Launch, deploy, and operate “22 satellites in less than 3 years.” That’s two satellites every three months, leading to a four-at-once launch in 2014. And that’s the challenge that Europe and the European Space Agency (ESA) now face.

This pointed call to action during the opening plenary of the European Navigation Conference (ENC) came from Didier Faivre, director of Galileo Programme and Navigation Related Activities at ESA. It was the only somber note sounded during the keynote speeches, which otherwise paraded the stirring recent accomplishments of the Galileo In-Orbit Validation (IOV) phase. IOV now concludes, and Galileo’s operational phase opens.

The ENC takes place in Vienna, Austria this week (April 23–25), hosted by the Austrian Institute of Navigation. Privately and informally, a handful of knowledgeable conference attendees expressed confidence that OHB System can furnish the completed satellites, at least, according to schedule. OHB System is the prime contractor for  construction of 22 Full Operational Capability (FOC) Galileo satellites and is responsible for developing the satellite bus and for integrating the satellites. Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) is developing and constructing the navigation payload and  assisting OHB with final satellite assembly.

“Using only European tools and means, European ground infrastructure deployed on European territory, our conception, machine and design, is totally validated,” stated Faivre, referring to the recent Galileo-only positioning fix by ESA. The March 12, 2013, event marks “the end of the beginning,” and culminates 12 years of intense work at all levels of European industry.

“Europe is at par with GPS” with performance as expected. “I hope that soon our U.S. colleagues will be jealous of our performance,” Faivre stated, implying yet again the persistent Galileo claim that the system will be more accurate than GPS. He returned to this theme with reference to Fugro’s accomplishment of real-time precise point positioning at the centimeter level.

He acknowledged that “It’s a technological competition with the United States, Russia, and China,” even though all may be friendly and collegial.

In that competitive light, “the success of Galileo will be measured by the number of users,” and not by the number of satellites, or the degree of accuracy, or the strength of the signal.

Previously, the ENC audience had heard from Ingolf Schädler that “Europe has closed the gap with the technological superpowers,” in what “may be the most complex invention ever of mankind, the system of navigation that is GNSS.” He also made a proud reference to Austrian-produced signal generators aboard Galileo’s orbiting IOV satellites. Schädler is the deputy director general of innovation for the Austrian federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology.

“We have reached cruising speed,” announced the third keynote speaker, Carlo des Dorides of the European GNSS Agency (GSA). He was referring explicitly to the re-positioning of the GSA headquarters from Brussels to Prague, but the remarks reverberated to the Galileo program as a whole.

David Blanchard, deputy head of unit, EU Satellite Navigation Programmes for the European Commission, quoted an unnamed U.S. publication: “With the capability to make a position fix from four signal-broadcasting satellites, we can now say that Galileo has truly arrived.”

That statement appeared in the May 2013 GPS World, an issue of the magazine that was distributed in conference bags to all attendees at the ENC.

Blanchard then shifted the focus slightly from Galileo, to Galileo together with the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Europe’s satellite-based augmentation service that also broadcasts GPS corrections. “We have to make sure that all the capabilities afforded by EGNOS are realized.” He also made strong references to the EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS).

Blanchard cited a current ongoing study that shows that 6 to 7 percent of European gross domestic product (GDP) is dependent upon GNSS.

“A gold mine within arm’s reach of European industry” was how Gard Ueland, head of Galileo Services, characterized the present situation. “Development of European downstream market is crucial; it also has to bring more benefits to European society.” Galileo Services will host a workshop of  industry stakeholders in late October, at the OHB System premises in Bremen, Germany. Watch GPS World Events calendar and news for an announcement with specific dates.

Having attained altitude and cruising speed, the Galileo program must now shift to warp speed to hit its goals on time: 18 satellites in orbit by the end of 2014, and a total of 26 by the end of 2015. Early services by the end of 2014, and full services in 2016. Stable, continuous services, as Blanchard emphasized.

Better go to overdrive.

My acquaintance with the system began in July 2000, when I joined the staff of GPS World and received my first assignment, editing an article about GPS-bearing carrier pigeons in the sister publication Galileo’s World, from founding editor Glen Gibbons. We published Galileo’s World quarterly from 2000 to 2002, chronicling the ups and downs, forward steps and back, of the European GNSS. Unless you counted EGNOS — really telecom satellites with a piggyback SBAS payload — Galileo had no space vehicles as yet, but did encompass plenty of political and financial maneuvering, rhetoric, market projections, international negotiations, and technical blueprints. In short, the stuff of news. For application stories in the magazine, we filled with European uses of GPS, all of which would eventually integrate Galileo as well.

In 2002, a UK-based travel agency of the same name began to assert its legal possession of the name Galileo, and sent a cease-and-desist shot across the bows to the corporate ownership of the two magazines, and to the European Union. The EU felt it had sufficient legal clout or standing of some kind, for it neither desisted nor renamed its space program. But our counsel at the time instructed us to quietly fold up our tent and steal away. The impending battle wasn’t worth our stake.

