IRNSS Success
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) successfully launched its first satellite on July 1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota spaceport on the Bay of Bengal. An Indian-built Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C22, XL version, carried the 1,425-kg satellite aloft.
IRNSS-1A is the first of seven satellites that will make up the new constellation: four satellites in geosynchronous orbits inclined at 29 degrees, with three more in geostationary orbit. IRNSS-1A is one of the geosynchronous satellites.
Following launch, the master control facility conducted five orbit maneuvers to position the satellite in its circular inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) with an Equator crossing at 55 degrees east longitude. Reports indicate that orbit-raising maneuvers have been completed, and all the spacecraft subsystems have been evaluated and are functioning normally.
IRNSS-1A’s drift eastward from 47 degrees east longitude on July 10 was gradually slowed, and the satellite achieved its assigned inclined geosynchronous orbit, with a 55-degree East equator crossing, by July 18. The orbit inclination is 27.03 degrees.
Payloads. IRNSS-1A carries two types of payloads, navigation and ranging. The navigation payload will operate in L5 band (1176.45 MHz) and S band (2492.028 MHz), using a Rubidium atomic clock. The ranging payload consists of a C-band transponder that facilitates accurate determination of the range of the satellite. IRNSS-1A also carries corner-cube retro-reflectors for laser ranging. Its mission life is 10 years.
GLONASS Bellyflop
A Russian Proton-M rocket carrying three GLONASS navigation satellites crashed soon after liftoff on July 2 from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome. About 10 seconds after takeoff at 02:38 UTC, the rocket swerved, began to correct, but then veered in the opposite direction. It then flew horizontally and started to come apart with its engines in full thrust. Making an arc in the air, the rocket plummeted to Earth and exploded on impact close to another launch pad used for Proton commercial launches.
Despite the loss, GLONASS still has a full operating constellation of 24 satellites.
The crash was broadcast live across Russia. Fears of a possible toxic fuel leak immediately surfaced following the incident, but no such leak has been confirmed. The rocket was initially carrying more than 600 tons of toxic propellants. No casualties or damage to surroundings structures or the town of Baikonur have been reported.
The crashed Proton-M rocket employed a DM-03 booster, which was being used for the first time since December 2010, when another Proton-M rocket with the same booster failed to deliver another three GLONASS satellites into orbit, crashing into the Pacific Ocean 1,500 kilometers from Honolulu.
A Russian government investigation revealed that at least “three of six angular rate sensors [on the booster stage] were installed incorrectly,” to be specific, upside-down. Examination of the wreckage discovered traces of forced, incorrect installation on three sensors. Assembly-line testing at the factory failed to detect the faulty installation.
Several videos of the crash are viewable online (YouTube).
First Live Broadcast of GPS CNAV Messages
By Oliver Montenbruck, Richard B. Langley, and Peter Steigenberger
Over the past several years, some users of the GPS navigation system have already benefitted from the addition of various new signals in addition to the legacy C/A- and P(Y)-code. With the introduction of the Block IIR-M satellites in 2005, a new civil signal (L2C) was transmitted on the L2 frequency, and a new signal on a new frequency (L5) was introduced as a standard signal with the Block IIF satellites beginning in 2010. These new signals provide direct access to dual-frequency observations and thus enable improved ionospheric corrections for civil, including aeronautical, users. In addition, a new Civil Navigation (CNAV) broadcast message has been defined in the GPS Interface Specifications (IS-GPS-200 and IS-GPS-705).
This message will be transmitted jointly on the L2C and L5 signals and provides a variety of useful new parameters. Compared to the legacy L1 C/A-code navigation message, the CNAV message also offers an increased flexibility concerning the type, sequence, and repeat rate of specific messages.
CNAV messages have already been broadcast over the past two years by the Michibiki (QZS-1) satellite of the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), which shares many aspects of the GPS signal design. In contrast to this, Block IIR-M and IIF GPS satellites have only transmitted dummy messages so far and a fully operational CNAV transmission is only foreseen once the ongoing modernization of the GPS control segment has been completed.
Triggered by various interest groups, the Global Positioning Systems Directorate has just conducted a first test campaign with live CNAV transmissions on L2C and L5 over the two-week period from June 15 to 29 (see Global Positioning System Modernized Civil Navigation (CNAV) Live-Sky Broadcast Test Plan.) It served as a first opportunity for end users and receiver manufacturers to test the decoding and use of the new messages under a wide range of different configurations.
CNAV messages have a common length of 300 data bits and are identified by a message type number that signifies their contents. The messages presently defined for GPS are summarized in Table 1. For QZSS, complementary messages have been established, which enable, among other features, a rebroadcast of GPS-specific data to QZSS users.
