GPS World

Tag: Galileo IOV

  • Directions 2023: Galileo Offers New Services

    Directions 2023: Galileo Offers New Services

    In 2022, the Galileo GNSS continued to provide the world’s most precise satellite navigation information, to a user base that stands at more than 3.5 billion worldwide. Furthermore, provided services continue to improve and expand, with plans for high-accuracy positioning and signal authentication now reaching fruition.

    The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) continue to enjoy an effective collaboration on the many development, deployment, and evolution activities of the Galileo Programme — each according to their respective responsibilities for service provision and system development with the European Commission (EC) acting as the program manager.

    Photo: Image 1 Directions 2023
    Ranging accuracy performance from January to September 2022.
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    Positioning-related MPLS from January to October 2022.

    New Services Launched in 2022

    Excellent Performance
    Service delivery operations and maintenance of operational systems are managed by EUSPA, which supervises many contracts that carry out the day-to-day activities from dedicated control and monitoring centers throughout Europe. In 2022, Galileo timing, navigation, and SAR/Galileo services were delivered with excellent performances that continue to exceed the formal declarations for minimum performance levels (MPL), which were increased in January, both in terms of absolute accuracy and overall service availability. The entry into service of two additional satellites in May and August, have further consolidated the overall service availability to end users.

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    Galileo FOC Batch 3 satellite under testing.

    Expansion of Service Portfolio
    The service provision teams have been able to focus on improvements to, and expansion of, the service portfolio.

    The I/NAV improvement will positively impact end users by enabling a faster time to first fix, and updates to the data validity status flags will lead to better protection of users against expired navigation data. These changes are implemented in updates of the onboard software of the satellites being rolled out across the constellation. At present, seven operational satellites have been successfully updated; the complete software upgrade campaign is planned to be completed this summer.

    Galileo’s new High Accuracy Service will provide free precise point positioning (PPP) corrections, in the Galileo E6-B data component and by terrestrial means, for Galileo and GPS (single and multi-frequency) to achieve real-time user position improved by up to 10 times. The infrastructure to support an initial service (Phase 1) is nearing completion, and the formal declaration of the service capabilities is planned for early this year.

    To provide users with a method of authenticating the received Galileo signals, especially the satellites ephemerides and the Galileo timing parameters, the new Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) service enables a receiver to confirm that a navigation message originated from the EU Galileo infrastructure. Many application areas are expected to benefit from this capability, including smart tachographs, telematics and logistics, UAVs, location-based services, and timing services. Having successfully demonstrated the technology behind the service in 2022, including a public observation phase, the roll-out of the Initial Service is planned to take place by the end of the year.

    A fourth Medium Earth Orbit Local User Terminal (MEOLUT) in La Réunion will extend the SAR/Galileo Forward Link Service Coverage Area over the Indian Ocean as part of the SAR/Galileo full operational capability (FOC) declaration expected in the first quarter of 2023. The Cospas-Sarsat commissioning of this new station was completed in September 2022, and operational data is already being distributed to Cospas-Sarsat.

    Reference documents for the above services can be found at the EUSPA European GNSS Service Centre website, including technical notes, interface control documents and service declaration documents.

    SAR/Galileo-related metrics from January to October 2022.
    SAR/Galileo-related metrics from January to October 2022.
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    Extension of the SAR/Galileo Forward Link Service Coverage Area over the Indian Ocean.

    FOC Infrastructure Development Nears Completion

    Satellite Production
    The production of the third batch of Galileo FOC satellites advanced further in 2022 with the completion of the environmental tests and the system compatibility test campaigns at the European Space Agency Test Centre in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. After 10 years of successful testing, on Oct.18, 2022, the last Galileo FOC satellite (flight model number 34) left the test center to return to the premises of the satellite manufacturer, OHB Systems, in Germany. Testing of the remaining 10 satellites has confirmed that they have been correctly built and will perform well in orbit. The acceptance review of the last couple of satellites will take place this summer.
    At the beginning of 2023, the plan is to start in-orbit testing of a quasi-pilot signal on the E5 frequency using the Galileo GSAT201/202 satellites in elliptical orbit. The provision of a signal offering coarse acquisition in Galileo E5-A/GPS L5 can be a distinguishing feature for Galileo with respect to all other constellations to further improve the capability to acquire the E5 signal at low complexity. Following in-orbit testing, the strategy for roll-out of this capability will be assessed with the involvement of receiver manufacturers.

    New SAR Galileo MEOLUT Facility in Réunion island
    New SAR Galileo MEOLUT facility in Réunion island.

    Access to Space
    The discontinuation of Soyuz launch services from the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana, because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, has caused delays in the two Galileo launches that had been planned for 2022. The Launch 12 campaign had to be interrupted and in March 2022 the FM25 and 26 satellites were put in storage at the Kourou launch base, then returned to Europe in November.
    Ariane 6 is the baseline launcher for Galileo satellites to ensure European independent access to space. The remaining Batch 3 satellites will be launched with the Ariane 62 launcher vehicle, the two strap-on solid booster variants of Ariane 6, now undergoing the final stages of development led by prime contractor Ariane Group. Ariane 6’s maiden flight is scheduled to take place in the fourth quarter of 2023.

    Ground Segment
    An upgrade of the ground control segment, in charge of command and control of the satellite constellation, is being developed by the industrial consortium led by GMV. The upgrades will address resolution of hardware and software obsolescence including cyber security, operability improvements, and a security monitoring overlay.

    With the planned increase in the number of satellites in orbit, an additional telemetry tracking and control facility (TTCF) is being deployed in Kourou leading to seven operational TTCF stations in early 2023.

    The ground mission segment, in charge of navigation control, is undergoing a complete technological refresh, including hardware/software virtualization performed by an industrial consortium led by Thales France. This upgrade will provide additional robustness, including a system extended contingency mode resilient to outages lasting up to seven days and a new state-of-the-art cyber security monitoring system. It will also provide ranging authentication through encrypted codes on the E6-C signal component for the implementation of the Commercial Authentication Service. Global coverage will be further increased with the introduction of two Galileo sensor stations in Wallis (Pacific Ocean) and Bonaire (Caribbean Sea), for a total of 15 sites around the globe.

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    OSNMA-related metrics from January to October 2022.

    G2G Development Started

    Galileo’s second generation (G2G) will introduce many innovative technologies to offer unprecedented precision, robustness, and flexibility.
    2022 was a key year for the evolution of G2G activities with the fast development cycles of the first batch of G2 satellites, beginning development of the associated G2G in orbit validation (IOV) ground segment and system test beds, and the consolidation of the G2G final system capabilities — including the coordination of the mission/service roadmaps with the EC, EUSPA, and the EU Member States delegates.

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    Ariane 62 launcher.

    G2G Satellite Manufacturing
    From the satellite development point of view, the two parallel contracts to develop and manufacture each of the six G2G batch one (G2SB1) satellites are progressing in a fast development environment, with the first hardware units ready for integration and testing.
    Following the completion of preliminary design review, these two contracts (for six satellites each) are preparing for unit-level validation/testing, which will lead to the critical design review.

    These satellites will provide the following key innovations:

    • Reconfigurable fully digital navigation payload
    • Point-to-point connection between satellites by inter-satellite-link for command and control, and ranging functionalities
    • Electric propulsion for orbit-raising capabilities
    • Advanced jamming and spoofing protection mechanisms to safeguard.

    The Galileo signals will improve with:

    • On-board authentication capabilities
    • Increased ground-to-space data rate
    • Improved time reference (number of clocks and advanced clock monitoring functions).

    G2G IOV Procurements
    2022 was also the year in which two key events took place with respect to G2G in-orbit validation (IOV) ground segment and system test bed procurements:

    • Finalization of the procurement cycle, now in the final evaluation/award phase, to be kicked off in the first quarter of this year
    • Confirmation of the IOV design through different coordinated actions with the EC and EUSPA, including the G2 system preliminary design review.
    • The contracts will provide Europe with the following capabilities:
    • G2SB1 satellite launch and early orbit phase, in-orbit testing and enhanced legacy services provision
    • G2 new capabilities in-orbit validation, including prototyping and validation of all the novel technologies that can exploit the full capabilities of the G2SB1 satellites.

    Eleven contracts will be issued to manage in synchrony all the G1 and G2 assets for the coming years:

    • G2 IOV ground control segment (G2 GCS) for satellites monitoring and control
    • G2 IOV ground mission segment/secured facility (G2 GMS-GSF) for the production, dissemination and monitoring of all enhanced legacy services and the dissemination of new G2 advanced capabilities for validation
    • G2 IOV security monitoring (G2 SECMON), for the cyber/security monitoring of the system
    • G2 filling device (G2 FD), to ensure proper initialization of system assets
    • G2 system test bed (G2STB), to generate and monitor new G2 capabilities for validation of the G2G mission/services
    • G2 PRS test bed (G2PRSTB), similar to G2 system test bed but focused on advanced PRS capabilities for validation purposes
    • G2 security chain (G2SC), a test bed to ensure proper satellite-ground segment qualification before launch
    • Four system engineering support contracts (G2 SETA), where the main GNSS technical experts from different industries in Europe provide their support to ESA and EUSPA in their different fields of expertise.
    • These contracts are complemented by a significant set of system research and development and test tools, such as test user receivers and radio frequency constellation simulators.
    Photo:
    G2G batch number one (G2SB1) satellites.

