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Innovation: EGNOS in Northeastern Europe

How Well Does It Perform?

We examine the performance of EGNOS in Finland, which lies near the northeast periphery of the coverage area, and how this performance can be improved now and in the future.

By Mohammad Zahidul H. Bhuiyan, Heidi Kuusniemi, Auryn Soderini, Salomon Honkala and Simo Marila

INNOVATION INSIGHTS with Richard Langley

“[O]NE ORBIT, WITH A RADIUS OF 42,000 KM, has a period of exactly 24 hours. A body in such an orbit, if its plane coincided with that of the earth’s equator, would revolve with the earth and would thus be stationary above the same spot on the planet. … [A] transmission received from any point on the hemisphere could be broadcast to the whole of the visible face of the globe, and thus the requirements of all possible services would be met.” So wrote writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke in his October 1945 Wireless World article “Extra-terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?,” envisaging the geostationary orbit (GEO) communication satellite.

The first GEO satellite was Syncom III, orbited by the United States in August 1964. Since then, more than 1,000 satellites have been launched into what is known as the Clarke Belt and around 450 are presently active. Most of them are used for civil or military communication. Some are used for direct-to-user TV and radio. Some are used for weather monitoring and other kinds of surveillance. And some are used for augmenting GPS.

While GPS is a remarkable positioning system, its real-time accuracy using L1-frequency pseudorange measurements and its instantaneous integrity are not sufficient for some applications such as aircraft navigation. That is why the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration developed the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), the first satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS). WAAS provides differential correction data and integrity information to GPS users in real time throughout most of North America using a “bent pipe” from a ground station through the GEO satellite to a user’s equipment. It uses a state-space-domain correction approach, which provides corrections for the satellite orbit and clock data transmitted by GPS satellites along with ionospheric propagation delays, all computed from measurements collected by a continent-wide tracking network.

The WAAS concept has been duplicated for other regions. Three other SBASs are in full operation: the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Japan’s Multifunctional Transport Satellite Satellite-based Augmentation System, and India’s GPS-aided GEO Augmented Navigation System. Russia’s System for Differential Correction and Monitoring is currently in development.

One hitch with GEO satellites whatever their function is their inability to service high latitudes well. At a latitude of 65°, a GEO satellite has an elevation angle of only around 17° at most and at 75°, it’s about 6° or less. Even if a GEO satellite is above the local horizon, communication might be difficult due to the longer signal path length between the satellite and the user.

And so it is with GEO satellites used for SBAS at high latitudes. And there is an additional problem that even if the signals from an SBAS satellite can be received, corrections for some GPS satellites will not be received if they are outside the coverage area of the SBAS tracking network. In this month’s column, we examine the performance of EGNOS in Finland, which lies near the northeast periphery of the EGNOS coverage area, and how this performance can be improved now and in the future.


FIGURE 1. Finnish national GNSS network, FinnRef. The three stations highlighted in red had the worst positioning accuracy in our analyses.

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is the first European-operated satellite navigation system and is a precursor to Galileo, Europe’s independent global navigation satellite system (GNSS), now being deployed. EGNOS, as a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) similar to the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), was developed with the vision to improve the performance of GNSSs, such as GPS and Galileo. At the moment, EGNOS only augments GPS, making it suitable for safety-critical applications such as flying aircraft or navigating ships through narrow channels.

Additionally, EGNOS also supports new applications in many different sectors, such as agriculture (for high-precision spraying of fertilizers), transport (enabling automatic road-tolling or pay-per-use insurance schemes) or even precise personal navigation services for general and specific use.

At present, there are two operational geostationary Earth orbiting (GEO) satellites and until March 2017, these satellites had pseudorandom noise code (PRN) numbers 120 and 136 that simultaneously broadcast EGNOS correction messages to European GPS users. The PRN satellites 120 and 136 are located at 15.5°W and 5.0°E. (Since March, PRN 123 has replaced PRN 136 as one of the operational EGNOS satellites.) The use of EGNOS in the northern Europe is much more challenging than elsewhere in Europe due to the relatively low-elevation angle of some EGNOS satellites as seen from there of about 14° or less.

To improve our understanding of the true performance of EGNOS in Finnish territory, we recently carried out a project entitled “Finland’s EGNOS Monitoring and Performance Evaluation (FEGNOS).” At the northeastern edge of the EGNOS coverage area, the availability of the EGNOS geostationary satellites is compromised due to their low-elevation angles. The Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI) at the National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) maintains a network of 20 permanent GNSS reference stations (FinnRef) all over Finland. The core objective of the FEGNOS project is to evaluate the performance of EGNOS at all of those reference stations to determine if the EGNOS system performance reaches its target in Finland.

Building on our initial research, in this article we report on the analysis of EGNOS performance at all 20 FinnRef stations for a year-long time-frame from November 2015 until October 2016. As it is of importance to compare the performance of EGNOS in a geographic region where EGNOS satellite visibility can be poor due to low-elevation angle, we assessed the performance of EGNOS by comparing the receivers’ own decoded SBAS messages against the SBAS messages provided by the EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS). The daily EDAS SBAS messages can be freely downloaded from the EDAS server with prior authentication from EDAS. The performance analysis has been carried out for the following three cases:

  • Applying EGNOS corrections obtained from the EDAS server
  • Applying EGNOS corrections obtained from the receiver-decoded (Rx-decoded) EGNOS messages
  • GPS stand-alone solution without any EGNOS corrections.

