GPS World

Tag: satnav

  • Murata and Xona Space sign MOU on LEO satnav for industrial applications

    Murata and Xona Space sign MOU on LEO satnav for industrial applications

    Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and Xona Space Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding to improve the accuracy and reliability of satellite PNT technologies.

    The companies will explore the potential to provide optimal products and solutions by combining Murata’s long-standing expertise in high-frequency and wireless communications, sensors, timing devices and module design with Xona’s advanced low-Earth-orbit (LEO)-based positioning and timing synchronization technologies.

    Benefit of LEO satellites

    Because LEO satellites orbit closer to Earth, they can deliver stronger signals to the ground, which improves signal reception in city centers and indoor environments. Their higher orbital speed compared with GNSS enables observation data in a shorter period of time, which enhances performance in urban areas via accelerated convergence times and reduction in multipath errors.

    Against this backdrop, technologies that combine satellites in different orbital layers, including LEO, are attracting attention as an approach to complement and strengthen the accuracy and reliability of PNT, with growing interest in their adoption for higher precision and enhanced resilience.

    The role of Pulsar

    Xona offers Pulsar, a PNT service based on a satellite network composed of a constellation of dedicated LEO satellites with significantly stronger signals than traditional GNSS systems. Pulsar is compatible with GNSS, enabling these enhanced capabilities to be integrated with typical GNSS user equipment in a way that complements and improves existing systems.

    As a purpose-built modern PNT service, Pulsar aims to achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy, greater performance in urban areas, and enhanced resilience against jamming and spoofing.

    Previous venture and latest MOU

    Murata has previously invested in Xona through Wonderstone Ventures, Murata’s corporate venture capital arm. This initiative represents part of an ongoing collaboration built upon the existing relationship between the two companies.

    Based on this MOU, the two companies will explore the potential to provide optimal products and solutions by combining Murata’s long-standing expertise in high-frequency and wireless communications, sensors, timing devices, and module design with Xona’s advanced LEO-based PNT positioning and timing synchronization technologies, with the goal of realizing highly accurate and highly reliable positioning and timing synchronization.

    Looking ahead, the companies will evaluate potential applications in data centers and financial institutions that require highly accurate timing synchronization to support 5G/6G communications, as well as in off-road industries such as construction and agricultural machinery, where positioning needs are high in environments where GNSS is difficult to use.

    Through these efforts, the companies aim to enhance performance and create new solutions across various sectors.

  • Satnav summer school to be hosted in Sweden

    Satnav summer school to be hosted in Sweden

    Image: ESA
    Image: ESA

    The European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, are hosting this year’s ESA/JRC International Summer School on GNSS with the Swedish Space Agency in July in Kiruna, Sweden. The course will include an overview of satellite navigation from the theoretical basis of GNSS, their signals, and processing by receivers and more.

    Elements of this year’s program will include details of low-Earth-orbit positioning, navigation and timing, navigation on the Moon, and Galileo’s Open Service Navigation Message Authentication. Exercises will include receiving signals from Galileo and other GNSS.

    Participants will also learn about business aspects, intellectual property rights, and the future of satellite navigation systems, including Galileo second-generation.

    Some of the world’s leading satnav and space experts will be giving lectures. Lecturers include Paul Verhoef, former director of navigation for ESA, and Jean-Jacques Dordain, former director general. The course will be opened by Anna Rathsman, Director General of the Swedish National Space Agency; Javier Benedicto, Director of Navigation at the European Space Agency; and Georgios Giannopoulos, head of the Technologies for Space, Security and Connectivity Unit at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

    The course is limited to 50 participants on a first-come, first-served basis and is open to graduate students, Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers, as well as young engineers and academics working within industry or agencies, aged 38 or younger.

    The summer school will take place July 17-28 in Kiruna, Sweden. Register before April 14 for a reduced early fee. For more information and to register, click here.

  • ESA funding expanded to help boost leading role in satellite navigation

    ESA funding expanded to help boost leading role in satellite navigation

    Photo:
    Image: ESA

    The Ministerial Council of the member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) has pledged 351 million euros to ESA’s board of directors for navigation to aid in multiple satellite navigation endeavors.

    This funding helps support ESA’s FutureNAV program, the Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP), and the Moonlight Initiative, developed for lunar telecommunications and navigation coverage and innovation.