    Galileo Second Generation System PDR
    The Galileo Programme is not only focusing on short-term G2G development activities, but also looking forward to the future in terms of the consolidation and definition of G2G final operation capabilities. During the second half of 2022, more than 200 public representatives from the EC, EUSPA, ESA and Member States held countless meetings in the frame of the G2G system preliminary design review, which concluded in early December 2022.

    As part of this review, the long-term implementation (G2G in orbit capability, or IOC, and final operational capability, or FOC) was reviewed and an agreement was reached on future steps. The evolution of Galileo capabilities will not only provide better services through advanced technical solutions, but will also ensure continuity of service and enhanced backward compatibility for first-generation legacy users.

    Conclusions
    The efforts of ESA and EUSPA continue with the aim of providing users continuous and stable services and evolving space and ground infrastructure to maintain Galileo competitiveness with the other global navigation satellite systems.

    For analogous updates on the other three GNSS constellations, please see:

  • 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.

  • Arianespace, ESA Sign Contract for New Galileo Launches

    Arianespace, ESA Sign Contract for New Galileo Launches

    Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA), acting on behalf of the European Commission, have signed a contract for three launch services with Ariane 5 ES to step up deployment of Galileo satellites.

    With this new launch contract and thanks to the performance of Ariane 5 ES, a total of 12 Galileo FOC (Full Operational Capability) satellites will be launched using three dedicated Ariane 5 ES launch vehicles, each carrying four satellites. The Ariane 5 ES launches will take place from 2015 onwards.

    Arianespace will be responsible for ensuring all of the 22 FOC satellites manufactured by the German group OHB System alongside the British company Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. are taken into circular orbit at an altitude of 23,522 km using a combination of five Soyuz launch vehicles (two satellites per launch) and three Ariane 5 ES launch vehicles (four satellites per launch). The 22 operational satellites will join the four IOV satellites launched successfully by Arianespace from the Guiana Space Center in 2011 and 2012.

    Arianespace and its subsidiary Starsem were responsible for launching in 2005 and 2008 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome the initial satellites in the Galileo constellation, GIOVE-A and GIOVE-B, which were able to secure the frequencies allocated to the constellation.

    The contract for Arianespace’s three Ariane 5 launches to orbit a total of 12 Galileo FOC satellites was signed at the Guiana Space Center by Chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël (seated, at left) and Didier Faivre, ESA director of the Galileo Program and Navigation-related Activities. Joining them were ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Daniel Calleja Crespo, director general for Enterprise and Industry, European Commission.
    The contract for Arianespace’s three Ariane 5 launches to orbit a total of 12 Galileo FOC satellites was signed at the Guiana Space Center by Chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël (seated, at left) and Didier Faivre, ESA director of the Galileo Program and Navigation-related Activities. Joining them were ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Daniel Calleja Crespo, director general for Enterprise and Industry, European Commission.

    Once the contract had been signed, Stéphane Israël, chairman and CEO of Arianespace, made the following statement: “With its Ariane 5 ES heavy-lift launch-vehicle, Arianespace is able to provide the most appropriate solution for stepping up the deployment of the entire Galileo constellation. Ariane has once again demonstrated its excellence as it lends its expertise to Europe’s ambitions in space. With the three Ariane, Vega and Soyuz launch-vehicles operated from the Guiana Space Center, European spaceport, Arianespace is giving Europe guaranteed access to space and suitable solutions to meet its wide-ranging needs. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the European Commission and European Space Agency (ESA) for their continued trust. Being the launch operator of the Galileo program is an immense source of pride for Arianespace, its employees and its partners.”

  • ESA Discusses Galileo Satellite Power Loss, Upcoming Launch

    During the European Space Agency (ESA) audio press conference held Wednesday morning in advance of Thursday’s launch of two Galileo satellites, there was extended discussion on the problem with the fourth in-orbit validation or IOV satellite (FM4 or GSAT0104 with PRN code E20). The satellite suffered a power anomaly on May 27 as previously reported by GPS World.

    The root cause of the problem has still not been identified despite looking at more than 40 possible failure scenarios so far. ESA has conducted extensive analyses of telemetry from the satellite as well as reviews of pre-launch tests. It has been determined, however, that the E5 and E6 frequencies have had a permanent loss of power. E1 appears to be OK and can be switched back into normal operation at any time. Currently, the satellite is transmitting on E1 but using a non-standard test code.

    It was also revealed that FM2, the second IOV satellite, suffered a power drop of 2 dB about a year ago, and FM1, the first IOV satellite, has also seen a power drop. In the case of FM1, the problem is in the primary solid-state power amplifier, and there is a plan to switch shortly to the back-up unit. However, there doesn’t appear to be a common-mode of failure relating the power losses on the various satellites.

    While the FM4 anomaly investigations are ongoing, the power on all of the IOV satellites has been backed off 1.5 dB.

    Concerning the two full operational capability or FOC satellites to be launched tomorrow, ESA is not yet revealing into which orbit plane and slots the satellites will be placed. Nor are they saying yet which pseudorandom noise codes will be used by the satellites. Once the satellites are launched into their preliminary orbits, it will take about two weeks for them to drift to their assigned locations. At that time, we should be able to deduce their locations using, for example, United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) tracking data. And once they begin transmitting standard PRN codes, all-in-view receivers, such as those participating in the International GNSS Service Multi-GNSS Experiment, will be able to identify their codes.

    The satellites will undergo testing for 73 days, after which they will be declared operational. ESA intends to use the passive hydrogen maser clocks on the satellites as the primary clocks, with the rubidium clocks used as back-ups.

     

  • Power Loss Created Trouble Aboard Galileo Satellite

    Power Loss Created Trouble Aboard Galileo Satellite

    In an update to our July 2 story (recapped below), correspondent Peter de Selding wrote in Space News on July 3 that the trouble aboard the fourth in-orbit (IOV) Galileo satellite arose from a sudden, unexpected loss of power. The power outage flashed on May 27, shutting down the satellite’s E1 signal. The signal “re-established itself almost immediately. But as soon as it was back in service, the two other channels’ power dropped and did not recover. The full satellite then was shut down by ground teams,” reported de Selding.

    European Space Agency (ESA) officials stated on July 3 that they would power-on the satellite again sometime this week (July 7–11) to continue investigating the problem. That investigation has been ongoing since the shutdown but has not identified a cause; officials state they have established that it is not related to the onboard atomic clocks.

    The four IOV satellites currently aloft differ in both technology and manufacturer from the next phase of Galileo satellites to be launched. Two of these newer generation are at the Guyana spaceport awaiting a possible late August lift date.

    ________________________

    July 2 GPS World story:

    Galileo GSAT0104, the fourth in-orbit validation (IOV) satellite, has been set “unavailable until further notice” according to the European GNSS Service Centre. International observers (not associated with the European Space Agency, ESA) including those of the International GNSS Service tracking the satellite have not detected a signal from GSAT0104 since May 27. A constellation update appeared June 26 at www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/Constellation-Information, and is reproduced here.

    Speculation by unofficial sources is mounting that something is wrong with the satellite, in particular with its passive hydrogen maser, used for timing the signal for synchronous transmission with other Galileo satellites. The hydrogen maser has “a known problem” according to one source. This is why the web site shows GSAT0104, also known as FM04 and E20, as currently using a rubidium atomic frequency standard.

    No statement has been made by the ESA.

    According to reports, the root cause of the outage is under investigation. Some unofficial sources have gone so far as to speculate that GSAT0104’s useful transmission life may be over.

    GalileoStatus-W2

    The setting of unavailability may be due to in-orbit validation testing, as the website implies may be the case, but no further official statement has appeared. On May 27, an active user notifications (NAGU) appeared at www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/user-notifications regarding GSAT0104 stating ” Unavailable from 2014-05-27 until further notice.” On June 26, another NAGU appeared for “All” satellites and stating “potential performance degradation.” A footnote states “The Galileo system is undergoing its in-orbit validation campaign. During this campaign of tests, users may experience periods of signal degradation.”

    According to the ESA website, “The Galileo satellites carry two types of clocks: rubidium atomic frequency standards and passive hydrogen masers. The stability of the rubidium clock is so good that it would lose only three seconds in one million years, while the passive hydrogen maser is even more stable and it would lose only one second in three million years. However this kind of stability is really needed, since an error of only a few nanoseconds (billionths of a second) on the Galileo measurements would produce a positioning error of metres which would not be acceptable.”

    Tim Reynolds is director of Inta Communication Ltd. and a long-term Brussels observer writing on many aspects of European government policy and implementation for a range of clients and publications. He is the contributing editor for GPS World’s new quarterly e-newsletter, EAGER: the European GNSS and Earth Observation Report. Subscribe free at env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/subscribe.

     

  • Europe Weighs Mandate of Galileo Chips in Mobile Phones

    The European Commission is considering a requirement for mobile phones, and perhaps other portable devices such as tablets, to be equipped with Galileo receivers that would automatically send location data as part of any emergency call to 112.