And so Galileo’s World sadly ceased publication. Not for lack of interest, or support, or commitment. But because of someone else’s greed or turf belligerence in a completely unrelated market. Such is the way of the global economy.

We have covered every step of Galileo’s way, technically, economically, and politically, in the pages of GPS World. Occasionally we ponder calling ourselves GNSS World, or even PNT World. But the brand, like the satnav system it is named after, is just so strong, it would be foolhardy to walk away from it, at this point in time at least.

We continue to support European satnav progress at each successive stage. And so we say yet again: Welcome, Galileo!

Greg Turetsky

Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Update

Many of us remember way back in 2001 when the FCC first announced E911 position reporting requirements for cell phones. That was a long time ago in many significant ways. Everyone had 2G phones and anxiously anticipated the arrival of 3G, and with it, data. Most people still had a landline at home, and used their mobile sparingly lest they overrun their monthly minutes. Roaming was very expensive and nearly impossible overseas. Very few phones had GPS, and people only turned it on when needed, as it significantly reduced battery life.

Now, in 2013, all of the technology has changed, but — not unexpectedly — the regulations have not. This is one of the reasons the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created CSRIC.

The Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council’s mission is to provide recommendations to the FCC to ensure, among other things, optimal security and reliability of communications systems, including telecommunications, media, and public safety. The current council, CSRIC III, was born on March 19, 2011, and ended on March 18, 2013. Working Group 3 (WG-3), the E911 Location Accuracy group, has looked into both outdoor and indoor location accuracy issues to help the FCC shape new guidelines. I don’t think any of us would argue that given the current patterns of cell phone usage, the ability to provide a location indoors to a public safety answering point (PSAP) is something that is now needed, has significant value to the public, and would seem to lie within our grasp technically.

Working Group 3 is a fairly large group of experts from a wide variety of backgrounds. The actual list of participants is publicly available; what’s more interesting is the groups that they represent. Three main constituencies constitute the Working Group: the public safety community, the wireless operators, and the technology vendors. Each group has a slightly different goal, but they all worked well together to produce clear, unbiased reports that represent all the different members’ views in a way that lends more credibility to the overall report.

On March 14, the FCC released two reports created by WG-3: the “Indoor Location Test Bed Report,” and “Leveraging LBS and Emerging Location Technologies for Indoor Wireless E911 Report.” I will not review either document here as they are available publicly, but I will summarize the highlights of the reports from my perspective as a member of the location community and a concerned citizen, and attempt to predict where the process might lead next.

Figure 1. Indoor accuracy in the dense urban environment.

Test Bed Report. In my mind, two key results emerged from the Test Bed Report. The first was very positive: the test bed showed that there are technologies capable of yielding positions indoors, and their performance can be compared analytically. This may seem like a bland statement, but it carries a significant amount of weight with both the public safety community and the FCC. It acknowledges that the technology has evolved sufficiently such that in a test bed setting, we can gather and compare, in an apples-to-apples way, the performance of diverse technologies in terms of yield and accuracy. Similar to the LightSquared reports, this report focuses on ensuring that the data itself is valid. The interpretation of the data is far too politically and economically charged to be agreed on by all parties involved. It is a great accomplishment to concur on a methodology by which testing should be done, and to produce a set of results that can be given to the FCC with the entire council’s approval.

The second highlight from my perspective was less positive. The test bed originally had seven participants, but in the end only three completed the process. This indicates that there are even more candidate technologies for solving the indoor E911 problem — but for a variety of reasons, they were not ready for CSRIC testing at this juncture. Although having three choices is good, seven (or even more) would be better for the FCC to feel confident in its ability to create a new mandate with sufficient flexibility on implementation. There are clearly many ways to skin this cat technically, but we have to ensure that the test bed methodology allows as many as possible viable alternatives to be compared. There is clearly a gap between those technologies that are commercially available and those that can be used for E911.

Leveraging LBS. The Leveraging LBS Technology report also reached some interesting conclusions. The concept of leveraging LBS was actually how I became involved in the CSRIC. The underlying question that the FCC asked me to explore was “Why can a smartphone user can get a dot on a map indoors (usually with an uncertainty circle, no less), but no location information shows up on the PSAP screen if he makes an E911 call?”

As we dug into this problem, it became clear that this was less of a technology problem and more of a business/policy one. Quite a few large companies make money by providing that indoor location for various applications, but there isn’t any real money in E911 — although there are lots of liabilities. Also, many of these solutions are proprietary either to the phone, the operating system, or the application, while an E911 solution would need to be standardized across all of those as well as different carriers.

Figure 2. Indoor accuracy in the urban environment.

Conclusion. The FCC has received two reports with similar conclusions: We have come a long way since 2001, but we might not be there — the indoor E911 promised land —just yet.