    The FutureNAV program is aimed at addressing the rapidly growing need for more ubiquitous, resilient and reliable positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). Its first mission consists of an initial in-orbit demonstration, small constellation of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) navigation satellites. The LEO-PNT satellites will test a multi-layer approach to deliver more accurate and robust PNT services, supplementing Galileo.

    The second FutureNAV mission, GENESIS, will map the moving contours of Earth, while enhancing the accuracy of Galileo.

    The expanded funding will also be invested in NAVISP. The program has already began working on over 200 projects relating to satellite navigation, PNT research, and backing Member States in research priorities.

    Lastly, funding is being delegated to the Moonlight Initiative, a project designed by ESA to extend satellite navigation and telecommunications coverage to the Moon. The advancement and launch of Moonlight infrastructure on the Moon will undertake several missions bolstering future Moon exploration.

  • GNSS constellations create four strong winds

    GNSS constellations create four strong winds

    Matteo Luccio
    Matteo Luccio

    First, there was one. In July 1995, the U.S. Air Force declared the Global Positioning System had met all the requirements for full operational capability (FOC). Soon thereafter, there were two. In December of that same year, Russia’s Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (Global Navigation Satellite System, or GLONASS), also achieved FOC. For a quarter century, that was it.

    Then, last year, the number doubled, as both the European Union’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS, named after the Big Dipper asterism, which is known in Chinese as Beidou) achieved FOC.

    The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS, aka Navigation Indian Constellation, or NavIC, which means “sailor” or “navigator” in Hindi) and Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS, also known as Michibiki) are not global yet, but plan to become so. Currently, NavIC is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system, and NavIC-based trackers are compulsory on commercial vehicles in India. QZSS currently complements GPS to improve coverage in East Asia and Oceania, but Japan plans to have an operational constellation of seven satellites for autonomous capability by 2023. The Korea Positioning System (KPS) plans to join the party by 2035.

    Who’s next? Will it be another country or a private company? Given that the state-sponsored systems are free to end users, I don’t see what the business model would be for a private GNSS constellation, unless it were to piggyback on one built mainly for another purpose.

    Surveyors who have begun to routinely use three or more constellations are over the moon. One, quoted in this month’s cover story, recalls that “the use of GPS for construction staking was an extremely risky proposition” because its residuals exceeded most construction tolerances. Using multiple GNSS constellations, however, has increased confidence in the accuracy of results to the point that some construction companies are relying on GNSS receivers for staking. Additionally, multi-constellation receivers can now increasingly be used under tree canopies and against structures, whether natural or built.

    Whatever their mix of military, political and commercial motivations for building, deploying and operating their own GNSS constellations in addition to the original two, the European Union, China, India, Japan, Korea and whichever entity may follow are greatly improving satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) for all users everywhere — by increasing accuracy, shortening the time to first fix, and making GNSS more impervious to jamming and spoofing.

    In 1978, the year that the U.S. Department of Defense launched the first NAVSTAR GPS satellite (“NAVSTAR” was later dropped from the system’s name), Neil Young sang “Four Strong Winds” (originally written by Ian Tyson and performed by him with his wife Sylvia as the Canadian folk-duo Ian and Sylvia).

    Now, GNSS has “four strong winds,” two lighter ones and several more breezes to follow. As a sailor and a navigator, I welcome them heartily. As this magazine’s editor-in-chief, I don’t mind that, like Jeep, Kleenex, Popsicle and Xerox, GPS probably will stick in popular culture as a generic term for global satellite navigation systems way past its accurate description of what is in the box.

    Matteo Luccio | Editor-in-Chief
    [email protected]

  • Galileo will help Lunar Pathfinder navigate around Moon

    Galileo will help Lunar Pathfinder navigate around Moon

    News from the European Space Agency

    Europe’s Lunar Pathfinder mission to the Moon will carry an advanced satellite navigation receiver to perform the first satellite navigation positioning fix in lunar orbit. The experimental payload marks a preliminary step in an ambitious European Space Agency (ESA) plan to expand reliable satnav coverage — as well as communication links — to explorers around and ultimately on the Moon during this decade.

    Due to launch by the end of 2023 into lunar orbit, the public-private Lunar Pathfinder comsat will offer commercial data-relay services to lunar missions, while also stretching the operational limits of satnav signals.

    Navigation satellites like Europe’s Galileo constellation are intended to deliver positioning, navigation and timing services to our planet, so most of the energy of their navigation antennas radiates directly towards the Earth disc, blocking its use for users further away in space.