    E112 is a location-enhanced version of the 112 universal European emergency services number via telephone, equivalent to 911 in the United States, in which the telecoms operator receiving the call for help transmits location information to the emergency dispatch center, which has further connection to police, firefighters, medical, and other emergency services.

    A European Union Directive on E112 requires all mobile phone networks to provide emergency services with available information on the location of the caller. Currently this data is the cell id, which is of limited use in localising a call as, for example, in rural areas where the mobile cell may have a radius of two to twenty kilometres — not very helpful for police or medical emergency crews in finding someone in distress.

    Whether the Commission (EC) should mandate Galileo, or take a different option, is currently the subject of consultation.  The EC convoked a public hearing  in Brussels in May to chew over the pros and cons.

    Legal Obligation

    The Commission has a legal obligation to look at potential activities that can maximise the societal benefits of Europe’s huge investment in satellite navigation technologies such as Galileo and EGNOS. It is also tasked to assess how these technologies could reinforce Europe’s economic infrastructure. To me, the E112 mandate is a low-hanging fruit ready to be picked, and the majority of stakeholders who voiced an opinion at the hearing evinced great enthusiasm for the proposal.

    Interestingly, the regulatory route to achieve a mandated use of Galileo for E112 would be via a delegated act; the relevant radio equipment and telecommunication directives are already effectively in place. This means that if the Commission decides to mandate, it can do so without the need for further regulation.

    Mandating a specific GNSS system for a regional service of this type is not a new idea. Russia and China have both done so. As Richard Catmur of Spirent Communications put it: “We are not seeing Galileo being pushed like GLONASS and Beidou in the market. We need input from this forum.”

    Justyna Redelkiewicz of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) outlined some technical reasons for mandating Galileo. Over and above (yet to be fully proved) improved accuracy, availability. and a faster time to first fix, the likely inclusion of signal authentification in the Galileo open service would reduce any impact of spoofing — a very useful characteristic in what is essentially a safety-critical system.

    Johannes Vallesverd, who chairs the group within the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, Electronic Communications Committee tasked with delivering harmonisation of the 112 number across Europe, was also very positive: “We need to talk about how we could be saving lives Europe.” He advocated a proactive and rapid decision.

    This was reinforced by Gary Machado, CEO of the European Emergency Number Association (EENA). He estimated the annual economic cost of the delays induced by inaccurate location data at more than €4 billion across Europe. In contrast, the cost of implementing a system to relay GNSS location from equipped smart phones was of the order of €250 million. Economically, it is a no-brainer.

    Bruno Gagnou from Thales Alenia also thought that GNSS — and specifically Galileo — gives the right answer for E112 positioning. “The technology is reliable and accurate,” he said, “with obvious benefits for society. Lives will be saved, the security of citizens enhanced due to quicker intervention, and European industry will be supported.” He noted that this was also the experience in the United States when the enhanced 911 regulation was introduced.

    Gagnou thought that Galileo should be mandated in order to ensure a harmonised approach across Europe and avoid an anarchic, non-compliant deployment of technologies for E112. “EU emergency services should rely on EU technology,” he concluded. “EU citizens deserve the best E112 emergency service.” Galileo should be favoured, all mobile devices should be addressed, but this will require mandating. It seems to me that the Commission will agree with him.

    Quantum Navigation: Ultra-Cold Alternative to GNSS?

    Some potential future tech! The Quantum Timing, Navigation and Sensing Showcase at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in mid-May highlighted the possible use of quantum technology for highly accurate timekeeping and advanced, GNSS-independent, navigation. This so-called second quantum revolution’\ could make a big impact on the field of Timing, Navigation and Sensing (TNS) through technology based on ultra-cold, laser-cooled atoms.

    The meeting was organised by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL). It presented a number of research projects including a table-top quantum accelerometer designed to provide ultra-precise, highly reliable positional data for submerged submarines.

    As we know, GNSS does not work well underwater, so submarines navigate using accelerometers to register every twist and turn of the submerged vessel relative to its last surface GNSS fix.

    “Today, if a submarine goes a day without a GPS fix, we’ll have a navigation drift of the order of a kilometre when it surfaces,” said Neil Stansfield of DSTL. “A quantum accelerometer will reduce that to just one metre.”

    Once chilled to an ultra-cold state, the rubidium atoms in the accelerometer achieve a quantum state that is easily perturbed by an outside force. Another laser can then be used to track these perturbations and calculate the size of the outside force, and therefore the relative position.

    At present, such devices are only found in the laboratory, but research is pushing past classical physical limits towards optimal performance, as scientists investigate miniaturisation and the potential use of new materials to reduce costs and increase the practicality of the devices. Following land trials in late 2015, it is anticipated that a sea-going version will be demonstrated in a British sub during 2016.

    ”The defence industry often acts as a pioneer in the development of new technologies. The potential benefits of a future in which we can navigate by inner space rather than outer space will impact both the military and civilian world,” commented Neil Stansfield.

    Bob Cockshott from NPL said: “Whilst the most immediate applications are in the defence field, future quantum navigation technologies could also have significant civilian applications across a wide variety of activities, covering high frequency trading, network synchronisation, robust and ubiquitous navigation, geo-surveying, and mineral prospecting. With the first applications potentially ready for market in five years, now is the critical moment time to consider the opportunities provided by quantum.”

    Cockshott points out that chip-scale atomic clocks using similar principles are here now from Microsemi in the United States —  indeed, they have been integrated with GPS in some U.S. military applications — and can provide low-power, low-cost hold-over for timing applications. He expects to see European designs on the market within five years and a steady improvement in capability thereafter.

    “Cold atom accelerometers may also appear in high-value (probably military) applications within five years. These could form the basis of a quantum compass,” he predicts .

    GPS-like progression. He envisages something like the progression seen in GPS receivers from expensive military equipment to high-value professional users and then mass-market. DSTL and the UK’s Technology Strategy Board are working hard to get industrial suppliers of support equipment and of quantum devices working as quickly as possible to get these technologies to market, and consumer devices are certainly the ultimate aim.

    “I would see these technologies as complements to GNSS, at least in the short and medium term, providing hold-over in poor GNSS environments (such as urban canyons etc) and capability where GNSS will never work — in tunnels, for example,” comments Cockshott.

    Of course companies like Google would like to guide city dwellers through urban underground metro systems, switching seamlessly to GNSS when they step out into the open air. “The quantum compass will not of course provide position fixes, only information about positional changes from a known starting point,” he points out.

    However, in the long term, such gravity sensors combined with detailed maps of the Earth’s gravitational field may be able to provide GNSS-free positioning and navigation. Militaries are interested in this option because there is no known physics that could jam or spoof such sensors. “But it’s hard to see them matching the precision available from GNSS,” he concludes.

    Galileo First Fixers

    The European Space Agency (ESA)  handed out certificates to the first 50 global citizens to determine their position using only the Galileo system. They got responses from around the world.

    While half the applications for certificates came from Galileo’s home continent, Europe, others first-fixers came from Australia to Canada, Egypt to Vietnam.

    The first positioning fix using only Europe’s civil-owned navigation system took place at ESA’s Navigation Laboratory in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, on March 12,2013.

    The Galileo team knew of fixes being performed on an informal basis, so to mark the anniversary of the first positioning fix they decided to issue commemorative certificates to groups who had picked up the signals to perform their own fixes. Teams were asked to include details of the receiver they used, the start and finish of the fixes in Universal Time Coordinated (UTC), and a plot of their latitude/longitude positioning overlaid on a map.

    Italy turned out to be the single best represented country in Europe, with six separate fixes, followed closely by Germany and the UK with five  each. Several groups had achieved fixes on the same day as ESA in 2013.

    Most of the employed receivers were software-based radio systems, with signal processing performed by software on a computer linked to a radio-frequency front end. Professional receivers were also customised for the job.

    “Most of the applications were obtained with static receivers and simple position fixes with Galileo’s Open Service signals,” explains Galileo engineer Gaetano Galluzzo.

    Belgium’s Royal Military Academy performed Galileo’s first position fix at sea, aboard Belgian frigate Leopold-I, while sailing along the Norwegian coast.

    A German telecom company made use of the satellite signals for timing and network synchronisation – one of the most important applications of Galileo will be as a nanosecond-scale time source, enabling the effective synching of financial, power and data networks around the globe.

    Finally

    Talking of fixes – has anyone heard anything from Galileo GSAT0104 recently? According to the European GNSS Service Centre, the fourth IOV satellite is “unavailable until further notice.” The setting of unavailability may be due to in-orbit validation testing, as the website implies may be the case, but no further official statement has appeared, nor active user notifications (NAGUs) at http://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/user-notifications.

    There have been a number of NAGUs over the past couple of months concerning outages and, at different times, one or more of the Galileo satellites have been off line while this extended period of testing takes place.

    A bientôt, as they say in these parts.

  • Occupy Media Space Now EGNOS and Galileo Mission

    By Peter de Selding

    The message to the recent European Space Solutions conference in Prague was simple enough: EGNOS is here, so let’s use it; Galileo is almost here, so let’s promote it.

    Neither task is straightforward.