Table 1. Summary of CNAV message types transmitted by space vehicles (SVs). Messages marked by an asterisk were transmitted during the recent CNAV test campaign.
|
Message
Type
|
CNAV Message Title
|
Function/Purpose
|
|
0*
|
Default |
Default message (transmitted when no message data is available) |
|
10*
|
Ephemeris 1 |
SV position parameters for the transmitting SV |
|
11*
|
Ephemeris 2 |
SV position parameters for the transmitting SV |
|
12*
|
Reduced Almanac |
Reduced almanac data packets for seven SVs |
|
13
|
Clock Differential Correction |
SV clock differential correction parameters |
|
14
|
Ephemeris Differential Correction |
SV ephemeris differential correction parameters |
|
15*
|
Text |
Text (29 eight-bit ASCII characters) |
|
30*
|
Clock, Iono & Group Delay |
SV clock correction parameters, ionospheric and group delay correction parameters (inter-signal correction parameters) |
|
31
|
Clock & Reduced Almanac |
SV clock correction parameters, reduced almanac data packets for four SVs |
|
32*
|
Clock & EOP |
SV clock correction parameters, Earth orientation parameters; Earth-centered, Earth-fixed to Earth-centered inertial coordinate transformation |
|
33*
|
Clock & UTC |
SV clock correction parameters, Coordinated Universal Time parameters |
|
34
|
Clock & Differential Correction |
SV clock correction parameters, SV clock and ephemeris differential correction parameters |
|
35*
|
Clock & GGTO |
SV clock correction parameters, GPS to GNSS time-offset parameters |
|
36
|
Clock & Text |
SV clock correction parameters, text (18 eight-bit ASCII characters) |
|
37
|
Clock & Midi Almanac |
SV clock correction parameters, midi (mid-accuracy) almanac parameters |
Other than the legacy L1 navigation message, which adheres to a fixed order of subframes, the sequence of CNAV messages can be varied widely to provide users with an optimized set of low latency information and parameters that change infrequently. As a baseline, the two ephemeris message types 10 and 11 are combined with any of the clock-and-auxiliary data messages (types 30 through 37) to provide users with the orbit and clock data of the received satellites. With a transmission duration of 12 seconds per CNAV message on L2C, a minimum of 36 seconds is required to transfer this information to the user if no other messages are transmitted. On L5, which operates at twice the data rate, a new frame is transmitted once every 6 seconds yielding a minimum of 18 seconds for the broadcast of ephemeris and clock data.
The recent test campaign started at 18:00 GPS Time on Saturday, June 15, 2013, with the transmission of message types 10, 11, 15, and 30 on a first space vehicle (PRN24) and included PRN12 from 18:42 onwards. Other space vehicles were sequentially phased in until all active IIR-M and IIF satellites (except for the recently launched IIF-4 satellite) transmitted CNAV on the supported signals. When the test ended exactly two weeks later (June 29, 18:00 GPST), all participating satellites were transmitting a complex master frame of 15 x 4 = 60 individual messages, which was repeated once every 12 minutes (on L2C). Each minor frame comprised the two ephemeris messages and at least one clock-data message (see Table 2).
Table 2. Sequence of message types in a CNAV master frame.
|
Message Types
|
|
10
|
11
|
15
|
30
|
|
10
|
11
|
32
|
33
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
35
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
30
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
33
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
35
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
30
|
|
10
|
11
|
32
|
33
|
|
10
|
11
|
15
|
35
|
|
10
|
11
|
32
|
30
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
33
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
35
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
30
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
33
|
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
35
|
Other messages included a reduced almanac (message type 12) and a text message (message type 15) with dummy content (“THIS IS A GPS TEST MESSAGE.”)
The CNAV data were recorded by selected multi-GNSS monitoring stations of the German Aerospace Establishment (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt or DLR) and the University of New Brunswick (UNB), which were specifically configured to record raw GPS navigation frames in addition to the normal observation data. The stations are located at Singapore (SIN0); Sydney, Australia (UNX2); Maui, U.S.A. (MAO0); and Hartebeesthoek, South Africa (HRAG); as well as Fredericton, Canada (UNB) and are equipped with either Javad Delta-G2/G3TH or NovAtel OEM6 receivers. Following initial validation, the raw and decoded data from the CNAV test will be made available to interested users through the Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) of the International GNSS Service (see http:/igs.org/mgex/) to facilitate the development of user software and suitable data formats (such as an extended RINEX navigation message format).
The CNAV orbit and clock data were updated once every two hours and offer a slightly higher bit resolution than their legacy counterparts. However, the accuracy of the ephemeris data has not yet been evaluated nor compared to that of the L1 C/A-code navigation data.
