News from the European Space Agency
In April, Galileo marked a step forward with the deployment of a new signal component, known as E5a Quasi Pilot, on 12 satellites of Europe’s satellite navigation constellation. This upgrade makes Galileo signals easier to access, particularly on emerging mass-market, low-power devices used for Internet of Things and smart city applications.
With the world’s most precise satellite navigation system, a constellation of more than 30 satellites and five billion of users worldwide, Europe’s Galileo continues to strengthen its position at the forefront of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
Galileo signals, like other GNSS signals, traditionally consists of two components: pilot signals and data signals. The first ones are data-less and help enable the receiver to acquire and track the signal, while the second carry all the navigation information needed to pinpoint the target’s location.
But what if this traditional concept could be rethought to respond to emerging market needs, particularly for users seeking faster and simpler acquisition?
The European Space Agency and its industrial partners have developed a solution targeted at mass-market applications that require low power: E5a-QP, a Quasi-Pilot (QP) signal component transmitted in Galileo’s E5 band.
The signal component is broadcast free of charge and now available for implementation in both new and upgraded chipsets, enabling all users of the Galileo Open Service to benefit from its capabilities.
A small addition for a big computational deduction
Quasi-Pilot means a pilot signal that retains its intended role but also carries a small amount of data, including the time information necessary for a first fix. This time information is fully predictable at user level. A Quasi-Pilot signal component is also characterised by a tailored signal structure that simplifies the acquisition process, which reduces the power consumption on the receiver’s end.
This proves particularly useful for low-power, basic receivers such as those found in smartphones, smart-city infrastructure, internet-of-things devices and those that only need to receive a GNSS signal for a very small time to determine their position (also known as ‘snapshot’ devices).
The deployment of E5a-QP also represents a key enabler for low-power receivers designed to process signals exclusively in the E5 band, rather than relying on signals in the E1 band. In this way, the resilience of the receiver against spoofing and jamming attacks is increased, as the fundamental acquisition process is no longer only dependent solely on E1 signals.
Test campaigns have demonstrated that E5a-QP can reduce signal acquisition time by a factor of three, while substantially lowering the number of operations required for acquisition by a factor of eight.
Testing, validation and in‑orbit deployment
The introduction of this new Galileo signal component follows an extensive series of design, testing and validation that demonstrated the value of the signal and the feasibility of implementing new signal components on current Galileo satellites.
Starting 2020, a design phase explored how to reconfigure the Galileo satellites’ payload to integrate the new signal component. Following on, a series of tests were run on engineering models at ESA’s Navigation Payload Laboratory to demonstrate the feasibility and performance benefits that can be achieved with the new signal component.
In 2023, the solution was then validated using an in-orbit test bench: a duo of Galileo satellites operating in an elliptical orbit reconfigured to transmit the new signal component. The signal was measured at Galileo In-Orbit Test facility at ESEC in Belgium and DLR’s Signal Monitoring Facility in Germany, and successfully acquired and tracked by a set of receivers at ESTEC in the Netherlands.
First generation updated, second generation in mind
Between November 2025 and April 2026, twelve Galileo satellites were updated to accommodate this new signal component, marking the completion of this deployment.
This critical mass of satellites ensures that at least one of the satellites used to compute a position fix transmit the Quasi-Pilot signal at medium to high elevation angles, making sure that users around the world can benefit from the performance gains.
This is just the beginning of Quasi-Pilot use within Galileo. All Galileo Second Generation satellites will broadcast additional and improved Quasi-Pilot signals on several frequencies, further enhancing their features and availability.