    Take the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), the European piece of a near-global network of terminals on geostationary satellites linked to networks of ground stations to verify GPS signal accuracy, primarily for aviation but with further applications as well. Other pieces of this global network are the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) in the United States, the System for Differential Corrections and Monitoring (SDCM) in Russia,  GPS-aided GEO-augmented Navigation (GAGAN) in India, and Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS) in Japan.

    EGNOS is operational. It works. Once airports publish the required specificafions for localizer performance with vertical guidance (LPVs), aircraft with EGNOS terminals ultimately will be able to use EGNOS for flight terminations up to as low as 200 feet above the runway. Gone is the need for runway infrastructure, and welcome to the long-promised world of satellite-based augmentation systems. “It offers cheap solutions for precision approach,” said Fabio Gamba, chief executive of the European Business Aviation Association.

    In the United States, where business aviation is a bigger market than in Europe, some 3,400 LPVs have been published for 1,670 airports. In Europe, the equivalent figure is 108 LPVs at 77 airports.

    Why the sluggish response? Gamba cited a long list of issues, including some that appeared more political than technical. Part of the reason, some said, was that the EGNOS backers, including the company under contract to manage the system — European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP) of Toulouse, France — have not done enough to get the word out.

    After all, these observers said, EGNOS suffered multiple delays, and its bigger younger brother, Galileo, has had bad press for years as its business model, ownership, regulatory backing, and schedule took turns in making eyes roll in Europe.

    But that’s yesterday’s issue. Thierry Racaud, chief executive of ESSP, said EGNOS posted greater than 99 percent availability in May for its safety-of-life service, which is currently available on none of the other regional GPS augmentation systems except WAAS.

    Racaud promised that the 108 LPVs signed so far would grow to 180 by the end of this year, and that 200-foot level approaches would be certified by late 2015. He said he hoped all 28 member nations of the European Union would have concluded their EGNOS regulatory approvals by 2017 or 2018.

    “What we need now is more users,” Racaud said.

    If EGNOS is not well known on its home turf, imagine its status in Africa, where European companies are trying to sell its adoption. Abdel Nasser Saint’Anna, director of the EGNOS-Africa Joint Program Office, said Africa should be Exhibit A for an EGNOS success pitch. Of the 2,500 runways in Africa, he said, only 177 were equipped with instrument landing systems (ILS), the system EGNOS and Galileo ultimately would like to replace.

    Galileo, with Four, in Fourth

    Galileo, too, appears headed for a successful adoption in many areas around the world even if, once operational, it likely will be the fourth global GNSS system in place, after GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and China’s BeiDou — not counting the large regional Indian and Japanese systems now being developed.

    For those with scorecards, recall that four Galileo satellites, designed to validate the system’s performance, are in orbit. Carlos des Dorides, director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) in Prague, said tests in May proved Galileo’s interoperability with GPS.

    More importantly, des Dorides said the tests demonstrated how much better it is for consumers when their terminals access GPS and Galileo together. That should be obvious. Less obvious: Results were much better than with terminals tracking both GPS and GLONASS, he said.

    The more satellites, the better? Yes, at least up to a point. Whether terminal manufacturers will see fit to incorporate all four global GNSS constellations, plus one or two of the regionals, in their hardware remains to be seen.

    But the pent-up demand for Galileo does now seem better than it was as little as a year ago, despite the fact that some Asian nations attending the conference said they need Galileo to demonstrate its vitality sooner rather than later. Some officials said signal-quality issues with Beidou, and the recent GLONASS outage, will more than make up for Galileo’s delays as long as deployment progress is visible.

    The fact remains that by 2020 there will be more than 100 GNSS satellites in medium-Earth orbit, in addition to the augmentation terminals on geostationary satellites.

    A graphic presented by SpaceTec Partners’ Rainer Horn, whose company has been charged with preparing the Asian market for Galileo, showed just how dense the Asian skies will be with GNSS assets at the end of the decade. India, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are SpaceTec’s current Asian targets.

    The message from these markets: Launch Galileo now. Drum up support. Occupy the media space.

    Did the European Commission get the message? Time will tell. The next opportunity to wave the Galileo flag comes in late August, when the first two of 22 full-operational-capability satelllites will be launched from Europe’s spaceport in South America. Two more are scheduled to follow late this year.

    Eight satellites in orbit by Christmas will not make an operational service, whatever the brochures say. But does that matter? Galileo now has secure funding, through 2020, for most — not all — of what it needs to launch a full constellation. Absent a new issue, by 2017 few will remember the delays.

    Paul Weissenberg of the European Commission, who has seen the Galileo wars up close, reminded the European Space Solutions audience in Prague that one future Galileo customer sits outside the commission’s offices, waiting for approval to use Galileo’s PRS encrypted service. The U.S. Defense Department’s desire for Galileo does not have an expiration date. Just launch it.

  • GNSS Future Glimpsed at Summit in Munich

    The Munich Satellite Navigation Summit annually gathers people involved with GNSS from around the world to report on current status and progress of the multiple systems. It is a high-level briefing of significant global importance. Of course Europe, Germany, Bavaria, and the European GNSS industry, now recognized around the world, all take the opportunity to present their capabilities and successes.

    This year’s Summit covered a lot of ground, and I’ve tried to do it justice in this column. For an overview, here are the main topics covered in what follows:

    • Opening Plenary
    • Constellation Updates
    • Regional and Augmentation Updates
    • Bavarian Highlights
    • GNSS Interference
    • Legal impacts of Personal Privacy Devices (PPDs)
    • Precise Point Positioning (PPP)
    • Future of GNSS in the User Segment

    I used to spend quite a lot of time in Munich working on a multi-national, multi-role fighter aircraft program, so returning for this year’s Summit stirred some good memories for me.

    Held in the opulent Residenz Muenchen, the conference derives a special atmosphere from these historic surroundings, some dating back to 1385.  The former royal palace of Bavarian monarchs, the labyrinthine palace has ten courtyards and 130 rooms. Overall, this is a delightful setting.

    Regional Flavor. Munich is in the southern German state of Bavaria, and Bavaria has taken a real interest in the promotion and success of Galileo; witness the expansive Bavarian booth at recent European and North American GNSS conferences, and the siting of a Galileo control center in Oberpfaffenhoffen, once a sleepy village in the Bavarian countryside 20 kilometers outside Munich, but now a significant high-tech research center with many aerospace facilities. Germany has of course been one of the lead nations funding Galileo from its inception.

    Opening Plenary: A View from the Top

    The host of the Summit is actually the University of the German Federal Army in Munich, and we received a warm welcome from two leading professors – Dr. Eissfeller and Dr. Niehuss, the president.

    The theme of the Summit is to move from implementation to utilization, and in typical European form, all parties were looking to shower potential users with funded solutions to problems of which users are not yet aware — so users clearly need government-provided education, pilot projects, and funding. Not exactly a North American concept, where we tend to encourage users to buy our innovative stuff by demonstrating how it can save them money or earn them more revenue. But there’s a city called Rome over here . . .

    The opening plenary session covered GNSS, Earth Observation (EO) and Telecommunications — an extensive mandate — with a panel headed by Ilse Aigner, Bavarian State Minister of Economic Affairs and Media, Energy and Technology, an equally extensive portfolio, even for a state-certified engineer who used to work for Eurocopter.

    The European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Agency (DLR), the European GNSS Agency (GSA), and leading manufacturers Airbus, OHB (providers of the Galileo full-operational capability (FOC) satellites), and Telespazio were also represented. The Minister did indeed associate with and praise the local area, claimed 1,000 jobs created related to Galileo through an incubation center at Oberpfaffenhofen, and declared whole-hearted Bavarian support for satellite navigation.

    Among important matters mentioned by the plenary panel:

    • an €11 billion budget for Galileo/EGNOS and Copernicus (an EO project) under the Horizon 2020 program;
    • an intent to declare Early Service for Galileo before the end of this year with two or three dual Galileo satellite launches.

    Two Launches this Year. The first two FOC (production) SVs should go to the European launch center in Kourou in April in preparation for launch around June.  I heard in a corridor that launches may be planned for June, October and December, but an EU spokesman later said that there would only be two launches this year. OHB now has the contract to build 22 FOC Galileo SVs, each with a design life of 14 years, and they are bullish on their ability to deliver on time and budget.

    Constellation Updates

    • GPS. An estimated 2 billion GPS receivers are in use, and there may be ~10 billion by 2020. A return-on-investment (RoI) analysis is currently underway, but a rough guess is that costs are in the tens of $Billions, while annual returns are of the order of $60–100B/year. Another IIF satellite (SV) launched last month brought the total to 5 SVs transmitting L1, L2C, and L5 – with 7 more to come, and multiple launches are expected this year. There are 30 operational SVs on orbit. Signal performance significantly exceeds the specs, and consistent, dependable performance has been provided for more than 20 years.
    • Galileo. First fix achieved 12 March, 2013 with four SVs, two (maybe three?) launches of two SVs each planned for 2014 & early operational capability to be declared by end of this year. €7B funding provisioned for 2014-2020, 16-24 operational ground stations, Commercial Service (CS) planned by 2016 (more on this later), and a long-term evolution plan is being worked up during this year.
    • BeiDou. 14 SVs are on orbit: 5 geosynchronous orbit (GEO), 4 mid-Earth orbit (MEO) similar to GPS and other GNSS birds, and 5 inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO), together providing dual-frequency services. 30 total SVs are planned, and the intent is to provide open, compatible, interoperable signals with other GNSS, free of charge. There was not much other news to report, other than China intends to invest significantly in BeiDou to keep improving services.
    • GLONASS.  Russian delegates were notably absent, and there was much speculation that they declined to attend due to the Crimean situation. One U.S. delegate even inferred that they were ‘un-invited.’
    • United Nations ICG. Nine nations and the European Union = International Committee on GNSS (ICG), with 20 other associate and observer states.  Activities include GNSS compatibility/interoperability, GNSS enhancements, information sharing, and reference frames, timing & applications – lots of upcoming meetings and activities (see associated story).