As indicated above, the CNAV data can also provide a particularly compact form of almanac data known as the reduced almanac. It does not offer clock information (that is not normally required for a signal search) and assumes a circular orbit, which reduces the overall accuracy. Still, it can be transmitted (and repeated) in a much shorter time interval than the legacy almanac, which requires a total of 12.5 minutes. Each reduced almanac message (message type 12) provides orbit information for a total of seven satellites and it takes a set of five such messages to convey information for a complete constellation. For the master frame layout described above, the full constellation reduced almanac is repeated twice within 12 minutes on L2C (and half this time on L5).
Novel types of CNAV data not covered by the legacy navigation message include the differential code biases (also known as inter-system corrections or ISCs), which are required for pseudorange-based positioning with signals other than the legacy P(Y)-code (in addition to the established Timing Group Delay parameter or TGD). An overview of TGD and ISC values broadcast by the various satellites participating in the CNAV test is given in Table 3.
Table 3. Differential code biases (in nanoseconds) of GPS Block IIR-M and IIF satellites broadcast during the test campaign as part of the message type 30 CNAV messages.
|
SV Type
|
SVN
|
PRN
|
TGO
|
ISC L1CA
|
ISC L2C
|
ISC L5I5
|
ISC L5Q5
|
|
IIR-M
|
48
|
07
|
-10.71
|
-0.84
|
6.52
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
50
|
05
|
-10.24
|
-0.32
|
5.41
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
52
|
31
|
-13.04
|
-0.55
|
7.36
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
53
|
17
|
-10.24
|
-0.84
|
6.17
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
55
|
15
|
-10.24
|
-0.47
|
5.62
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
57
|
29
|
-9.31
|
-0.76
|
5.06
|
|
|
|
IIR-M
|
58
|
12
|
-12.11
|
-0.76
|
6.64
|
|
|
|
IIF
|
62
|
25
|
5.59
|
-2.07
|
-5.24
|
-0.38
|
-0.87
|
|
IIF
|
63
|
01
|
8.38
|
-2.30
|
-7.57
|
0.38
|
2.15
|
|
IIF
|
65
|
24
|
2.79
|
-0.26
|
-2.27
|
2.27
|
3.70
|
Another important achievement is the provision of Earth orientation parameters (EOP) in message 32, which provides GPS users with access to the celestial reference frame. EOPs were transmitted during the second test week and updated on a daily basis (see Table 4). Knowledge of these parameters is of particular interest for GPS-based orbit determination and navigation of spacecraft (in low Earth orbit), which is preferably referred to an inertial rather than an Earth-fixed coordinate system.
Table 4. Daily Earth orientation parameters from the CNAV test campaign (pole coordinates and dUT1 (UT1-UTC) time differences and derivatives).
|
Epoch (GPST)
|
x_p
(arcseconds)
|
x_p_dot
(arcseconds per day)
|
y_p
(arcseconds)
|
y_p_dot
(arcseconds per day)
|
dUT1
(seconds)
|
dUT1_dot
(seconds per day)
|
|
June 22, 0:00
|
0.13517
|
0.00104
|
0.39657
|
-0.00054
|
0.06341
|
-0.00046
|
|
June 23, 0:00
|
0.13621
|
0.00102
|
0.39604
|
-0.00056
|
0.06295
|
-0.00049
|
|
June 24, 0:00
|
0.13740
|
0.00101
|
0.39535
|
-0.00058
|
0.06231
|
-0.00053
|
|
June 25, 0:00
|
0.13815
|
0.00099
|
0.39487
|
-0.00060
|
0.06164
|
-0.00063
|
|
June 26, 0:00
|
0.13846
|
0.00096
|
0.39443
|
-0.00062
|
0.06078
|
-0.00067
|
|
June 27, 0:00
|
0.13885
|
0.00094
|
0.39381
|
-0.00064
|
0.06004
|
-0.00067
|
|
June 28, 0:00
|
0.13947
|
0.00093
|
0.39310
|
-0.00066
|
0.05909
|
-0.00063
|
|
June 29, 0:00
|
0.13987
|
0.00090
|
0.39246
|
-0.00068
|
0.05842
|
-0.00053
|
Overall, CNAV offers exciting prospects for improved GPS utilization and users may look forward to the next test campaigns, which will tentatively be conducted once every six months.
As a side note, it should be mentioned that individual satellites could be observed to transmit various types of non-standard CNAV messages as well as CNAV messages with improper data (such as an invalid week count) after the end of the main test campaign. Various receivers in the MGEX network, which were processing the received CNAV messages internally and which put full confidence in their proper contents, were mislead by such information. During the actual test campaign, all data appeared fully valid and no problems were reported by the stations.
OLIVER MONTENBRUCK is the head of the GNSS Technology and Navigation Group at DLR’s German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
RICHARD B. LANGLEY is a professor in the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
PETER STEIGENBERGER is a staff member in the Institut für Astronomische und Physikalische Geodäsie of the Technische Universität München (TUM) in Munich, Germany.