    “But this is not the whole story,” explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, leading ESA’s Galileo Navigation Science Office and coordinating ESA lunar navigation activities. “Navigation signal patterns also radiate sideways, like light from a flashlight, and past testing shows these antenna side lobes can be employed for positioning, provided adequate receivers are implemented.”

    Just like people or cars on the ground, satellites in low-Earth orbit rely heavily on satnav signals to determine their orbital position, and since ESA proved higher orbit positioning was possible, a growing number of satellites in geostationary orbit today employ satnav receivers.

    But geostationary orbit is 35,786 km up, while the Moon is more than ten times further away, at an average distance of 384 000 km. In 2019 however, NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission acquired GPS signals to perform a fix and determine its orbit from 187,166 km away, close to halfway the Earth-Moon distance.

    “This successful experimental evidence provides us high confidence since the receiver we will embark on Lunar Pathfinder will have a significantly improved sensitivity, employ both Galileo and GPS signals and will also feature a high-gain satnav antenna,” Javier added.

    The main challenge will be overcoming the limited geometry of satnav signals all coming from the same part of the sky, along with the low signal power.

    The high-sensitivity receiver’s main antenna was developed through ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, with the receiver’s main unit developed through ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, NAVISP.

    The receiver project is led by ESA navigation engineer Pietro Giordano. “The high sensitivity receiver will be able to detect very faint signals, millions of times weaker than the ones received on Earth. The use of advanced on-board orbital filters will allow for unprecedented orbit determination accuracy on an autonomous basis,” Giordano said.

    Lunar Pathfinder’s receiver is projected to achieve positioning accuracy of around 100 meters — more accurate than traditional ground tracking.

    Once in a stable elliptical orbit over the lunar south pole, Lunar Pathfinder will relay signals from other Moon missions. (Image: ESA)
    Once in a stable elliptical orbit over the lunar south pole, Lunar Pathfinder will relay signals from other Moon missions. (Image: ESA)

    The availability of satnav will allow the performance of ‘Precise Orbit Determination’ for lunar satellites, said Werner Enderle, head of ESA’s Navigation Support Office. “Traditional orbit determination for lunar orbiting satellites is performed by radio ranging, using deep space ground stations,” Enderle said. “This Lunar Pathfinder demonstration will be a major milestone in lunar navigation, changing the entire approach. It will not only increase spacecraft autonomy and sharpen the accuracy of results, it will also help to reduce operational costs.”

    While lunar orbits are often unstable, with low-orbiting satellites drawn off course by the lumpy mass concentrations or mascons making up the Moon, Lunar Pathfinder is planned to adopt a highly stable “frozen” elliptical orbit, focused on the lunar south pole – a leading target for future expeditions. Earth — and its satnav constellations — should remain in view of Lunar Pathfinder for the majority of testing. The main challenge will be overcoming the limited geometry of satnav signals all coming from the same part of the sky, along with the low signal power.

    Lunar Pathfinder’s demonstration that terrestrial satnav signals can be employed to navigate in lunar orbits will be an important early step in ESA’s Moonlight initiative. Supported through three ESA Directorates, Moonlight will establish a lunar communication and navigation service.

    “Over this coming decade, ESA aims to contribute to building up a common communications and navigation infrastructure for all lunar missions based on dedicated lunar satellites,” explained Bernhard Hufenbach, managing commercialisation and innovation initiatives for space exploration at ESA. “Moonlight will allow to support missions that cannot use Earth satnav signals, such as landers on the far side and is planning to cover the current gap towards the needs expressed by the Global Exploration community, targeting positioning accuracy below 50 meters.”

    As well as facilitating lunar exploration, these satnav signals might one day become a tool for science in their own right, used, for example, to perform reflectometry across the lunar surface; sounding the scant dusty exosphere that surrounds the Moon or by providing a common time reference signal across the Moon, to be used for fundamental physics or astronomy experiments.

    Javier noted that Lunar Pathfinder’s satnav experiment also will have larger consequences. “This will become the first-ever demonstration of GPS and Galileo reception in lunar orbit, opening the door to a complete way to navigate spacecraft in deep space, enabling human exploration of the Moon,” he said.

  • UK hits reset on how to deliver satnav

    UK hits reset on how to deliver satnav

    The United Kingdom will explore new options for satellite navigation and timing capability to support critical infrastructure, it announced in a press release.