    Regional & Augmentation Updates

    • WAAS (the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System). Phase IV is underway with GEO replenishment begun, introduction of L5 to replace L2, and replacement of obsolete component parts. 100 GIII receivers were ordered with L1/L2C and L5 capability for delivery by September this year– and have capacity to also add Galileo. GIII receivers have already been fielded in six locations as part of initial integration testing. The Safety computer will also be upgraded starting this year.  3,912 LP/LPV approaches have been approved, of which 3,379 LPVs serve 1,667 Airports.
      GBAS CAT I is progressing with four US airport installations, system design approval began in January this year, and United Airlines has begun equipping more than 90 B737/B787 for GPS approach and landing. Alternative Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT) investigations are underway (as a backup to GPS) with a hybrid DME-pseudolite configuration currently favored. Stanford University subsequently presented this and other concepts.
    • EGNOS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service).  €1.58B budget approved, EGNOS V3 evolution is underway – introduction of L1/L5 and GEO (SES 5 and Astra 5B) replenishment, a requirement to expand East and West and to the North to provide full coverage to all EU States.There are ~100 EGNOS LPV approaches approved, this year it is hoped to add 150 more.
    • QZSS (Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System). Operational concept has been proven with 1st IGSO SV (Michibiki), so Japan is moving forward quickly to add another 3 SVs  (3xIGSO and 1xGEO) and ultimately would like to have a total of seven SVs in orbit providing QZSS services. L1/L1C/L2C/L5 signals are identical to GPS and L1s/L5s are augmentation signals, while L6 is proposed to be similar to Galileo E6, providing cm level PPP type service. QZSS essentially is intended to provide higher-elevation satellites to improve urban navigation in dense cities.
    • IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System).  Coverage extends 1500 kilometers beyond India’s land area, target is <20m accuracy, signals are in L5 and S band and can be used independently or in dual frequency combinations. A 2nd IRNSS-1B GEO satellite is scheduled to launch on April 4th.
    • GAGAN – The Indian SBAS was commissioned and certified in February this year with a number of ground stations, redundant uplinks and two on-orbit GSAT 8 & 10 GEOs. Gagan is now qualified to provide RNP0.1 (navigation accuracy to 0.1 miles).

    Bavarian Highlights

    A collection of examples of Bavarian GNSS innovations followed in a very interesting session led off by an overview of Business Incubation Centers and their collaboration with government agencies and research centers. Small business start-ups are encouraged to apply during four annual time-slots, and receive two years’ incubation support and cash incentives.  This has lead to 81 new ventures and has apparently been the source of the 1,000 new jobs mentioned by the Minister of Economic Affairs.

    The annual European Satellite Navigation Competition and Galileo Masters competition have also generated a large number of ideas and concepts (8,000), some of which have found support through this incubation process.

    Airbus Defence gave a short overview of the testing work they accomplished in supporting the first Galileo fix. The company fix has prepared several vehicle test platforms, ready to take the next phase of Galileo testing to the streets in realistic, real-world environments.

    DLR provided insights into a number of their activities, namely: Iono mapping; signal distortion; multipath; jammer mitigation – adaptive antenna and processing; GNSS repeaters – how they can become unintentional jammers; spoofer and multipath investigations; antenna designs; GNSS evolution – maser and clock combination benefits.

    IFEN provided information on the activities at the GATE ground-based pseudolite range, which has enabled realistic outdoors testing of Galileo receivers, well in advance of signals from orbiting satellites. Recent testing has now been able to include the four operating Galileo SVs on orbit with GATE pseudolite signals. GATE will continue to evolve over the next few years to keep up as more Galileo orbital signals come on-line.

    Fraunhofer presented information on their 40-channel GPS/Galileo/GLONASS chip-receiver, claiming 1m accuracy, low-cost, robust reliable position solution, small form-factor and low-power. Following PRS test-bed development efforts, Fraunhofer has now received a contract to also deliver 20 pre-operational Galileo PRS receivers for use in initial pilot projects.

    GNSS Interference

    Vidal Ashkenazi, in his inimitable form, led a panel discussion on interference, jamming (in particular personal privacy devices (PPD)) and spoofing, and coaxed his panel members to provide a quantity of information on what’s being done, mitigation capabilities and potential enforcement. Unlike all the other sessions, panel members did not use presentations, instead responding to some wide-ranging questions on the subject from the session chair.

    David Turner, representing the U.S. Department of State, indicated that the ICG will meet shortly in Geneva hosted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to focus on interference, jamming and mitigation. The recourse that nations have for use of PPDs by their people is the law — jammers are illegal, sale and purchase of them is illegal — however internet sales are very difficult to police. So detection and mitigation are required to find and shut them down. Dave’s presentation on the GPS.gov website indicates that the ICG is working on an education program for States to inform about GNSS sensitivity to interference and the threat to critical infrastructure if they are allowed to operate. The ICG also has a task force on detection, reporting and systems development.

    The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) indicated that PPD jammers in India are restricted but permitted for gatherings such as at churches where personal safety may be an issue. Ground-based detection is needed and stronger legal protection which may well prohibit use of PPDs altogether.

    Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) indicated that they are working on ‘signal proofing’ for QZSS.

    BeiDou said that they are building a monitor network in China which will detect jamming.

    There was a general discussion on whether receiver manufacturers should be mandated to make receivers which are resilient to jamming. Many thought that there have already been significant advances in the direction by manufacturers. The normal approach would be to develop requirements with industry, agency and user inputs, publish them and call up the requirements in equipment specifications. In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking an approach to detection and location.

    Legal impacts of Personal Privacy Devices (PPDs)

    While the audience may have had high hopes that the ‘Legal Eagles’ could come up with some magic prevention and prosecution solution, the next session was more of a legal background briefing, without any concrete conclusions (quite similar to other discussions I’ve had with some lawyers in the past, actually).

    The first briefing was from the European Commission/European Union who indicated that the EU doesn’t own the frequency rights to Galileo (uh-oh). They have to operate through a member state, which gets the rights through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and then licenses use to the EU – the bottom line being that EU enforcement of jamming protection laws maybe be difficult, as the legal framework only exists at the national level for each State. The EU is trying to get recognition under another class of ITU membership.

    EU regulations were presented, stating that GNSS re-transmitters can only be operated legally by governments or government contractors. Or can be used indoors for indoor navigation, but only for emergency services at fixed sites which are pre-approved. Pseudolites can only be operated indoors,and there should be no interference to other systems. Jammers are forbidden and cannot be placed on the market for sale. 

    Eurocontrol had a lot to say about the impact on aviation navigation infrastructure and receivers on aircraft. Existing ground nav aids have limitations, the world-wide equipment infrastructure is becoming quite old, aviation has generally moved away to GNSS and inertial based navigation, and uses ground navaids as backup. There is a conflict between regulating GNSS heavily for aviation and how people want to use it in the commercial world. We may have to consider a trade-off between heavily restricted GNSS operations, and wide open commercial GNSS applications.

    David Sobel from Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States presented the contrary case for individual privacy. His argument is that sale of tracking devices is unregulated and can readily be purchased, so people may presumably use them to track others, thereby infringing their privacy. So why shouldn’t people be able to ‘defend their privacy’ by use of PPDs?

    Say an employer insists that a vehicle you are driving have a tracking device so he knows where you are, isn’t the driver also justified in trying to protect his privacy? Since U.S. police can no longer place tracking equipment on suspect vehicles without a warrant, tracking appears to be down to private individuals or companies, who it would appear, have the legal ability to attach tracking devices under most circumstances. So the argument goes that if people have a legitimate concern about privacy, there should be acceptable provisions to allow them to disrupt tracking.

    If there is a service such as road tolling, there is an incentive for people to avoid these costs. So systems should be robust enough to avoid disruption. Enforcement is a problem. Should police chase people they suspect have jammers, or should they rather chase criminals or help and protect citizens? Mitigation systems need testing, so to test these systems there has to be jamming transmission, which needs to be controlled and regulated. Restricting the import of bad devices into a country might be desired, but the manufacturing countries don’t tend to want to restrict exports, as exports help their economy. Again, the argument seems to be that of personal privacy over potential risks and damages to society.

    No solutions, but a healthy discussion of views from a legal perspective.

    Precise Point Positioning (PPP)

    The group discussing PPP options consisted of the GSA (charged with exploitation of Galileo services), several principal industry service providers of PPP, and the Federal agency which provides PPP-like services in Germany.

