GPS World

Tag: M3 Systems

  • Railway in France to test GNSS for train control

    A region in France is working with SNCF (the French National Railway Company) to foster the emergence of new solutions — including GNSS technologies — for the operation and control of regional trains and railway infrastructure.

    On Sept. 1, the Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée Region and GUIDE (GNSS Testing Laboratory) signed an agreement to open a railway line to field tests for companies seeking to perform assessments aboard trains. The agreement is supported by the French space agency CNES and the Aerospace Valley Center.

    The Geofer project, managed by GUIDE, will allow the testing of applications in operational situations. The applications are based on radionavigation and telecommunication data initially intended for other business sectors.

    Through the Geofer project, the Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée Region is pursuing two strategic goals. The first aims to strengthen mobility within the region through better control of operating costs. The second is to diversify industrial activities with rail. The project could lead to modernization of secondary lines of the national railway network by embedding, for example, some functions of railway signaling.

    The test region — the Tessonnières-Rodez line (Tarn/Aveyron) — crosses a mountainous area conducive to tests in constrained environments.

    As leader of the project, GUIDE is working to geo-reference the line and to instrument a train that will calibrate future embedded applications. The collected data will then be re-used and replayed on test benches to help solution developers tune their embedded systems more easily.

    A co-financer of Geofer, CNES is actively involved in the tests. A receiver implementing an algorithm (PPP-WIZARD) developed by its engineers will be tested on board, using software to exploit future satellite services to achieve decimetric accuracy. This technology could make possible many rail applications such as precise dock stops or a better prediction of maintenance operations.

    M3 Systems will supply the mission receiver responsible for dispatching accurate and real-time data about the positioning and speed of the train to embedded applications. This device merges the satellite measurements with those of other sensors used to ensure the quality of the geolocation messages.

    For example, devices such as shock sensors to detect unusual efforts of the pantograph against the overhead cable, speed control systems for eco-driving, and roaming systems for telecommunication will be developed, implemented and evaluated on the line and on simulation benches.

  • M3 Systems Announces Simulator Based on Vector Signal Transceiver

    M3 Systems Announces Simulator Based on Vector Signal Transceiver

    StellaNGC_Simulator-O

    M3 Systems is now offering the StellaNGC multi-constellation GNSS simulator based on the National Instruments (NI) vector signal transceiver.

    The simulator is designed for the testing of satellite navigation receivers for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and EGNOS/WAAS. It is designed to improve performance, scalability, and versatility, and reduce cost over existing navigation test solutions.

    GNSS is the predominant technology today for navigation and outdoor positioning. However, given the weakness of GNSS signals, receiver performance is often affected by interference from the local environment and propagation channel conditions. Understanding the effects of this interference is of particular importance not only for existing GNSS signals but also for future signals that will appear with the deployment of new constellations such as Galileo.

    To properly characterize receiver performance under varying conditions, the StellaGNC multi-constellation GNSS simulator provides signal generation, signal recording and replay, interference generation, signal and data processing, and complete analysis tools. The StellaNGC simulator is based on the NI vector signal transceiver in PXI for improved performance and full simulation capabilities. For record and playback only, a scaled-down version is also available based on the NI USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral). Both options were developed with NI LabVIEW and benefit from the performance and flexibility of the NI RF platform.

    The simulator provides a scalable solution that allows easy signal additions through software upgrades, multi-frequency, processing extensions with the addition of FPGAs with NI FlexRIO, and an HDD extension for storage increase. Because the simulator is based on the open PXI standard, the hardware investment can also be extended to other applications, such as simulation, record and playback, or payload simulation.