Tag: rail

European Rail Supported by European GNSS

Photo: European GNSS Agency (GSA)

By the European GNSS Agency (GSA)

As European satellites offer a possibility to improve the efficiency of train control systems, GNSS technology is starting to gain momentum in the rail sector. To promote the role of GNSS in this important sector, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) recently exhibited at Innotrans — a leading rail transport tradeshow.

EGNOS can and, in the future, Galileo will provide continuous and highly reliable positioning service — helping increase the competitiveness of rail among other modes of transportation. Currently, GNSS in European rail is primarily used within non-safety-of-life applications, including asset management and passenger information services. However, the latest technological developments show that augmented GNSS, together with specific sensors, can help satisfy the stringent CENELEC Safety and Integrity Level requirements.

As a result, the rail sector has an increasing demand for cost-effective and innovative GNSS applications for both safety critical and non-safety critical purpose. For example, in the safety-critical domain, GNSS-based applications can provide signaling and autonomous train control. In the non-safety critical domain, GNSS is helping improve the performance of asset management and passenger information systems.

Showcasing the E-GNSS Advantage

With rail becoming an important market segment for GNSS technology, and to put emphasis on the many benefits E-GNSS can bring the rail sector, for the first time the GSA exhibited at a rail tradeshow. At Innotrans, one of the leading international tradeshows for the sector held September 23-26 in Berlin, the GSA showcased the EGNOS advantage for rail.

Joining a panel discussion hosted by the European Railways Agency (ERA) entitled “How Heaven Could Support European Train Control System (ETCS),” GSA Head of Market Development Gian-Gherardo Calini explained how European GNSS can serve as a solution to some of the problems the sector currently faces.

“Although rail will become a major market for E-GNSS, it is already providing benefits, such as helping to improve safety,” he said. “Our role at the GSA is to serve the end user by making sure the technology delivers the necessary solutions.”

Calini acknowledged there are challenges to the sector’s full adoption of GNSS, but stated that other sectors have overcome challenges and are benefiting from E-GNSS: “It is a successful reality in other transport sectors, especially aviation, and we must focus on building from these experiences,” he said.

The ERTMS/ETCS is a major industrial project that aims to replace Europe’s different national train control and command systems. The deployment of ERTMS will enable the creation of a seamless European railway system with aligned signalling — essential to increasing the competitiveness of European railways.

Europe’s GNSS systems — Galileo and EGNOS — are actively contributing to the needed evolution of the ERTMS. One example of this long-term perspective is the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking, whose objective is also to support the adoption of GNSS in the rail sector. Within this undertaking, it is foreseen that both Galileo and EGNOS will be brought into ERTMS standards and foster European GNSS adoption in the area of Low Density Lines.

October 16, 2014
Synergies between Europe’s Rail and SatNav Programs Can Make Rail Travel Affordable

Cost-effective synergies between the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) and satellite technologies such as Galileo can make rail transport more efficient and reliable, agreed European authorities in February at a Rail Forum Europe dinner in Brussels. But while the technology is now available, its implementation pace is still too slow due to the long term return on investment.

Francesco Rispoli, manager of satellite technologies at Ansaldo STS, an Italian provider of rail-traffic management, planning, train control and signalling systems, stressed that satellite technology can improve the penetration of ERTMS in the worldwide market as well as on European local and low-traffic lines. He predicted that further synergies will be developed on the SHIFT²RAIL initiative: “EGNOS and Galileo are key enabling technologies for a market-driven step change in the rail sector” he concluded. In that light, Ansaldo STS is developing an open platform to allow the ERTMS to fully exploit EGNOS and Galileo.

Olivier Onidi, director for Innovative and Sustainable Mobility at the EC’s Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), highlighted the role of ERTMS in achieving an interoperable Single European Railway Area. “2014 is a key year in terms of innovation for the rail sector. Major progress is expected on ERTMS, Galileo, and SHIFT2RAIL”.

SHIFT²RAIL is a European technology initiative seeking to double the capacity of the European rail system, increase its reliability and service quality by 50 percent ,and cut lifecycle costs in half.