There is still more to come, however. Therefore, many participants and observers hope the work of the current CSRIC will lay the foundation for a rational conversation about indoor E911 right now, and still be around to allow for future improvements. We have recommended that the test bed be maintained so future results can be compared with current ones. At issue is the funding source for the test bed. The FCC has announced the coming of a CSRIC IV, but has not released any further details. It is certainly the hope of WG-3 that the work performed to date to establish and validate the test bed will be available for use by future technologies as they mature.

Locating emergency callers indoors is a critical capability that we as society must address — not for the callers’ convenience, but for their safety and or public safety generally. The problem has technical, commercial, regulatory, financial, legal, and public safety facets to it, making it a very complex issue.

I should also note, that although E911 is a U.S. regulation, the problem of indoor location is under scrutiny in nations all over the world. I earnestly hope that all sides can continue working together to find a solution that can be implemented for the benefit of everyone.

Greg Turetzky is senior director, CTO Office, for CSR. He served on the CSRIC Working Group 3 LBS Subgroup. He will participate in a April 16 GPS World Webinar on this topic. Registration is free.

Measurements of individual Galileo horizontal position fixes performed for the first time using the four Galileo satellites in orbit plus the worldwide ground system between 1000 and 11:00 CET on Tuesday 12 March 2013, showing an overall horizontal accuracy over ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, of 6.3 m.

Galileo Logs First Autonomous Fix; Galileo over Canada (By James T. Curran, Mark Petovello, and Gérard Lachapelle); and Indoor Nav: Early Steps towards FCC Standards

Galileo Logs First Autonomous Fix

Entitling its release “From Orbit with Love,” the European Space Agency (ESA) announced March 12 that the four current satellites of the Galileo constellation achieved their first autonomous position fix. The feat was replicated by the NavSAS group of Politecnico di Torino, by GNSS manufacturer Septentrio, and by a University of Calgrary team as the four satellites appeared over North America.

The obtained accuracy lies in the 10-meter range, according to ESA, adding that this fulfills expectations, considering the infrastructure is only partly deployed. The fix was obtained by ESA’s Netherlands navigation lab, using the four satellites, launched in October 2011 and 2012, and the Galileo programme’s ground infrastructure: control centers in Italy and Germany and a global network of ground stations.

With only four satellites for the time being, the full Galileo constellation is visible at the same time for a maximum two to three hours daily. This frequency will increase as more satellites join the constellation in orbit, along with extra ground stations coming online, for Galileo’s early services to start at the end of 2014.

With the validation testing activities under way, users might experience breaks in the content of the navigation messages being broadcast, said ESA. In the coming months the messages will be further elaborated to define the offset between Galileo System Time and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), enabling Galileo to be relied on for precision timing applications, as well as the Galileo to GPS Time Offset, ensuring interoperability with GPS.

NavSAS Confirmation. Almost simultaneously with the ESA announcement, the NavSAS group of Politecnico di Torino and Istituto Superiore Mario Boella in Turin, Italy, also achieved a position fix using the signals of the four In-Orbit Validation satellites (PFM, FM2, FM3, FM4). NavSAS researchers computed the positions using full software receivers developed by the team.

Septentrio, Too. Septentrio became the first receiver manufacturer to report an autonomous real-time position calculation using Galileo IOV satellites with its own standard commercial receiver. The company based in Leuven, Belgium announced on March 12 that it performed  standalone position calculated from in-orbit navigation messages using a standard PolaRx4 GNSS receiver equipped with commercially released firmware.

This achievement was followed by a further Septentrio release stating performance of what it believes to be the first 4-constellation PVT by a standard commercial receiver, on March 12 at approximately 10:35 UTC.

The milestone in all three accounts is that it is Galileo-only real-time positioning. Galileo positioning in post-processing mode was described by authors from the Technische Universität München and the German Space Operations Center, in a GPS World account, February 2012 issue.

Galileo over Canada

By James T. Curran, Mark Petovello, and Gérard Lachapelle

Within a day of activation over Europe, Galileo satellites were visible over North America. The PLAN Group of the University of Calgary captured and processed signals from Galileo PRN 11, 12, and 19 on E1B/C. The PLAN software GSNRx  simultaneously tracked GPS L1 and GLONASS L1 for combined solutions in real time.

The Galileo navigation message on E1B stated that the satellite health status is flagged as E1BHS=3 meaning “Signal Component currently in Test” and the data validity status is flagged as E1BDVS=1 meaning “Working without guarantee.” Current Galileo-ready commercial receivers may automatically discard measurements from a satellites broadcasting such messages. Parsing the received words in the I/NAV message, more than 50 percent were of type 0, although all words (types 0 to 10) were decoded at some point during the test.

Figure 1. 2D position errors.

Data was collected using a roof-mounted NovAtel 702GG antenna and an in-house two-channel digitizing front-end clocked by a high quality OCXO, in addition to a three-channel National Instruments front-end for post-processing. The two-channel intermediate frequency data was streamed live to a laptop computer for real-time processing with GSNRx. The GPS and GLONASS signals were tracked using a Kalman-filter-based tracking strategy while the Galileo signals were tracked using a specialized data-pilot algorithm.