    The GSA presented its ideas concerning the provision of high-accuracy PPP corrections over the Galileo E6 signal – the so called Commercial Service (CS). The intent however would not be to disrupt the commercial market-place. Nevertheless, GSA is proposing a public-funded service  to be sold to users within a market that is already well served by commercial worldwide service providers who charge users for cm-level PPP service.

    While Trimble made a polite presentation on the many levels of capabilities of their TerraSat services, as did Veripos and to some extent Fugro, it was clear that the commercial providers are not eager to find competition in their market from a government entity. NovAtel also chimed in on this conflict as it will be involved in Veripos/TerraStar, following the acquisition of the latter by Hexagon, which also owns the former. Fugro appeared to be interested in acquiring rights to distribute CS on behalf of GSA.

    The German Federal agency promoted open data, source and standards from the IGS network to which they contribute: IGS is supported by numerous national agencies around the world. Orbit and Clock PPP service is available 24/7 from multiple sources. However, the service is offered on a best-efforts basis without a service guarantee and cannot achieve the accuracies or convergence times of commercial services.

    I talked subsequently with Michael Ritter, CEO of NovAtel to learn the background to the Veripos/TerraStar acquisition. It is clear that providing PPP services means added-value to NovAtel when it sells receivers with PPP capability, so it will quickly discontinue offering Omnistar subscriptions and will launch ‘NovAtel Correct’ shortly, offering Veripos (marine) and TerraStar (land) PPP subscription services. NovAtel is making significant inroads in the agriculture segment and sees PPP service as an essential element of this and other businesses. The acquisition was worth something on the order of $200 million, so there is a vested interest in making these services pay, and discouraging GSA entry into this market. Veripos will continue supplying other GNSS OEM receiver manufacturers — notably Septentrio — who use TerraStar services, now adding NovAtel, and potentially another major GNSS manufacturer.

    Future of GNSS in User Segment

    Chaired by Greg Turetzky of Intel, this session opened the third day of the Summit. The presenters offered their concepts for current and future GNSS equipment and systems.

    Stanford University outlined its work with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administratin (FAA) on an alternate PNT system to be used as a back-up to GNSS. It used to be that GNSS systems were designed to overcome ‘space-weather’ effects and faults in equipment design or manufacture. Nowadays there are ‘bad-guys’ out there and we need to ‘protect, toughen and augment’ these systems. Antennas can be built which impart a specific signature to the signals they transmit, and this may aid in finding and prosecuting the bad guys, but the main focus of work is development of a hybrid system using Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) and a pseudolite.

    Tests have demonstrated good performance and these prototype efforts could lead to aviation requirements (MOPS) development by 2018 and deployment by 2020.

    Septentrio has been involved in Galileo since it began and was the first company with Galileo receivers. Nowadays it fields receivers in multiple commercial applications including machine control, maritime, aviation, automation, and measurement, delivering accuracies from a meter down to a centimeter. It will add E6 to the AsteRx family of multiple-channel, multi-frequency, multi-constellation receivers, has developed a number of hardware and software mitigation techniques to combat jamming, interference and multipath, and integrate receivers with inertial units for aiding.

    Furuno is interested in resilient PNT for marine applications, and has examined the use of eLoran as an alternative to GPS, but has moved towards a system of radar beacons that detect radar pulses from passing ships and transmit their position, enabling position determination. In tests, accuracies of around 2 meters have been obtained with two beacons.

    Quascom adds ‘firewalls’ inside receivers which ‘toughen’ the processing and prevent distortion of position information. It believes this will be necessary until authentication can be added into the GNSS system itself, so that any data received is validated and is known to be good.

    Chris Rizos from the University of New South Wales, Australia drew attention to the ‘holes’ that exist in GNSS and reviewed a number of possible ‘band-aid’ fixes, such as WiFi especially for indoor location. However his solution seems to be to establish terrestrial networks transmitting GNSS-like signals.

    Eurocontrol indicated that aircraft currently use inertial and DME extensively as a back-up to GNSS navigation. By 2030 there will be multiple constellations, and dual-frequency use should become commonplace in aviation, so GNSS navigation should be much more robust. Aircraft approaches are required to be in conformance with Required Navigation Performance (RNP), so would it be possible to develop RNP procedures for DME and Inertial to be used as back-up during approaches in the event GNSS is disrupted?

    To conclude the session, Airbus provided a ‘starter-course’ overview on inertial systems – how they work, the range of different types available, what they can achieve, costs, strengths and weaknesses and integration with GNSS.

    The Summit continued with subsequent sessions on: space technologies and users; GNSS monitoring of Earth and disaster management; Copernicus – Earth Observation; GNSS Education. Unfortunately neither the space available here nor my deadline allowed me to attend these equally interesting presentations.

    A manufacturers’ exhibit area at the Summit   fits into a couple of corridors near the main Hall, around 20 booths. I talked with several of the manufacturers, including Spirent who has launched its latest GSS9000 multi-frequency-constellation simulator, with a four-fold increase in system iteration rate over the previous model. Exhibitors appeared to be pleased to be at the Summit and the level of interest shown by the attendees.

    As this year’s Munich Summit concludes, where does it leave us? We’ve learned some new things about several GNSS topics and heard some interesting new concepts. Europe appears to be now focused on users and applications, to ensure there is market growth and use of Galileo.

    What stands out for me is the contrast between how European governments go about GNSS and how North America and the commercial world does the same thing without as much direct influence. This is nothing new of course, it is simply the European way.

    ——————–

    Tony Murfin is GPS World’s contributing editor for the Professional OEM e-newsletter.

     

  • EGNOS, European Superiority, and the Need to Get ‘Very, Very Busy’

    The European GNSS scene received an early Easter present with the successful launch of two new-generation transponders for the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS). The two geostationary transponders, GEO-2, rose on board the SES ASTRA 5B satellite from the European Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana, on March 22 via an Ariane 5 lifter. The new transponders will provide higher accuracy positioning signals to those citizens and professionals using EGNOS enabled receivers.

    Together with the previous transponder replenishment on the SES-5 satellite launched in July 2012, GEO-2 will ensure the continuity and quality of the EGNOS open service and safety-of-life services for the next 15 years. Once validated in orbit, the signals will be introduced in current EGNOS operations and will support the new EGNOS generation (EGNOS V3). EGNOS V3 will provide dual-frequency signals on L1 and L5 bands and augment both GPS and Galileo constellations as part of the Multi-Constellations Regional System (MRS) concept.

    EGNOS is currently made up of transponders on board three geostationary satellites (Artemis, Inmarsat 3F2, Inmarsat 4F2), and an interconnected ground network of forty positioning stations and four control centres which cover most of the territory of the European Union. The ASTRA 5B payload for EGNOS will essentially extend transponder capacity and geographical reach over Eastern Europe and neighbouring potential markets.

    Europe’s first venture into satellite navigation, EGNOS represents a major stepping-stone towards Galileo. EGNOS improves the accuracy of GPS by providing a positioning accuracy to within three metres together with system integrity messages. The system offers three services: an Open Service that is free of charge; a Safety-of-life Service (SoL) that was certified for civil aviation in 2011; and a Commercial Service – the EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS) that disseminates EGNOS data in real time.

    Since the beginning of 2014 the European GNSS Agency (GSA) has been responsible for the operation and service provision of EGNOS. “The successful launch is an important achievement in view of the enhanced performance that EGNOS will provide both today and in the future,” said Carlo des Dorides, GSA executive director.

    EGNOS Extension

    Future extension of EGNOS was discussed at the recent Munich Satellite Summit (see below and other articles in this issue of EAGER).

    While GSA is now EGNOS exploitation manager, the European Commission is responsible for the overall programme, said Ignacio Alcantarilla Medina, deputy EGNOS project manger at the Commission. With medium-term finances for the service secured, through a budget of € 1,580 million for the period 2014 to 2021, the main aim for service extension was to ensure complete coverage of all EU territories.

    “Coverage of Member States is the priority; that is what budget is for,” said Alcantarilla Medina. This essentially means reinforcing coverage in the east of Europe and extreme north and overall increase robustness.

    Currently (March 2014) there are 100 EGNOS-enabled LPV procedures for the civil air space published in Europe. During 2014 a further 150 LPV procedures should be completed, he stated.

    Once all EU territory is adequately served, then further extension might be possible. International projects in terms of demonstration were being undertaken under the European Commission’s FP7 and Horizon 2020 research programmes and funding for international extensions could come from third party or Commission sponsored development funding.

    Interestingly, in the light of recent political events, funding for extension of EGNOS to the Ukraine has already been allocated in the European Commission’s budget by DG Development. Other countries could benefit from this type of funding or from other international development aid. An ambitious flight test campaign over Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine was carried out in the second quarter of 2013 under the auspices of the EGNOS Extension to Eastern Europe: Applications (EEGS2) project. Full demonstration of EGNOS performances and capabilities was performed flying Instrument Landing System (ILS) overlay procedures and by providing real guidance to the pilots during final approach. In total, 19 flight trials were performed between April and June 2013.

    European Showcase at Munich Summit

    Perhaps the good EGNOS news created the warm glow bathing the Munich Satellite Summit in late March. While input arrived from all parts of the world and all major satellite navigation programmes — except Russia and GLONASS — the majority of the discussions focused on the European programmes, Galileo/EGNOS and Copernicus/Earth Observation, and thus by extension on European technological accomplishment.

