GSA Begins Preparations for Future EGNOS Services

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) Wednesday published a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting operators to bid for the provision of EGNOS services over the 2014-2021 period. This contract will consist in operating, maintaining and upgrading the EGNOS system infrastructure, and ensuring the continuous and safe provision of the three services offered by EGNOS.
 
The new EGNOS service provision contract is planned to be awarded in 2013 and is aimed at guaranteeing the provision of EGNOS services for eight years starting on January 1, 2014, without service interruption. The future EGNOS operator shall become certified for provision of the EGNOS services according to the Single European Sky (SES) regulation. The requests to participate shall be transmitted to the GSA by July 16 and the deadline for submission of initial tenders is expected to be in November 2012.
 
The GSA is carrying out this procurement on behalf of the European Commission and is expected to become responsible for the management of EGNOS from 2014.
 
The EU Official journal notice can be accessed here.
 
All the documentation related to this call for tender can be found on the GSA procurement link here.
 
The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) improves the accuracy of GPS by using 34 ranging and integrity monitoring stations (RIMS) that receive signals from the U.S. GPS satellites. Four mission control centers handle data processing and differential corrections counting and six navigation land earth stations manage accuracy and reliability data for sending to the three geostationary satellite transponders for relay to end-user devices.

EGNOS offers 3 services:

1. Open Service: free and open for anyone with an EGNOS-enabled GPS device.
2. Safety-of-life Service: provides an integrity message warning the user of any malfunction of the GPS signal in 6 seconds. This is essential when satellite navigation is used for applications where lives are at stake. EGNOS was certified for civil aviation in 2011.
3. The EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS): provides EGNOS information in real time over the internet.

EGNOS is the first pan-European satellite navigation system. Similar services are provided in North America by the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and in Japan by the Multifunctional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS).