GMV improves airport navigation performance

Image: GMV

The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (EuroControl) has awarded GMV a contract for the evolution of AUGUR, a free service for pilots, airspace users and air navigation service providers.

AUGUR is a web-based service that makes it possible to predict the availability of the GPS and receiver autonomous integrity monitoring (RAIM) navigation solution for a wide range of air operations. The RAIM processing algorithm, which is standardized and incorporated into most aeronautical GPS receivers, allows operators to check the integrity of GPS satellite signals by exploiting the redundancy of measurements offered by the current constellation.

Although only four satellites in view are needed to calculate the position and time of the aircraft, the current GPS constellation has 31 active satellites, meaning that the receivers are getting signals from more than four satellites much of the time. The RAIM technique takes advantage of these additional measurements to check the integrity of the satellites and ensure the position obtained is correct within the alarm limits established for each operation.

Within the framework of the new project, GMV will lead all phases related to the development of the new AUGUR services, including the definition of requirements, design, implementation, verification, validation and software deployment. Throughout the process of designing, developing and validating the new version, GMV will also continue to provide the current services, ensuring that they are not interrupted. The new version will be available in May 2025.

The improvements made to the AUGUR include RAIM GPS availability displayed on a map and the integration of the planned Navigation Integrity Category (NIC), which measures the quality of the aircraft navigation position transmitted via automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B).  It also issues space weather warnings such as solar flares, geomagnetic storms and coronal mass ejections (CME) and has options to import or export geographic data in industry-standard formats.