    Matthias Petschke, Director of EU Satellite Navigation Programmes at the European Commission proclaimed: “Galileo is a reality. We are on track again!” But he stressed that infrastructure does not automatically generate services, and the focus must now be on service provision. On integration, Petschke emphasised that in most cases services meant applications, and few current applications relied on only one source of data. This meant it was not a question of “whether” for integration, but “what else” can be gained from integration of data.

    The big challenge is to transform space infrastructure into commercial service platforms that provide clear benefits to users and society. The introduction of Galileo Early Services, possibly as early as Q4 2014, would herald this move to service platforms and that was when Europe needed to “get very, very busy.”

    Galileo Boasts of Superiority. The plenary audience heard repeated statements from leading European figures on the ‘superiority’ of the Galileo system over current GPS satellites. The grinding of teeth from the various U.S. delegates was almost audible on some occasions but, in the spirit of world peace, they deigned to publicly challenge such statements.

    Typical was Jean-Jacques Dordain, director-general of ESA, who proclaimed Galileo as a success with technologies much better than GPS. Although he did concede that with 22 satellites still to launch this “was not the end of the process – but a real good start.”

    Evert Dudok of Airbus Defence and Space stated, “To develop from scratch a system significantly better than GPS is not easy, but we are creating the best system.” A number of delegates supported this, indicating Galileo’s better-quality code and phase measurement signals that were particularly important for higher-accuracy applications. The excellent, over-specification performance of the initial four in-orbit satellites was often quoted.

    From a commercial point of view, Carlo des Dorides of the GSA claimed that effectively the European Union already had a 25 percent share of the sat nav market and that one-third of the existing global receiver base was already Galileo compatible. He saw a great future for the system.

    “Galileo is unique compared to other GNSS due to its civil nature,” said des Dorides. And the user was at centre of the system’s evolution, with developments in Galileo moving from technology push to demand pull. The clear role of GSA was to ensure that both Galileo and EGNOS delivered the valuable services they are designed to deliver.

    Galileo’s public regulated service (PRS) should be a key factor in growing market share in secure civilian applications with its enhanced ability to counter intentional and unintentional signal interference – another main topic of the Summit. In a dedicated session on combating interference, the introduction of a ‘PRS-lite’ authentification signal on the Galileo open service was mooted, which could be a very interesting development.

    The absence of any Russian input to the Munich SatNav Summit — save for a small pile of the unexpectedly glossy GLONASS Herald publication outside the registration hall — brought the chill of geopolitics into the usually apolitical space arena.

    Does Augmentation Have a Future?

    Another interesting question raised at the Summit – given the near-future fact of four compatible GNSS constellations on station – was whether there will be a role for augmentation systems such as EGNOS and WAAS?

    Deborah Lawrence of the FAA was clear that her organisation was working to take advantage of the multi-constellation future and that the role of SBAS might change, but that the FAA is already looking towards what the requirements for SBAS in 2040 might be.

    European Commission spokespersons agreed with the need for multi-constellation, globally interoperable SBAS for the foreseeable future, not least because the currently installed receiver base in the aviation sector would likely have a 20-year replacement horizon.______________

    Tim Reynolds is director of Inta Communication Ltd. and a long-term Brussels observer writing on many aspects of European government policy and implementation for a range of clients and publications. The material presented here was first prepared in a somewhat different form for the GSA.
       He is the contributing editor for GPS World’s new quarterly e-newsletter, EAGER: the European GNSS and Earth Observation Report. Subscribe free at env-gpsworld-integration.kinsta.cloud/subscribe.

  • Squeeze at the Launchpad for Galileo

    With the first two full-operational-capability (FOC) Galileo satellites successfully through their thermal-vacuum tests, the program’s next hurdle is securing a firm launch date in June aboard a Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket, operated from Europe’s spaceport on the northeast coast of South America.

    It will not be a walk in the park. Competing with the two Galileo FOC satellites for the same June Soyuz launch are four commercial broadband communications spacecraft owned by O3b Networks of Britain’s Channel Islands, a start-up that promises, if all goes well, to launch as many as 100 satellites.

    O3b and Galileo managers as of late March were rushing to complete final tests to be able to be first to ship their craft to the spaceport and thereby lay claim to priority rights aboard the June Soyuz. Both say they can be on a plane to the Guiana Space Center launch base in April. Should they arrive within days of each other, the already nightmarish dilemma confronting the Arianespace commercial launch consortium will only grow more complicated.

    Here’s the matchup.

    Powerful Backer. O3b, in addition to its plans to launch dozens of satellites if the business model proves out, is backed by SES of Luxembourg, the world’s second-largest satellite fleet operator and as such a big Arianespace customer.

    SES has already shown itself disinclined to maintain its loyalty to the heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket operated by Arianespace by booking three less-expensive launches, one already completed, aboard the new Falcon 9 rocket operated by SpaceX of the United States. Arianespace can ill-afford to alienate SES, whose 50-satellite fleet requires 3-4 launches per year just to maintain its existing capacity.

    The four first O3b satellites in orbit all have a defect that could cause one or more of them to stop functioning at any time. Without at least four satellites — and preferably six — O3b does not have a business and its future is put into question.

    It would be, to say the least, a public relations calamity for the company if its initial commercial operations, which began in March, were to be suspended in the wake of a satellite failure while waiting for a second batch of four spacecraft. This explains the extraordinary pressure that SES is placing on Arianespace on behalf of a June Soyuz launch for O3b.

    Does it really matter, O3b backers say, if Galileo waits until the next Soyuz launch slot, tentatively set for August?

    Emphatic Politician. It matters to the European Commission, which owns Galileo. Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani has all but pounded the table, insisting that the European Space Agency, hired to oversee Galileo’s technical development, ensure three Galileo launches on Soyuz rockets in 2014.

    Four initial-operating-capability Galileo satellites are in orbit. Indications are that their performance exceeds specifications. Three Soyuz launches carrying two satellites at a time would bring the constellation to 10 spacecraft, enough to offer initial commercial services, according to the Commission.

    Tajani has made clear how much he wants that feather in his cap as he prepares to leave the EC this year, probably headed for a political career in Italy. Make no mistake: as is the case with many wounded animals, Tajani’s status as a lame duck has made him all the more fierce in his insistence that Galileo meet its three-launch schedule in 2014.

    Tajani has put very public pressure on the European Space Agency, which in turn is pressuring Arianespace, for Galileo launches.

    Ariane’s Quandary. Arianespace is already facing an exceptionally crowded launch manifest in 2014 as it coordinates the schedules of three vehicles: the small Vega rocket in addition to the medium-lift Soyuz and the heavy-lift Ariane 5. Because both O3b and Galileo are late, neither has an obvious claim of priority status at Arianespace, which is clearly hoping that the problem will solve itself when either O3b or Galileo arrives at least several weeks ahead of the other.

    At press time, the next Soyuz launch was scheduled for April 3, carrying a European Commission environment-monitoring satellite. Commission officials will attend the launch and no doubt use the occasion to press their case for Galileo.

    There is no telling how this will turn out. Satellites have been known to face last-minute problems even after arrival at the spaceport. This happened to O3b in 2013, as the in-orbit defect did not surface until just before its scheduled Soyuz launch.

    But if one were to hazard a guess, here is the most likely scenario: O3b arrives ready for launch several weeks ahead of Galileo and secures the June launch. Galileo moves to August and is promised a second launch in the autumn. O3b’s planned second launch in 2014 is moved to early 2015, as is the planned third launch of Galileo.

    The effect of these schedule slips on the cost of the Galileo program, which is about a year late — cost overruns that Tajani has vowed will not be paid by the Commission — is a subject for another day.

  • The System: Galileo Accomplishes In-Orbit Validation

    Galileo Accomplishes In-Orbit Validation

    Nucleus of Four Now Operational: It “Works, and Works Well”

    figure 1 Dual-frequency Galileo positioning performance during the In-Orbit Validation phase: positioning accuracy is an average 8 m horizontal and 9 m vertical (95% of the time). Its average timing accuracy is 10 nanoseconds on average. Plot courtesy of ESA.
    Dual-frequency Galileo positioning performance during the In-Orbit Validation phase: positioning accuracy is an average 8 m horizontal and 9 m vertical (95% of the time). Its average timing accuracy is 10 nanoseconds on average. Plot courtesy of ESA.

    The European Space Agency (ESA) announced fulfillment of the in-orbit validation (IOV) of Galileo on February 10. IOV was achieved with four satellites, the minimum number needed to perform navigation fixes.

    “IOV was required to demonstrate that the future performance that we want to meet when the system is deployed is effectively reachable,” said Sylvain Loddo, ESA’s Galileo Ground Segment manager. “It was an intermediate step with a reduced part of the system to effectively give evidence that we are on track.”

    Following a March 2013 first determination of a ground location, jointly by Galileo’s space and ground segments, program managers undertook  a wide variety of tests all across Europe.

    “More than 10,000 kilometers were driven by test vehicles in the process of picking up signals, along with pedestrian and fixed receiver testing. Many terabytes of IOV data were gathered in all,” said Marco Falcone, ESA’s Galileo System manager.

