has served as the contractor for Galileo operations since 2010 under the Galileo Full Operational Capability (FOC) Operations Framework Contract.
Products and Services. The first Galileo smartphone by Spanish company BQ is now available on the market, and other manufacturers are expected to follow suit. Application developers can now test their ideas on the basis of a real signal.
With the declaration, Galileo will start to deliver, in conjunction with GPS, the following three types of services free of charge. Their availability will improve as more satellites are launched.
The Open Service is a free mass-market service for users with enabled chipsets in, for instance, smartphones and car navigation systems. Fully interoperable with GPS, combined coverage will deliver more accurate and reliable positioning for users.
Public Regulated Service is an encrypted, robust service for government-authorized users such as civil protection, fire brigades and the police.
Search and Rescue Service is Europe’s contribution to the long-running Cospas–Sarsat international emergency beacon location. The time between someone locating a distress beacon when lost at sea or in the wilderness will be reduced from up to three hours to just 10 minutes, with its location determined to within 5 kilometers, rather than the previous 10 kilometers.
Advisory Updates. USABINIT NAGUs were issued for 11 satellites: 0101, 0102, 0103, 0203, 0204, 0205, 0206, 0208, 0209, 0210 and 0211.
USABINIT, or Initially Usable, notifies users that a satellite is set healthy for the first time. 0104 had a power problem and is operating on E1 only. 0201 and 0202 were launched into lower orbits.
0207 and 0212–0214 are still undergoing commissioning and drifting to their designated orbital slots.
Ground control upgrade for GPS III approved
The U.S. Air Force approved Lockheed Martin’s design to upgrade the current GPS satellite ground control system with new capabilities that will enable it to operate more powerful and accurate GPS III satellites.
The successful Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Contingency Operations (COps) contract, completed on Nov. 17, gives Lockheed Martin a green light to proceed with software development and systems engineering to modify the existing GPS ground control system, called the Architecture Evolution Plan (AEP) Operational Control Segment.
The AEP is currently maintained by Lockheed Martin and controls the 31 GPS IIR, IIR-M and IIF satellites in orbit today.
The COps modifications will allow the AEP to support the more powerful, next-generation GPS Block III satellites, enabling them to perform their positioning, navigation and timing mission, once they are launched. COps is envisioned as a temporary gap filler prior to the entire GPS constellation’s transition to operations onto the next generation Operational Control System (OCX)Block 1, currently in development.
On Oct. 15, under a separate contract, Lockheed Martin completed the Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Upgrade #2 (CUP2) project — part of a multi-year plan to refresh the AEP’s technology and enhance the system’s ability to protect data and infrastructure from internal and external cyber threats, as well as improve its overall sustainability and operability. CUP2 is now fully operational and managing the current GPS constellation.
Lockheed Martin also is under contract to develop and build the Air Force’s first 10 GPS III satellites, which will deliver three times better accuracy, provide up to eight times improved anti-jamming capabilities, and extend spacecraft life to 15 years, 25 percent longer than the newest GPS satellites on-orbit today.
GPS III’s new L1C civil signal will make it the first GPS satellite to be interoperable with other international global navigation satellite systems.
GPS funded at $847 million for FY 2017
On Dec. 23, 2016, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2017. The act includes policy and funding guidance for the GPS program of $847.362 million. This total excludes $13.171 million requested for the GPS IIF program, which requires FY 2017 funding for on-orbit support and contract closeout.
Procurement of GPS III satellites is budgeted at $34 million, development of GPS III satellites is at almost $142 million and the next-generation ground control system (OCX) is budgeted at $393 million, which comes with certification and congressional briefing requirements. The amount includes funding for the GPS Enterprise Integrator.
The GPS Enterprise Integrator project includes efforts necessary to accomplish the critical integrating function with the entire GPS user community. The Enterprise Integrator maintains the GPS architecture and system definition, controls and validates interfaces, ensures compatibility of Generation II and III systems, and develops and manages plans for execution and fielding of the GPS enterprise.
The final defense budget item is $278 million for development of new military GPS user equipment.
Besides the NDAA, other areas that include funding for GPS and related programs are Transportation (including WAAS), to support designated civil elements of the Air Force GPS program, along with civil GPS augmentations and related activities.
The Department of Transportation this year requested civil funding for GPS through the Office of the Secretary instead of through the FAA. Also, the request does not include funds for the Nationwide Differential GPS (NDGPS) program in FY 2017.
New cars for the Russian market must be equipped with the automatic ERA-GLONASS emergency call system.
For certification of these in-vehicle systems, both conformance and performance tests are mandatory, in line with the Russian GOST R 55534 specification.
The Rohde & Schwarz CMW500 is being used to test the ERA-GLONASS system.
For both types of tests, the Russian Certification Center Svyaz-Certificate uses standard-compliant test solutions from Rohde & Schwarz. Manufacturers and component suppliers can use the same test solution in pre-tests to speed up certification for their products.
Now, for the newly required performance test, the center is using the GNSS simulator in the R&S SMBV100A vector signal generator.
Accuracy Requirements. During performance testing, it is verified whether the GNSS receiver of an ERA-GLONASS emergency call system fulfills the accuracy requirements of the specification.
In case of an emergency, the call system should not only correctly transmit position data according to a specified protocol to the public safety answering point, but position data must also be accurate so that the first responder can locate the accident vehicle quickly.
ERA-GLONASS module manufacturers and test houses can use the R&S SMBV100A during pre-tests to create reliable and reproducible conditions similar to those in official certification tests, according to Rohde & Schwarz, to minimize the risk of failing tests during certification.
A tight coupling of GNSS and inertial measurements is needed for both accurate and reliable positioning. The use of multi-GNSS is recommended to obtain a sufficient number of visible satellites in any outdoor environment.
We perform a joint GPS/GLONASS ambiguity fixing and a tight coupling of GNSS, 3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, 3D magnetometer, barometer and thermometer measurements. As GLONASS uses FDMA, double difference ambiguities are no longer integer-valued. We derive a transformation for the GLONASS double difference ambiguity term, that recovers the integer property and maintains a full-rank system. The obtained transformation maps the real-valued double difference ambiguity terms into integer-valued double difference ambiguity terms and a common single difference ambiguity term, that is treated as a real-valued parameter.
ANavS Multi-Sensor Module with GNSS receiver (green), 3D accelerometer/ 3D gyroscope and 3D magnetometer (red) and barometer (yellow). Photo: ANavS
Low-cost GNSS antennas cannot suppress multipath and, therefore, require an estimation of multipath errors. We provide a precise model for multipath that considers an individual amplitude, code delay, phase shift and Doppler shift for each reflected signal, and include it in our sensor fusion. The magnetometer measurements provide rough attitude information, which makes them very valuable for robust GNSS attitude ambiguity fixing.
We verified the performance of our sensor fusion in a test drive on a parking lot. The fixed phase residuals were in the order of a few centimeters for both GPS and GLONASS, which indicates a very precise position estimation. The proposed algorithms reduced the horizontal 95th-percentile error from 8.49 meters (for a standard GPS-only solution) down to 3.96 meters — a 66 percent improvement. In order to combine the GPS and VIO measurements as described in the last paragraph, the data need to be brought into the same reference frame. We develop a novel method to perform this change of reference frame. The proposed approach combines a quaternion reformulation of the problem together with a semidefinite relaxation technique.
This session is an activity of IAG SC4.4. “Multi-constellation GNSS” and IAG-ICCT JSG 0.10 “High-rate GNSS”
Session G1.4 description: In the past two decades high-precision GPS has been applied to support numerous applications in Geosciences. Currently, there are two fully operational Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), and two more are in the implementation stage. The new Galileo and BDS systems already provide usable signals, and both, GPS and GLONASS, are currently undergoing a significant modernization, which adds more capacity, more signals, better accuracy and interoperability, etc. Meanwhile, the huge technology development provided GNSS equipment (in some cases even at low-cost) able to collect measurements at much higher rates, up to 100 Hz, hence opening new possibilities. Therefore, on one side, the new developments in GNSS stimulate a broad range of new applications for solid and fluid Earth investigations, both in post-processing and in real-time; on the other side, this results in new problems and challenges in data processing which boost GNSS research. Algorithmic advancements are needed to address the opportunities and challenges in enhancing the accuracy, availability, interoperability and integrity of high-precision GNSS applications.
This session is a forum to discuss new developments in high-precision GNSS algorithms and applications in geosciences; in this respect, contributions from other branches in geosciences (geodynamics, seismology, tsunamis, ionosphere, troposphere, etc.) are very welcome.
We encourage, but not limit, submissions related to:
Modeling and strategies in high-precision GNSS,
Multi-GNSS benefit for Geosciences,
Multi-GNSS processing and product standards,
Inter-system and inter-frequency biases and calibrations,
New or improved GNSS products for high-precision applications (orbits, clocks, UPDs, etc.),
Precise Point Positioning (PPP, PPP-RTK),
High-rate GNSS,
GNSS and other sensors (accelerometers, INS, ecc.) integration for high-rate applications,
Ambiguity resolution and validation,
CORS services for Geosciences (GBAS, Network-RTK, etc.),
Precise Positioning of EOS platforms,
Precise Positioning for natural hazards prevention,
Monitoring crustal deformation and the seismic cycle of active faults,
The University of the Bundeswehr Muenchen and the Norwegian Space Centre are organizing the International Summer School on Global Satellite Navigation Systems 2017.
Longyearbyen, Norway.
This year the Summer School will be held at Longyearbyen, Svalbard – Spitsbergen, Norway, Sept. 4-15. Lectures start the morning of Sept. 5 and end Sept. 14 following dinner.
The Summer School is open to graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, early-state researcher and young professionals seeking to broaden their knowledge.
Svalbard is an Arctic wilderness series of islands comprising the northernmost part of the Norwegian territories. It is mostly uninhabited, with only about 3,000 people. Longyearbyen, however, is a living community with an airport, a university, a hospital, schools, shops, restaurants, pubs, hotels, and the world’s largest commercial ground station.
The summer school will provide key information, fresh ideas, basics, innovative approaches and practical advice on such topics as:
Basics of satellite navigation
Ionospheric and tropospheric effects on GNSS
Carrier-phase positioning
GNSS RF link performance
GNSS signals
GNSS receivers
Leadership and team effectiveness
GNSS threats and countermeasures
Navigation in GNSS denied environments
Cyber safety for civilian navigation
Become a GNSS entrepreneur
Location data and raw measurements in Android
IPR and patents in GNSS
Liability issues in GNSS
Railway high-integrity navigation overlay system (RHINOS)
Multi-frequency multi-system GNSS
Evolution of GNSS, in particular of the Galileo system
Satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) and receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM, ARAIM)
GNSS space service volume and deep space navigation
The summer school will be held in cooperation with the European Space Agency and the Joint Research Centre, as well as, ISAE Supaero, Stanford University and TU Graz.
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