    The Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing Programme (SBPP) will explore new and alternative ways to deliver vital satellite navigation services to the U.K. for transport systems, energy networks, mobile communications, and national security and defense.

    The SBPP also aims to boost the British space industry and develop the U.K.’s own capabilities in these services.

    UK GNSS program reinvented

    The new program follows the work of the UK GNSS program, which concludes Sept. 30. UK GNSS began in 2018 as a result of Brexit and the U.K.’s departure from the Galileo program.

    UK GNSS is an exploration programme that has developed outline plans for a conventional satellite system as an alternative to American GPS or the EU’s Galileo. The program will now be reset as the SBPP to build on this work to consider newer, more innovative ideas of delivering global satnav and secure satellite services to meet public, government and industry needs.

    In 2018, the government announced an 18-month program, led by the UK Space Agency, to develop a conventional GNSS, which could meet U.K. security requirements and support the U.K.’s sovereign space and cryptography sectors.

    Work completed by the UK GNSS Programme so far has developed cutting-edge British expertise in areas such as spacecraft and antenna design, satellite and ground control systems, systems engineering and simulation, which have wider applications across the space sector, in addition to supporting specialist U.K. jobs and industrial GNSS capability.

    SBPP program to meet everyday needs

    Image: melis82/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
    Image: melis82/iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

    The refocused SBPP program could include technology that supports people’s everyday lives, such as emergency services to locate incidents, financial services companies to regulate exchanges on the U.K. stock market, or energy networks to ensure households receive power. Satellite navigation systems are also necessary to unlocking future technologies such as driverless cars, smart cities and artificial intelligence.

    Capitalizing on the ingenuity of British businesses and academics, the program will explore the use of different kinds of satellites at various levels of orbit by exploiting technologies offered by companies at the cutting-edge of innovation such as OneWeb, Inmarsat and Airbus.

    A Cabinet Office Study examining the need for a U.K. space-based system for secure positioning, navigation and timing concluded that any solution would need to examine more options and further work is needed to determine what form a potential system takes so it provides value for money.

    To meet U.K. industry and government needs for resilient global navigation and timing while also providing value for money to the public, the new SBPP will consider collaboration with international allies to share satellite navigation services, costs and technology.

    Also see

    With new space program, UK continues march to more holistic PNT

    “Satellites underpin so many of the services that we all use every single day, from precise train timetables on our phones and satnavs in our cars,” said Business Secretary Alok Sharma. “Through our Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing Programme, we will draw on the strengths of the U.K.’s already thriving space industry to understand our requirements for a robust and secure satellite navigation system. This includes considering low-orbiting satellites that could deliver considerable benefits to people and businesses right across the U.K., while potentially reducing our dependency on foreign satellite systems.”

    “I am delighted to see a further boost to the U.K.’s already thriving space industry,” said Scotland Office Minister Iain Stewart. “The U.K. government works closely with industry and academia to support the sector. We have high ambitions for the U.K. to be a global sector leader. The U.K. government is expanding its plans to understand requirements for a satellite navigation system. Satellite navigation provides the core services that we all use every day such as our mobile networks and is the key to unlocking further technical innovation in the future. This new programme will potentially pave the way for greater independence from foreign systems such as the United States’ GPS or the EU’s Galileo system which will allow greater opportunities for British businesses.”

    “Our work to date has developed cutting-edge U.K. expertise in satellite navigation spacecraft, antenna design and control systems, while supporting high-skilled jobs,” Graham Turnock, CEO of the UK Space Agency said. “Now is the time to drive this work further to look into wider, more innovative ways of delivering this important national capability — to help protect our critical infrastructure and put the U.K. at the forefront of the development of new space technologies.”

    Currently, the U.K. is entirely dependent on foreign systems for these critical navigation services. SBPP will enable to the U.K. to build on its thriving space industry, home to global players such as Inmarsat, Airbus, Surrey Satellites (SSTL) and others, to become a global leader in space navigation technologies, developing new opportunities for businesses in the U.K. and overseas and creating new highly skilled jobs.

    The government has made clear its ambitions for the U.K. to become a globally competitive space power and is taking action through the newly established National Space Council, emerging National Space Strategy and the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, to create the conditions for a strong, secure and innovative space sector that delivers for the British people.

    A government-backed study from London Economics estimated that sustained disruption to existing satellite navigation capabilities would likely cost the U.K. economy £1 billion per day. Investment in space technology and services will enable the U.K. to build back better, unleashing the country’s global competitiveness and underpinning growth and high-skilled jobs.