    According to ESA’s elaboration on the test results, the system has proved itself capable of solely performing positioning fixes across the planet.

    Galileo’s observed dual-frequency positioning accuracy is an average of 8 meters horizontal and 9 meters vertical, 95 percent of the time. Its average timing accuracy is 10 billionths of a second. Its performance is expected to improve as more satellites are launched and ground stations come on line.

    For Galileo’s search-and-rescue function — operating as part of the existing international Cospas–Sarsat programme —  77 percent of simulated distress locations can be pinpointed within 2 kilometers, and 95 percent within 5 kilometers. All alerts are detected and forwarded to the Mission Control Centre within a minute and a half, compared to a design requirement of 10 minutes.

    “Europe has proven with IOV that in terms of performance we are at a par with the best international systems of navigation in the world,” said Didier Faivre, ESA director of Galileo and Navigation-related Activities.

    Historically Speaking. In a February 2013 GPS World article, Peter Steigenberger, Urs Hugentobler, and Oliver Montenbruck discussed Galileo-only positioning. “Using an ionosphere-free dual-frequency linear combination of pseudorange measurements on the Galileo E1 and E5a frequencies, the position of the TUME reference station [at the Technische Universität München (TUM) in Munich, Germany] could be determined with a 3D position error of less than 1.5 meters,’” the authors said.

    Crystal Ball Gazing. The next two Galileo satellites, of the full operational capability (FOC) class, currently complete their testing for flight clearance at ESA’s ESTEC facility.

    Six such satellites are destined to rise into space in 2014, according to ESA’s master plan. Should all those launches occur as scheduled, Galileo’s initial services could start by the end of the year.

    GNSS Vulnerable: What to Do?

    Too Much Sensitivity, Not Enough Robustness, Says Parkinson

    Brad Parkinson, the founding architect of GPS, told a UK conference that the system needs to be made more robust to ensure worldwide availability of services to users. His concerns over GPS availability relate to threats such as the loss of authorized frequency spectrum (implicitly creating licensed jammers), space weather due to hyperactive ionospheric conditions, and deliberate or inadvertent jamming of GPS signals.

    He warned that GPS is more vulnerable to sabotage or disruption than ever before, and charged that politicians and security chiefs are ignoring the risk. Western governments are “in their infancy in recognizing the problem,” he remarked further in an interview with London’s Financial Times. “[In the United States] I don’t know anyone that is really in charge of it. The Department of Homeland Security should be [but] … they don’t have any people that understand it very well. They’ve got one person without any budget to speak of.”

    He also warned that Europe’s €5 billion Galileo system is equally at risk.

    Parkinson proposed a three-stage program to:

    • Protect (legally) the signal and physically eliminate jamming sources;
    • Toughen the GPS/Galileo receiver’s resistance to interference;
    • Augment the GPS signals with other satellites or with ground-based transmitters such as eLoran.

    To support his proposal, Parkinson stated, “The number one need for all GPS or Galileo users is availability. Over the years, manufacturers of signal receiver technologies have focused too much on sensitivity and not enough on resilience or robustness. The maritime industry is a particular concern where users have taken GPS for granted. They must increase preparedness and backups as they do in aviation or other GNSS-using industries.

    “Even today, most ships have only GPS and the vision of their crew to guide them when approaching harbors. As you can see from today’s conference, there are a wealth of solutions to toughen and back up GPS, many of which are not technologically difficult nor expensive, but still their adoption in sectors such as global shipping is certainly not adequate.”

    As part of his protection program, Parkinson urged that penalties for jamming GPS networks be coordinated worldwide. “In Australia, if you cause interference likely to cause prejudice to the safe conduct of a vessel, it’s five years in the jug [jail] and $850,000.” Contrasting this with a U.S. case that may simply impose a forfeiture of the culprit’s jamming device, Parkinson added, “I’m calling for the community of nations to move to the Aussie-type penalties.”

    In the toughening regard, Parkinson alluded to integration of GPS data with information derived from an inertial positioning system. “If you combine all of these things, a good set should be able to fly within 1 kilometer of a jammer with a 10-kilometer range,” said Parkinson. “That’s what I call toughening.”

    Parkinson made his remarks as the keynote speech at GNSS Vulnerabilities and Resilient PNT 2014, hosted by the Royal Institute of Navigation. He will also deliver the keynote address, “Assured PNT: Assured World Economic Benefits,” for the European Navigation Conference on April 15 in The Netherlands.

    GLONASS Seeks Broader Monitoring Footprint; Launch Imminent

    Russia will deploy as many as seven ground monitoring and augmentation stations for GLONASS outside its national boundaries. GLONASS/GNSS Forum Association Executive Director Vladimir Klimov stated that “It is planned to deploy about six or seven stations on foreign territories this year.” Negotiations for the stations are now taking place with foreign nations.

    Currently, there are 46 GLONASS ground stations on Russian territory, eight in neighboring countries, three in Antarctica, and one in Brazil. The United States recently spurned, with some Congressional trumpeting, a Russian tender to site one of the ground stations on U.S. soil.

    New Instrument in Space. In mid-February, the most recent GLONASS-M satellite traveled to the Plesetsk cosmodrome for a probable mid-March launch. GLONASS-M 54 will carry a high-accuracy thermal stabilization unit, installed on the spacecraft for testing and flight qualification. The next-generation K-class of GLONASS spacecraft will loft this device to provide increased positioning accuracy.

    Five GLONASS-M craft are planned for launch in 2014, in one triple and two single launches.

  • Directions 2014: Galileo IOV Passes with Flying Colors

    Marco Falcone
    Marco Falcone

    By Marco Falcone, System Manager for the European Space Agency in the Galileo Project Office

    Following the second Galileo launch in October 2012, leading to four operational satellites in orbit, a progressive chain of events has taken place in 2013 encompassing all Galileo Services, starting from the first position fix on March 12 (Figure 1), when navigation message continuous broadcast began.

    • Galileo System Time (GST) to Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) dissemination to timing users started on April 16 and since then has been maintained within 5 nanoseconds (Figure 2).
    • GPS to Galileo Time Offset (GGTO) dissemination started on April 22, favoring the use of our satellites for combined positioning with the GPS constellation. GGTO accuracy is well within 7 nanoseconds.
    • The first implementation of the Galileo Terrestrial Reference Frame (GTRF), aligned to the IGb08, an update of IGS08 (International Terrestrial Reference Frame 2008), has been available since May 27, including all deployed Galileo Sensor Stations sites.
    • The capability to disseminate Commercial Service data in the navigation message was demonstrated on June 25.
    • In July, several European Union Member States achieved the first position fix using Public Regulated Service (PRS) receivers as part of the EC-ESA joint PRS Participants To IOV (PPTI) campaigns, demonstrating PRS positioning and access control.
    • The first search-and-rescue (SAR) localizations using the operational mid-Earth orbit Local User Terminal (MEO LUT) in Maspalomas was exercised July 9, and the first dissemination of the acknowledgement via return link to users in distress was tested in October.

    The majority of performance verification tests has been successfully completed as part of the In Orbit Validation (IOV) experimentation campaign completed at the end of October 2013, demonstrating the achievement of the Galileo system’s expected performance. The average positioning accuracy for E1/E5a dual-frequency Open Service users is already around 8 meters horizontally and 10 meters vertically. This is an impressive result considering the small number of Galileo satellites in orbit and the limited ground infrastructure so far.

    Figure 1. Galileo first position fix (source: Timing and Geodesy Validation Facility).
    Figure 1. Galileo first position fix (source: Timing and Geodesy Validation Facility).

    But the single most important message from the In Orbit Validation campaign is that Galileo works, and it works well.

    The experience gained and lessons learned during the IOV period, especially in the domain of ground operations, have been very useful and will be addressed as a priority in the next phase, as part of the planned new versions of the Ground Control Segment and Ground Mission Segment.

    The launches in 2014 of the new FOC satellites manufactured by OHB will further increase the availability of positioning and timing accuracy to users.

    Complementary system validation campaigns will be carried out next year, moving towards commercial receiver technology for all categories of users, with particular focus on the mass market and the Public Regulated Service. Following the letter issued by the European GNSS Agency to Galileo chipset manufacturers in July 2013, an opportunity has been given to interested companies to take part in a test campaign to support the early introduction of Galileo in commercially available receivers. The campaign will be carried out next year, focusing on the compatibility of the devices with the reception of Galileo Open Service signals and their combined use with GPS and GLONASS. A number of mass-market chipset manufacturers and professional receiver manufacturers have already expressed their interest in participating in the campaign.

    Figure 2. GST and UTC prediction error (source: FOC WP1 System Engineering Technical Assistance).
    Figure 2. GST and UTC prediction error (source: FOC WP1 System Engineering Technical Assistance).

    Marco Falcone is system manager for the European Space Agency in the Galileo Project Office in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. He has been mission manager for the GIOVE-A and –B satellites, the precursors of the Galileo operational satellite constellation. Nowadays, his main task is to validate the overall Galileo system and to ensure that it fulfils in operations the required performance starting from the first four satellites of the In Orbit Validation Phase throughout the full deployment of the constellation. He received his Master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pisa, Italy and his Master’s degree in space systems engineering from the University of Delft, the Netherlands.