Carlo des Dorides, executive director of the European GNSS Agency, applauded the ERTMS Memorandum of Understanding envisaging the future use of EGNOS and Galileo to improve the competitiveness of train control systems. “There are signs that GNSS will be adopted globally as in the aviation sector. In this scenario, Europe now has the opportunity to exploit the synergy between ERTMS and GNSS.”

March 28, 2014
GSA Releases 2012 SatNav Market Report

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has published its second Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) Market Report, providing key information to entrepreneurs in the satellite navigation sector.

GNSS market forecasting is of great interest to private and public GNSS stakeholders, for business and strategic planning and policymaking, according to the GSA. According to the 2012 GSA Market Monitoring Report, the worldwide GNSS market is growing fast and the total market size is expected to increase at an average of 13 percent per year until 2016.

The total enabled GNSS market size is expected to stabilise in the latter half of the decade due to market saturation, price erosion and platform convergence. Global shipments of GNSS devices are lower than previously forecasted up until 2015 yet are forecasted to continue growing to over 1.1 billion units per year.

Expanding coverage. Following up on the first GNSS Market Report published in 2010, the GSA’s 2012 Report includes an analysis of two new sectors: maritime and surveying. Relevant examples from EU research projects have also been included for each sector.

2012 Report Highlights

Road and location-based services (LBS) still in the lead. Road and LBS dominate GNSS device sales (54% and 44% respectively). LBS constitutes 87% of the total GNSS market in terms of units sold and GNSS penetration in smartphones is set to increase from 30% today to almost 100% in 2020. For road navigation, traditional Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) will gradually disappear from the European market yet remain present in other regions in the form of low cost OEM products. Smartphones and in-vehicle devices will be the preferred means of navigation.

Commercial aviation use will grow. In the Aviation sector, the segment that will see the greatest growth in terms of GNSS equipment revenues will be Commercial Aviation, surpassing general and business aviation by 2018.

GNSS use in agriculture continues to rise. In agriculture the current positive growth trend will continue; low cost precision agriculture solutions based on EGNOS are driving GNSS adoption by farmers in Europe.

Surveying: a growing opportunity. In surveying, the construction segment is dominating the market in terms of units and value. North America is leading in terms of market penetration but the other regions will catch up by 2020 as GNSS is rapidly replacing the traditional surveying and mapping methods in Europe and around the world.

Safer seas with GNSS. In the open sea segment, shipments of search-and-rescue (SAR) beacons will exceed those of other categories making the SAR segment the largest in terms of shipments and second largest in terms of market size.

The 2012 GSA Market Monitoring Report can be downloaded for free.

May 30, 2012
GSA Releases First GNSS Market Monitoring Report

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has published a 2010 GNSS Market Monitoring report, providing key information in support of entrepreneurship in the satellite navigation sector.

GNSS market forecasting is of great interest to private and public GNSS stakeholders, for business and strategic planning and policymaking, said the GSA. According to the new report, the market for GNSS will grow significantly over the next decade, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11 percent, reaching €165 billion for the core GNSS market in 2020. Delivery of GNSS devices will exceed one billion per year by 2020.

“This Report confirms that the market potential of GNSS is significant,” said Gian Gherardo Calini, head of the GSA Market Development Department. “The information should be useful to researchers, market players and decision makers who want to grasp the GNSS market opportunities today and tomorrow.”

Report Highlights

Road leads the way: The report shows that the road transport sector is still the leading GNSS segment, accounting for more than 50% of market share. The penetration of receivers in road vehicles, today at 30%, will exceed 80% over the next decade. However, after a period of fast growth, market saturation and competition in the form of ‘smartphones’, often equipped with free navigation capabilities, have resulted in a slowdown in the car-based navigation market.

Price erosion has been high, driven by declining costs and strong competition. Vendors are using innovation as a differentiator resulting in ‘converged’ products with both communication and multimedia functionalities. Some Personal Navigation Device (PND) vendors are also tapping into new distribution channels, including car dealerships and smartphone application stores.

GNSS for road transport: The road transport sector is facing major challenges, such as the demand for increasing safety and for reduced congestion and pollution. These problems are particularly acute in highly populated zones, including big cities and suburban areas. GNSS represents a powerful tool for improving road transport. Not only does it help get drivers where they want to go more quickly and efficiently, but it also promises fairer road-pricing schemes, for example, to automatically charge drivers for the use of road infrastructure.

GNSS in your hands. Mobile location-based services (LBS) are taking off as progress is being made in different areas. More and more mobile phones now have GNSS capabilities, the result of both increasing consumer and developer awareness and an improvement in navigation services and performance.

All major mobile phone operating system vendors now provide application programming interfaces (API) with location functions. In 2009, in the UK, France and Germany, 5 out of the 10 best-selling iPhone applications were related to navigation or location-based applications. Also, 30% of Android developers’ contest winners used location capabilities in their applications.

A promising future for location-based services. The integration of accurate hand-held positioning signal receivers, within mobile telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mp3 players, portable computers, even digital cameras and video devices, brings GNSS services directly to individuals, making possible a fundamental transformation of the way we work and play. The penetration of GNSS in mobile phones is therefore expected to increase very quickly, from some 20% today to above 50% within the next five years.

The GSA says Galileo in the future and EGNOS today open up new and exciting prospects for economic growth, benefiting citizens, businesses and governments throughout the EU and beyond.

Just the beginning. The GSA underlines that the GNSS Market Monitoring process is ongoing and future reports are planned to update information presented in this first report and to cover other sectors. The Agency welcomes stakeholder contributions.

The 2010 GSA Market Monitoring Report can be downloaded free.

November 16, 2010
On the Edge: Tracking, Testing

By Lukasz Bonenberg and Craig Hancock

One-hundred-twenty meters of test track, designed for repeatable dynamic position testing, run along the roof of the new Nottingham Geospatial Building at the University of Nottingham, UK. The figure-eight track provides an optimal controlled environment with test equipment aboard a remote-controlled, multi-sensor 7¼-inch gauge locomotive platform with a top speed of 7 kilometers per hour, a dedicated power supply, and five antenna mounts. Simulation of the track using Spirent GSS8000 hardware (GPS and Galileo) provides additional planning and testing capacity.

The combination of these tools creates the ideal environment for our new project: augmentation of GNSS systems with ground-based Locata positioning technology. This pseudolite-like system, described in the March issue of GPS World, works in a GNSS-like fashion, using code and carrier phase. The major advantage, apart from utilization of the licensee-free 2.4 GHz frequency band, is the precise time synchronization of the network to the nanosecond level.

The proposed integration addresses Locata’s weak vertical coordinates (due to relative coplanarity of transceivers) and GNSS’s requirement for a clear view of the sky and location-specific weak geometric distribution of the satellites. Prior research and analysis suggests considerable improvement in 3D positioning accuracy when combining ground-based positioning devices (pseudolites) with GNSS, but the current project pushes the research forward by attempting to create on-the-fly ambiguity resolution.

Combination of hardware and software simulation has provided an initial assessment of the proposed integration, optimization of equipment location, and test of the mathematical model to be used. Practical tests, using the roof lab on top of the NGB, will further verify the method and allow comparisons between the predicted and real-life results. This will aid the assessment of noise, multipath, and in-bound interference. The test design minimizes the tropospheric effect, while track flexibility and repeatability offer the possibility of implementing and simulating obstructions and areas of GNSS outage. This will provide a full assessment of the mathematical model and the integrated system’s capacity.

This project offers new opportunities in civil engineering, specifically monitoring and machine control. GPS is currently widely used for those applications, with Locata also proven successful. The integrated solution can provide not only enhanced positioning capacity but lower the required number of visible GNSS satellites, and offer improved integrity and quality control, ultimately increasing the safety of life.

The intended utilization is for positioning in dense urban areas and essential structures (airports, seaports, factory sites, bridges) where sky visibility or correct satellite distribution cannot be guaranteed.

The track is available for other projects. Funded by East Midlands Development Agency, hosted by the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy, the Centre for Geospatial Science, and the GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence (GRACE).

November 1, 2010