Pseudorange and Doppler observations were extracted from the tracking strategies at a rate of 2 Hz. Single-frequency single-point position solutions were then computed for each of the three systems, each of the three pairs of systems and for the full combined Galileo-GLONASS-GPS. In the case of the three-satellite Galileo solution, the height was held fixed. Figure 1 shows 2D position errors with respect to antenna ITRF coordinates. Departures of the solutions involving GLONASS are likely due to orbital biases, given location of Calgary with respect to GLONASS ground stations.

Figure 2. Pseudorange residuals.

Next, by fixing the known position in the solution and solving only for the three clock biases, accurate pseudorange residuals were computed and are shown Figure 2. Galileo PRN 19, launched a year later than PRN 11 and 12, exhibits larger residuals, perhaps attributable to ephemeris or orbital errors. The overall results show very good consistency of the Galileo results and the PLAN Group equipment and GSNRx receiver.

Indoor Nav: Early Steps towards FCC Standards

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 14 released two reports from its Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC): the “Indoor Location Test Bed Report,” and “Leveraging LBS and Emerging Location Technologies for Indoor Wireless E9-1-1.”
They report on Bay Area tests of technology from NextNav, Polaris Wireless, and Qualcomm, in four representative morphologies (dense urban, urban, suburban, rural) and various building types. They are available online, via www.gpsworld.com/csric, are the subject of an Expert Advice column (see page 10), and will be more fully discussed in May issue.  For now, this summary from the first-named report:

“Seven location vendors/technologies began the process to demonstrate their performance indoors through the common test bed, but only three completed the process. Of these three, two technologies (AGPS/AFLT and RF Fingerprinting) are already in common use for emergency services, while the third (metropolitan beacons) is not yet commercially available. However all technologies tested demonstrated relativity high yield and various levels of accuracy in indoor environments.

“Significant standards work is required for practical implementation of many emerging location technologies for emergency services use.

“Many positioning methods require handset modifications. Integration of these modified handsets into the subscriber base, once the location technology is commercially available, will take years to complete.

“Progress has been made in the ability to achieve significantly improved search rings in both a horizontal and vertical dimension. However, even the best location technologies tested have not proven the ability to consistently identify the specific building and floor, which represents the required performance to meet Public Safety’s expressed needs. This is not likely to change over the next 12–24 months. Various technologies have projected improved performance in the future, but none of those claims have yet been proven through the test bed process. It is hoped that such technologies would be tested and validated in future test bed campaigns.”

An April 16 GPS World Webinar covers this topic with test participants. Registration is free.

The questions that candidate speakers are asked to address (given further on in this column) read like a primer on modern signal design, and suggest the complexity of issues dealt with at this very high technical level. The depth and level of detail at which the session organizers seek input reveal — what? That such issues are truly not yet determined by U.S., Chinese, Russian, and European system operators? This is impossible to know, outside government circles, and could easily be doubted by cynical minds. Yet the organization of such a workshop hints that at least some, if not many, such delicate matters remain in flux and under discussion.

The organizers seek three speakers each in four main topic areas. They emphasize that they are trying to involve only those who design GNSS receivers, not users, service providers, or product integrators.

High-Precision Code is for products with sub-decimeter accuracy that use wide area correction signals such as from OmniSTAR or StarFire.

High-Precision Phase is for products with sub-cm accuracy that use terrestrial correction signals to resolve carrier phase ambiguities.

Medium Precision is for products with sub-50 cm accuracy, which often are single-frequency receivers using local correction signals.

Consumer Applications are for chipsets embedded in consumer products.

If you want to participate, in person, by Internet, or by recorded PowerPoint presentation, you can contact the workshop organizers via GPS World magazine, by emailing editor@gpsworld.com. Please indicate the topic that best fits your presentation. If you are not selected to speak, you are welcome to submit a paper or presentation that will be given to each signal provider.

Specific questions that candidate speakers are asked to address include:

Supported applications: What types of applications do your receivers (or receiver designs) support?

Increase in noise floor: Do you see a threat to GNSS receivers due to many more GNSS signals centered at 1575.42 MHz?

Whether you see a threat or not, do you prefer all new CDMA signals at L1 to be centered at 1575.42 MHz, or have some of them elsewhere, e.g., at 1602 MHz?

Given that most GNSS providers plan to eventually transmit a modernized signal at 1575.42 MHz, what is your long-term perspective on whether you will continue to use C/A? Why and How?

CDMA and FDMA: Once there are a large number of good CDMA signals, will there be continuing commercial interest in FDMA signals? Why or why not?

Compatibility: Do you prefer signals in different L1 frequency bands for interference mitigation rather than at one center frequency for interoperability? Why?