  • Will Britain launch its own Galileo? Maybe not

    Will Britain launch its own Galileo? Maybe not

    When Brexit happened, many in Britain thought the country should have its own satellite navigation system, because it was no longer going to be a participant in Galileo, created and run by the European Union.

    Now the Telegraph reports that officials have concluded that such plans should be scrapped because the £5 billion project would be a waste of taxpayer funds.

    The Telegraph reports that members of the Cabinet Office and Department for Business are pressing ministers to shut down work on the program, which was set up after Brussels froze the U.K. out of the EU’s Galileo satellite program.

    In 2018, then-Prime Minister Theresa May announced £92m for a feasibility study into the U.K. satnav, reports Engineering & Technology. Much of that money has already been spent, it is believed. In March 2020, it was reported that the project had been delayed for at least six months over concerns about its scope and multi-billion-pound cost.

  • Galileo positioning aids with COVID-19 tracking apps

    Galileo positioning aids with COVID-19 tracking apps

    Image: ESA
    An artist’s rendering of a Galileo satellite in orbit (Image: ESA)

    News from the European Space Agency

    As European governments plan their phased recoveries from the lockdown states triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the positioning delivered through satellite navigation is becoming more important than ever before, said the European Space Agency (ESA). Location is a key requirement when attempting to monitor and map the spread of a disease and satnav is one of the main tools supporting this, the agency added.

    Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, many applications have been developed that use satnav-based location data to monitor the global spread of the virus and map outbreaks.

    For example, Romanian company RISE developed an app called CovTrack, which monitors people in a user’s vicinity made identifiable via Bluetooth connections to the user’s mobile phone and stores the identification data of these devices.

    By pressing a button, users can access the database in which the unique identifiers of the mobile phones are registered (without having access to any personal data of these mobile phone users), to verify whether the persons with whom users came in contact have subsequently been confirmed with COVID-19, ESA said. If users have identified a potential contact, they can refer to the relevant authorities whether that contact requires inclusion among the monitored persons, or even testing for COVID-19.

    According to ESA, CovTrack, developed on a pro-bono basis, is a spin-off from the existing AGORA project for festival management, supported through ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, focused on future navigation technologies.

    ESA, along with the European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency (GSA) and European Commission, put together a repository of these apps. The list, based on apps that are already working and available in app stores, includes practical apps that facilitate the daily lives of citizens. Check out the list here.

    Europe’s Galileo, currently embedded in over 1.3 billion smartphones and devices worldwide, is helping to increase satnav accuracy and availability, especially in urban areas, ESA added.

    In addition, GSA is developing its own Galileo-enabled application, Galileo for Green Lane, to monitor and ease the circulation of goods between European Union (EU) Member States while identifying potential congestion at Green Lane border crossings, thus ensuring EU citizens can access the needed supplies of critical goods.

    Check out more of GPS World’s coronavirus coverage here.

  • More than 80 million BeiDou chips sold

    More than 80 million BeiDou chips sold

    Photo: Maridav/Shutterstock.com
    Photo: Maridav/Shutterstock.com

    When I was a kid, two of my hometown’s burger drive-ins attracted the hungry attention of my sister and myself, causing us to hound our parents to take us “out to dinner” upon the slightest pretext. Only one of them, however, boasted a sign claiming “400 million served.”

    This was a staggering number to an eight-year-old. I hypothesized that everyone in the world must have consumed several by now — a very good argument for me to have one tonight.

    The desire to provoke similar reasoning could form part of the motivation for the China Satellite Navigation Office to announce that sales of BeiDou-based chips have exceeded 80 million. Ran Chengqi, director of the CSNO, delivered the number in a report on the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference held in Beijing on May 22.

    “It would be stretching a point to say that satnav chips are the burgers of the future, but it’s not an exaggeration to assert that they are becoming a commodity on the world market.”

    Now, 80 million falls short of 400 million, but that next hurdle is well within reach, considering the size, potential and explosive growth of the Chinese market, to say nothing of others along the Great Belt and Road, a global development area of infrastructure development and investments in 152 countries and organizations in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

    The BeiDou number pales in comparison to the 3.15 billion units of total GNSS chips that global consumption is expected to hit in 2022. By a reasonable projection, BeiDou-enabled chips will by then constitute a major if not the lion’s share of that number.