What to do about misbehaving signals: If a satellite’s signals do not meet quality standards, should they:

• Be set unhealthy?
• Transmit with a nonstandard code?
• Transmit with reduced signal power (reduce interference)?
• Be switched off?
• What combination of the above?

To assure only good signals, should GNSS providers agree on minimum international signal quality standards and agree to provide only signals meeting the standard?

E5a and E5b: Given that L5/E5a will be transmitted by most GNSS providers, do you intend to use the E5b signal? If so, for what purpose?

Frequency steps: For your applications, are small satellite frequency steps (Δf) a problem?

If so, what interval between frequency steps and what Δf magnitude would be excessive?

Interoperable use: Assuming signal quality is acceptable from every provider, would you limit the number signals used by provider or by other criteria? What criteria?

Is having more signals inherently better or do you think there should be a limit?

Will the marketplace force you to make use of every available signal?

For best interoperability, how important is a common center frequency? How important is a common signal spectrum?

Another common open-service signal: Will you provide tri-lane capability in the future? Why?

If so, do you prefer a common middle frequency or the combined use of L2 (1227.6), B3 (1268.52), and E6 (1278.75) if B3 and E6 open access is available?

Would you prefer a common open signal in S Band? In C Band? Why?

Precision code measurements: Does a wider satellite transmitter bandwidth help with multipath mitigation?

What minimum transmitter bandwidth would you recommend for future GNSS signals in order to achieve optimum code precision measurements?

Added GNSS or SBAS messages: Would you recommend GNSS or SBAS services provide interoperability parameters:

• System clock offsets
• Geodesy offsets
• ARAIM parameters
• Others

Should they be provided by other means so as not to compromise TTFF or other navigation capabilities?

Signal coherence: For your applications and for each signal, what amount of drift between code and carrier over what time frame would be excessive?

For your applications and for two or more signals in different frequency bands, e.g., L1 and L5 (when scaled properly), what amount of relative drift in code and carrier between the signals would be excessive?

Spectrum protection: Should the international community strive to protect all GNSS signal bands from terrestrial signal interference?

System geodesy: Do the current differences (~10 cm) in geodesy pose a problem for your users? Why or why not?

If geodesy differences are a problem, what is the preferred method of compensation:

• Published values (e.g., on websites)
• Satellite messages

System time: Do you want each system to cross-reference the other’s time (e.g., with a GGTO type of message) or compare itself to a common international GNSS ensemble time? To what precision?

Will your future receivers calculate a time offset between systems based on signal measurements or use only external time offset data?

What is the preferred method of receiving time offsets: Satellite messages, Internet messages, or internally calculated?

Further information and background on the April 26 session can be downloaded at http://www.mediafire.com/?cegvqb9l8ya1c.

The timed agenda for the April 26 meeting follows, showing both Hawaii Standard Time (HST) and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), provided because some presenters will speak from remote locations using GoToMeeting over the Internet. Another option for presenters is to provide a PowerPoint file with embedded audio.

HST/UTC        Topic                        Presenter

9:00/19:00     Welcome and Introduction     Working Group Co-Chairs

9:25/19:25     Welcome and Introduction     Xiaochun Lu

9:35/19:35      Framing the Presentations    Tom Stansell

9:50/19:50     Certified Avionics           TBD

10:15/20:15     High Precision Code #1       TBD

10:40/20:40    Break

10:5520:55     High Precision Code #2       TBD

11:20/21:20     High Precision Code #3       TBD

11:45/21:45     High Precision Phase #1      TBD

12:10/22:10     High Precision Phase #2      TBD

12:35/22:35     Lunch

13:35/23:35    High Precision Phase #3      TBD

14:00/0:00     Medium Precision (~GIS) #1   TBD

14:25/0:25     Medium Precision (~GIS) #2   TBD

14:50/0:50     Medium Precision (~GIS) #3   TBD

15:15/1:15    Break

15:30/1:30     Consumer Applications #1     TBD

15:55/1:55     Consumer Applications #2     TBD

16:20/2:20     Consumer Applications #3     TBD

16:45/2:45     Summary                      Tom Stansell

16:55/2:55     Summary                      Xiaochun Lu

17:05/3:05     Conclusion       Working Group Co-Chairs

17:25/3:25     End

Paul Flament

A Constellation of 18 by 2015, Rising to 26 by the End of That Year

An Interview with Paul Flament

Paul Flament is the European Commission Programme Manager and Head of the EU Satellite Navigation Programme Unit.

A Belgian civil engineer specialized in telecommunications, he previously worked  for 11 years in the European Space Agency, for space missions control centers and for the design and development of telecommunication satellites. After obtaining a master’s degree in European Studies, he joined the European Commission in 1998.

On the occasion of this special Europe/Galileo issue of the magazine, he speaks to GPS World readers regarding the present and promising future of the European GNSS.

Alan Cameron (AC): Can you recap for us briefly the upcoming satellite launch schedule that will take Galileo to Initial and then to Full Operating Capability?

Paul Flament (PF): It’s very simple. The first two in-orbit validation satellites were launched in October 2011, the next two on October 12, 2012. Satellites 5 and 6 will be launched in September of this year, aboard a Soyuz launcher from Kourou, and numbers 7 and 8 will follow in December.

Then, in 2013 we will see three Soyuz launches of two satellites each. We do not have the precise launch dates yet, but they are likely to be in April, June, and September. In December 2014, we expect to have the first launch using the Ariane 5 launcher, which is capable of deploying four satellites in one go. This means that by the end of 2014 Galileo will have deployed 18 satellites in orbit.

In 2015, there will be two Ariane 5 launches, one in the middle of the year, one at the end, each carrying four satellites. This will bring the total number of satellites to 26 by the end of 2015.

I am doubly confident of this constellation deployment schedule. First, at the technical level: The European Commission (EC) together with the European Space Agency (ESA) is following very closely all the industrial activities. The satellites in production now are with OHB. We have people in Bremen, where the OHB facilities are located, following this very closely. If there are technical issues, we take them up straight away with those concerned, the moment they appear. We also have monthly meetings with Jean-Jacques Dordain, the director general of ESA, and we make a careful tour of all the dates and conditions.

Secondly, there are no unknowns from the budget point of view. Except for the cost of the Ariane 5 launchers, the costs of deployment are already covered. And the EU’s member states have agreed on a budget of €6.3 billion for the next seven years. Budget should not be an issue.

Just recently, on March 12 of this year, we were for the first time able to calculate positions with the four Galileo satellites already in the sky. They pass overhead every so often, depending on geometry of orbit. This is an important technical milestone, even if this does not provide you a service as such. It demonstrates that the capability is there and that the mission part of the system works.

In terms of services, we want to be able at a certain point in time to start offering a guaranteed service. Our objective is October 2014. We will then have a constellation of 14 satellites. On the basis of that constellation, taking some margins, we will guarantee a minimum service of eight operational satellites. That service, in combination with GPS and other systems like GLONASS, will be something that users can start counting on. We will guarantee that at least eight satellites will be in operation from that moment onward.

We will probably translate this number of satellites into a performance-level guarantee. But for the moment it will be based on the number of satellites.

The fact is that we are populating the constellation, and very quickly we will have 26 satellites in orbit. That leads us to the Initial Operational Capability (IOC) phase: With those 26 in the sky we will guarantee a service based on 22 operational satellites.

The target constellation is one of 30 satellites. We don’t know yet for sure when this will be achieved. That will depend on when the last batch of satellites are ordered, and we are still discussing that. But we have an obligation to have deployed 30 satellites by the end of 2020. Then we will guarantee a service based on 24 satellites, with two spares per orbital plane.

AC: What is foreseen as the market readiness to adopt and use Galileo at that time? What companies are taking the lead in designing, manufacturing, and selling combined GNSS receivers?

PF: We believe that market trends go towards multi-constellation receivers. We already see that in some iPhones with GLONASS capability. We already see in the professional market segment that there are some companies providing Galileo capabilities, taking advantage of E1 and E5 for GPS and Galileo.

In the mass market, we also believe many companies will start to build up the multi-signal capability. Companies like STMicroelectronics are working on that. I have asked the European GNSS Agency (GSA) to provide figures. Out of a list more than 60 receiver manufacturers, at least 50 percent of them have at least one product that incorporates European Geosationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) capabilities. Of those same 60 companies, 30 percent already also have products incorporating Galileo capabilities: STMicro, Septentrio, NovAtel, Leica Geosystems, IFEN, Japan Radio, and others.

We believe that it is important to have continuous interaction with receiver manufacturers so that they understand the benefits of Galileo. EC Vice President Antonio Tajani is devoting a lot of attention to that. We build Galileo, but we do it for users. We have to make sure manufacturers understand the benefits. Discussions with them started in December in London when Mr. Tajani met with a set of CEOs of receivers manufacturers. He promised to meet with them every six months. We are also meeting with them on March 19 to provide information on calendars.

AC: What other European Commission programs will rely on initial or full Galileo capability to fulfill their mission?

PF: As of today, there is no obligation to use Galileo, no mandatory regulation imposing the use of it. There are some initiatives, like the Intelligent Transport Directive, which recommend but do not impose making use of EGNOS and Galileo. Or eCall, which in case of a car accident automatically contacts the rescue services. This will be required in all new cars starting 2015. These systems rely on satellite navigation for positioning. We also have digital tachography to measure the times of driving and rest of truck drivers. This will become a requirement as from 2018, and also relies on satellite navigation.

We also see initiatives by member states to put in place GNSS-based road-pricing systems. Germany has taken a lead in this. The European Union (EU) is trying to harmonize these road-pricing systems across national borders, with programs like Eurovignette and the Interoperability Directive.