    Of course, GPS-enabled chips will form a greater majority, if not the totality. All chips will — unless the world radically changes — be GPS-enabled to start, and then have some combination of other GNSS in addition.

    Big Numbers. Ran Chengqi further said that 22-nanometer dual-frequency BeiDou chips are ready for commercial applications.

    According to the China Global Television Network, 116 new positioning-capable cellphone models applied to enter the Chinese market in the first quarter of 2019; 82 of them carry BeiDou-enabled chips. The latest government report on the scale of China’s satnav industry anticipates it will reach 400 billion yuan (US$ 57.8 billion) by 2020.

    The news agency stated that more than six million vehicles in 36 cities use BeiDou; long-distance operations and precision farming help raise output by 5% while saving 10% of fuel costs; and more than 70,000 fishing vessels employ BeiDou’s short messaging service.

    BeiDou’s rapid success in a relatively short term echoes that of GPS and GNSS in general. It would be stretching a point to say that satnav chips are the burgers of the future, but it’s not any exaggeration or distortion to assert that they are becoming — if they have not already become — a commodity on the world market.

    By the way, those golden arches have since 1994 stopped counting and updating their published burger tally. All the signs simply say “billions and billions served.”

  • New ESA facility puts satnav at the service of science

    New ESA facility puts satnav at the service of science

    News from the European Space Agency (ESA)

    Global satellite navigation systems are continuously bathing Earth in satnav signals. As well as helping in our daily lives, these signals are also tools for cutting-edge science. A new ESA facility, based at ESA’s astronomy centre near Madrid, is championing their use for everything from Earth monitoring to fundamental physics.

    A Surveyor uses a GNSS device to map urban assets with Galileo and EGNOS. (Image: ESA)
    A Surveyor uses a GNSS device to map urban assets with Galileo and EGNOS. (Image: ESA)

    The new ESA Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Science Support Centre is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre, ESAC, near Madrid. Run by ESA’s Galileo Science Office, the GSSC integrates IT and satnav infrastructure to deliver advanced data processing services to the scientific community.

    Precisely timed to a few billionths of a second and highly stable, satnav signals can be used as a point of reference for many scientific sectors, including Earth and atmospheric sciences, astronomy, highly precise timing metrology as well as the study of relativity and other fundamental physics topics.

    Current satnav infrastructure plans worldwide should see more than 120 satnav satellites in orbit in coming years. This number includes Europe’s own Galileo constellation — offering unique features such as its highly stable passive hydrogen maser atomic clocks, multiple transmission frequencies, robust modulation, wide bandwidth and onboard laser retro-reflectors, which permit exact pinpointing of the satellites’ position in space down to a few tens of centimetres.

    “The potential of satnav for science has been recognised for a long time,” explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, Head of ESA’s Galileo Science Office. “The Galileo Science Office was set up in 2016 as a joint initiative between ESA’s Science and Navigation Directorates, coordinating scientific opportunities through interaction with the scientific community and the independent GNSS Science Advisory Committee.

    “The opening of the new centre is the next step. It is ESA’s concrete answer to the need expressed by the scientific community for a one-stop-shop to offer researchers long-term GNSS data, products information, results of scientific experiments, plus services to enhance GNSS scientific research and collaboration.

    “The future evolution of the centre will be driven by the interaction and feedback received from the scientific community, maximizing synergies with other GNSS data service providers from other institutions and research organization.”

    Among the activities to be supported by the new GSSC are big data processing of large amounts of satnav data, crowdsourcing as a means of weather monitoring and a scientific assessment of satnav performance in Antarctica.

    It also supports the continuing measurements of general relativity using Galileo satellites 5 and 6 and serves as a global data centre for the International GNSS Service. The long-established Navipedia website, giving technical information on satnav, is also hosted by the GSCC.

    One enthusiastic early adopter is ESA’s Navigation Support Office, based at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, lending support to mission teams making use of satnav to steer satellites.

    ESA's GNSS Observation Network (EGON). (Image: ESA)
    ESA’s GNSS Observation Network (EGON). (Image: ESA)

    “The GSSC is a welcome addition to ESA’s activities in the science of satellite navigation,” says Werner Enderle, heading ESOC’s Navigation Support Office. “The GSSC already hosts GNSS products generated by the team at ESOC, including observations from our worldwide EGON GNSS Observation Network and precise satellite orbits generated by their state-of-the-art software. Our two teams look forward to this collaboration continuing for the benefit of ESA and the scientific community.”