In other modes, like aviation, you already have EGNOS. With landing procedures in place based on EGNOS, the system has become a reality.

In Europe we have the common agricultural policy, providing subsidies to farmers. As these are based on field sizes and crops, they need to be controlled, and using EGNOS and Galileo will help achieve more precise measurements.

AC: The Galileo Open Service Signal In Space Interface Control Document (OS SIS ICD) Issue 1 is described as being “subject to evolution.” Can you predict when a further iteration (Issue 2) will appear, and what changes it may contain?

PF: The present version of the ICD is still applicable. It correctly reflects the structure of the messages broadcast by Galileo. The statement you quote refers to the evolution of the document because as you remember there has been a debate about a safety-of-life (SOL) service that is multi-constellation and multi-regional. Since the initial concept of SOL on Galileo was changed in the last two years, some capacity onboard the satellites has been freed. We would like to use that for something else, keeping the backward compatibility for receivers. This will allow us to put in place, for example, a mechanism to improve the tracking performance and availability. Also authentication and higher accuracy for professional markets could be implemented, while maintaining the options for future advanced receiver-autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM). That explains why we are still working on the evolution of the document. The next version of the ICD will be published in due time.

AC: Can you talk about progress towards increasing the EU share of the GNSS global market — currently 20 percent, but with the objective to reach 33 percent, as in other high-tech sectors? How might this be done?

PF: It is important for us in building Galileo that users benefit in having a second constellation. Satisfying users is the key. It also gives us some sort of independence from GPS, which would otherwise be the sole-source GNSS in the world. We would like our European companies to be more proactive and not to be limited to 20 percent share of the market. Everyone would.

We have our traditional research programs, like the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The next installment of the EU’s research programs will be called Horizon 2020, and it will make available budget devoted to the development of applications, receivers, and so on. Whether that will allow European companies to gain market share will depend on their proactivity, their innovation, and market-oriented strategies. That is their responsibility.

We are also active in things like the Galileo Masters, which tries to help small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) who have good business ideas, young entrepreneurs or scientists with good GNSS-related innovations.

On top of that, we are starting studies to see how we can secure the market uptake of Galileo, not simply to help European industries, but to see that manufacturers and downstream applications developers understand the benefits of Galileo. By the end of the year, we should have created a better understanding by manufacturers and users of the full potential of using Galileo.

AC: Are there any other issues or concerns that you would like to bring to the attention of GPS World readers and the global GNSS community?

PF: I would like to briefly focus on EGNOS. For us it is important that this service will stay for a long time. We promised this to the aviation sector. The EU is finalizing its budget for the period 2014 to 2020, and this will allow us to continue to operate and improve EGNOS. Our objective is that it will augment Galileo as well as GPS, using the dual-frequency approach. That’s a real plus at the regional level for Europe. Its main customer will remain the aviation sector, although it is also widely used in precision farming, tracking and tracing, and so on.

Secondly, we are working on the continuous evolution of the system. We all know that satnav is an evolving domain. It takes time to build satellites and to improve technology. The Mission Evolution Road map that has been developed by experts will be presented to member states later this year.
Finally, we will be organizing the annual European Space Solution conference in Munich in November this year, and in mid-2014 in Prague. We are also hosting the International Committee on GNSS (ICG), which will take place in Prague in November 2014. For us, the location in Prague is symbolic since the European GNSS Agency (GSA), which will be our exploitation entity, is also located there.

The alliance appears to reflect a desire on the part of some industry members to take a more aggressive approach inside the Washington Beltway, a sign, it would seem, of the political times. Some of those involved spoke informally of a desire to take advantage of contacts made on Capitol Hill and in the media during the highly visible LightSquared combat, fought in the glare of media attention heretofore unknown in industry circles.

Members of the Alliance are drawn from a variety of fields and businesses reliant on GPS, as well as leading manufacturers of GPS equipment. The former group includes, aviation, agriculture, construction, transportation, first responders, and surveying and mapping, and consumer organizations representing users of GPS for boating and other outdoor activities, and in automobiles, smartphones, and tablets.

Joining John Deere, Garmin, and Trimble — three lead drivers of the Coalition effort at the FCC — are NovAtel Inc. and Topcon Positioning Systems. All five were previously long-time members of the USGIC, and they appear as founding members of the alliance at www.gpsalliance.org.

Affiliate members listed on the website include the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, National Association of Manufacturers, Association for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles International, and Boat Owners Association of the United States.

The alliance plans to build on “the proud heritage and extensive expertise of the United States GPS Industry Council (USGIC), which was formed in 1991 to promote broader commercial applications of GPS and to expand global markets while assisting in safeguarding the technology’s military advantages. The council has a long history of highly effective advocacy on behalf of the GPS industry, as well as serving as a trusted source of objective information for policy makers, the media and the public both in the U.S. and around the world.” The alliance website gives a longer statement about the history and record of the USGIC, highlighting its role in international negotiations.