    The GSSC will roll out access to data, products and services over the coming months.

  • GNSS Summer School slated for July

    The annual ESA/JRC International Summer School on GNSS will take place July 16-27 in Loipersdorf, Austria. The early registration discount ends May 15.

    The 10-day school will cover all aspects of satellite navigation, up to and including the creation of a satnav-based business. It is open to graduate students, Ph.D.s and postdoctoral researchers, as well as young engineers and academics working within industry or agencies, aged 35 or younger.

    The number of participants is limited to 50, on a first-come, first-served basis.

    Internationally renowned scientists and specialists will be giving lectures as well as overseeing practical exercises and lab work.

    Participants will receive a full-spectrum overview of satellite navigation, starting from the theoretical basis of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, their signals, the processing performed by signal receivers and how the position-navigation-time solution is worked out.

    Also discussed will be threats to the satnav systems, such as spoofing or jamming, and countermeasures available against them, along with back-up navigation solutions for a GNSS-denied environment.

    Practical exercises will include receiving the various satnav constellations now in orbit — including Europe’s Galileo — to give course members direct, hands-on experience.

    In addition, lectures will cover business aspects, including patents and intellectual property rights.

    The main emphasis of the course will be the development of a group business project, building on an innovative idea to take in the planning of the product or service, its technical realisation and finally its marketing to customers.

    Image: Summer School
    Image: Summer School

    The school takes place in cooperation with Stanford University in the United States, the Institut Supérieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse, France, Graz University of Technology in Austria, and the University FAF Munich in Germany.

    Austria is this year’s host nation, and the summer school is supported by Graz University of Technology and the Austrian Institute of Navigation.

    For more information and to register, visit the summer school website.

  • Money doesn’t buy progress for GPS

    Alan Cameron

    While it sounded like good news at first, once the real results were plucked from the slurry, they resemble nothing so much as the same old uncertainties.

    About the future of GPS III, I mean.

    Additional money allocated by Congress to the Department of Defense budget — $80 billion on top of $549 billion for FY18 and $85 billion added to the $562 billion previously set for FY19 — alleviated longstanding worries about sufficient funding for GPS. The satnav system has always been at the mercy of raiding by other military programs, over budget and cash-strapped. At least that pressure will be off, we thought.

    But money on paper does not always lead, expeditiously or at all, to boots on the ground or birds in the sky. The funds come with an enthusiasm for reorganizing everything. To streamline it, effectivize it, make it more…businesslike.

    In the case of the Space and Missile Defense Command, this means eliminating three top-level decision-making positions, and designating someone other than the secretary of the Air Force as responsible for space budget prioritization.

    Congress stopped short of its initial idea, which was to establish a whole new department for military space activities, separate from and equal to the Air Force. But there’s no doubt that the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act strongly rebukes the current way of doing space things in the Pentagon and the Air Force — while proffering more money to do them.

    Like many announced initiatives to drain the swamp elsewhere, this one has just drawn in more murky water. It may take four or five years, according to some with Pentagon insight, to figure out new procedures, lines of command and the actual fulcrums of decision-making. In the meantime, matters will — you guessed it — slow down.

    All this as the GPS III launch schedule and OCX next-generation ground-control readiness slide rightward, and military GPS user equipment can count on at least a decade to even partially update. Mind you, Increment I of the new M-code cards is not yet complete. Once it is, the three major contractors who have developed them will compete to sell their varying versions to the different branches of the military, the different arms of those branches, and the different weapon systems (716, by GAO’s count) operated by those arms.

    The pursuit of increased resilience in space, clearly destined to be a contested domain in the event of large-scale international conflict, may actually inhibit itself in the near term.

    As noted below, the previous wielder of this space has relinquished satnav matters to take up, as he says, “some unfinished business with life.” I owe him a great debt. He gave me my start here.

    Glen Gibbons Retires

    Glen Gibbons announced his retirement from active leadership of Inside GNSS magazine at the end of last year, when he wrote he was “promoting myself to Editor Emeritus.” Gibbons was editor of GPS World from 1989 to 2005, and editor and publisher of Inside GNSS from 2006 through 2017.

    In 2003, he received the U.S. Institute of Navigation’s Norman P. Hays Award for inspiration and support contributing to the advancement of navigation. GPS World joins all those around the industry and the international GNSS community in recognizing and thanking him for his many years of coverage of and service to the field of positioning, navigation and timing.