Michael Swiek, executive director of the USGIC, has transitioned to become the executive director, executive branch and international, of the Innovation Alliance. In addition to working closely with leading offices of executive branch departments of the U.S. government, he will continue well-established dialogs with governmental, private sector and academic entities in areas critical to GPS and satellite navigation among key players in Europe, Japan, Russia, Korea, China, and elsewhere.

Heather Hennessey, a principal of Innovative Federal Strategies LLC, a “comprehensive government relations firm,” has taken the position of executive director, legislative, at the alliance. Hennessey has seven years of service in the House of Representatives, including two years as chief of staff for Congressman Jack Kingston of Georgia.

An active voice in alliance representations on Capitol Hill will presumably be that of Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel for Trimble. Kirkland was the most prominent spokesperson for the coalition during the LightSquared battle, which appears to be either over or nearly so. “The alliance is committed to ensuring constructive, robust dialog between GPS users, manufacturers and policy makers on critical policy issues affecting GPS,” Kirkland said, “a commitment Trimble is pleased to be a part of as the industry continues to innovate and modernize.”

The alliance mission statement cites the importance of GPS to global economy and infrastructure; vows to aid further GPS innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship; and to protect, promote and enhance the use of GPS.

The GPS Innovation Alliance officially launched on February 13 with a reception on Capitol Hill, a traditional lobbying tactic that previous efforts had perhaps not envisioned.  The organization has also hired a public relations firm, Prism Public Affairs, and commissioned a logo.

John Lavrakas

Economically, the System Differs Significantly from Its GNSS Cousins

John W. Lavrakas

In May 2007, I authored an article in GPS World looking ten years into the future and envisioning how the GNSS field would operate at that then-distant time. Reviewing my assessments, I see that I was both accurate and wide of the mark with my predictions.

The prediction that has proved accurate was that the GNSS world would be hybrid, with no one system as the sole provider of satellite-based positioning and timing services. This was hardly a risky prediction. Most in the GNSS community would have come to the same assessment.

But what I did not see coming were the advances China would take with its BeiDou program. My original assessment was based on three GNSSs only: GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo, and did not include BeiDou.

When I did my analysis in 2006, China was pretty quiet on BeiDou: no technical descriptions, no interface control document (ICD); no presentations at conferences of the Institute of Navigation. What little we knew about BeiDou was that it was a limited system, offering at best a regional solution. The original design was an active system using geosynchronous satellites, requiring each remote unit to request position from the satellite, which was calculated and sent back to the remote station.

How things have changed.

Since 2007, China has reshaped the BeiDou concept into a full-fledged modern GNSS, offering CDMA codes, navigation messages, and data rates comparable to GPS and Galileo — and lots of satellites. The ICD states in section 3.1, “When fully deployed, the space constellation of BDS consists of five geostationary Earth-orbit (GEO) satellites, twenty-seven medium Earth-orbit (MEO) satellites, and three inclined geosynchronous satellite orbit (IGSO) satellites.” No dates are provided, however, regarding attaining these numbers. So the BeiDou system promises to be on par with the other GNSSs.

Why does this matter?

While technically the BeiDou system resembles its cousins, economically it presents quite a different animal. Unlike other nations offering GNSS, China has a huge capacity for manufacturing at low cost. Considering this situation from a business perspective, a possible scenario could be that China offers GNSS chipsets that operate with BeiDou (either solely or as a hybrid with another GNSS)at extremely low prices. In doing so, China could corner the market for general purpose LBS applications (setting aside specialty receivers, such as for surveying and aviation applications). The price point would be so attractive that LBS services would employ Chinese devices in preference to the GPS ones, much like consumers purchase television sets: most come from China, and none are made in the United States any more.

China offers something, then, in this scenario that neither Russia, Europe, nor the United States can currently match. This may not be the scenario that eventually occurs, but it is possible. Other factors such as local terrestrial PNT solutions and dual-frequency improvements will come into play, but what I have described is one possible scenario. While the signal is free, the equipment is not, and when we are talking about a billion or more installations, cost is going to be a big driver.

Am I going out on a limb and saying that BeiDou will be the system of choice in another ten years or so? No, I would not go this far.

But I do say that serious competition for GNSS users (read “market share”) is now in play. Further, it is important for each GNSS operator to recognize this as they consider the services and features they choose to offer, and the impact these have in capturing their share of the market. GNSS providers now must factor the business aspect of their services as much as the technical, scientific, or safety of life. The U.S. government, for one, has gotten a bit complacent in upgrading GPS services to meet user needs, operating from a basis that it is the only GNSS on the block. It could wake up one day and find this no longer to be the case.

John Lavrakas is president of Advanced Research Corporation, where he provides consulting services on satellite navigation and fishery information systems. He has spent 32 years in GPS, supporting development of the GPS Control Segment, GPS user equipment, GPS performance analysis capabilities, and developing and marketing location-based systems. He is past president of the Institute of Navigation and an ION Fellow.