We carried out the data analysis using the EGNOS analyzing tool called PEGASUS (which originally stood for Prototype EGNOS Analysis Using SAPPHIRE, where SAPPHIRE stands for Satellite and Aircraft Database Programme for System Integrity Research) from Eurocontrol. The results show that the Rx-decoded EGNOS performance is not as good as the performance obtained from the EDAS-offered message corrections. The ongoing experience and knowledge learned from the project has helped to identify weaknesses of the EGNOS system at high northern latitudes.

FINNISH NATIONAL GNSS NETWORK, FINNREF

The Finnish National GNSS network, FinnRef, was established on the initiative of the Nordic Geodetic Commission and the director generals of the Nordic Mapping Authorities in the 1990s. FinnRef is part of the Nordic GNSS network, and some stations of the FinnRef network also contribute to the global International GNSS Service (IGS) network and to the European Permanent Network (EPN). The primary function of FinnRef is to offer geodetic-grade GNSS measurements, which have been continuously used for forming and maintaining the national coordinate system (EUREF-FIN). In addition, the FinnRef network is used for many GNSS-related research activities. For example, it is now possible to analyze the positioning performance of different augmentation services via the FinnRef network. Currently, FinnRef also offers an open positioning service based on the differential GNSS (DGNSS) corrections for GPS and GLONASS.

The FinnRef network was renewed during the 2012–2013 timeframe. The renewed FinnRef network now consists of 20 GNSS reference stations, as shown in FIGURE 1. The raw GNSS data from all 20 reference stations is used in the FEGNOS project for EGNOS performance monitoring and analysis.

DATA COLLECTION

EGNOS signal monitoring at all FinnRef stations was carried out for one year from Nov. 4, 2015, until Oct. 31, 2016. There are in total about 360 days of data from the 20 stations out of a possible 366 days (2016 was a leap year). The day-of-year (DOY) information for the collected data set is detailed in TABLE 1. No data was available during DOY 233 and 234 of 2016 due to a technical fault at the FinnRef stations. There are 57 days of data from the year 2015 and 303 days of data from 2016.

Table 1. DOY information for the year-long data set.

Each FinnRef station is equipped with a dual-frequency geodetic-grade receiver. Each receiver generates 1-hour binary proprietary data files with a 1-Hz data rate. Data is pushed to the network server and saved at the conclusion of each hour. This means that there are in total 24 data sets for each single day for one single station. All the stations’ binary data files are then organized under one directory, which is named after DOY for that particular year. The FEGNOS data Collection Tool (FEGCoT) was developed in Matlab to collect data every day automatically from all 20 FinnRef stations.

These three steps are followed for automatic data collection:

  • Collect: 1-Hz hourly data is collected from the FinnRef server, and then saved to the local hard disk for further processing.
  • Convert: The saved raw binary-formatted hourly data files from the receivers are converted to RINEX observation, navigation and SBAS data files via the receiver manufacturer’s converter.
  • Combine: In this step, all 24 one-hour data sets from each station are combined into one single 24-hour data set for every RINEX file type (that is, observation, navigation and SBAS files).

The combined 24-hour RINEX data file for each station is then processed using the PEGASUS software. The key configuration parameters used in the data analysis are listed in TABLE 2. (Note that airborne accuracy designator refers to specifications in the WAAS Minimum Operational Performance Standards,  MOPS.)

TABLE 2. PEGASUS configuration parameters.

Two PEGASUS modules are used for data analysis:

  • Convertor module: The Convertor module translates the RINEX observation, navigation and SBAS data into a generic format, which can then be used by the GNSS_Solution module for detailed analysis. Convertor can also use input from different GNSS/SBAS receivers and then transform the recorded binary data into readable ASCII data.
  • GNSS_Solution module: The GNSS_Solution module is used to compute a position solution in conformance with the MOPS for GNSS receivers used in avionics (GPS, SBAS or ground-based augmentation systems). In other words, the GNSS_Solution module can be considered as a post-processing MOPS-compliant GNSS receiver. It interfaces with other PEGASUS components, notably the Convertor module.

The elevation cut-off angle and the minimum accepted signal-to-noise ratio are kept low so as to have more satellites available for user-position computation. (The European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) advises that range measurements from EGNOS satellites not be used for position computation.)

A Matlab-script was written to download EDAS-provided daily SBAS messages automatically from the EDAS server. All the PEGASUS-related processing was also executed by a Matlab-based script.

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

We analyzed the EGNOS/GPS performance for the above-mentioned cases with the collected year-long data set from the 20 FinnRef stations. The operational time or uptime of each FinnRef station was monitored throughout the FinnRef network nodes on a daily basis. The average uptime of each station for the one-year data set is shown in FIGURE 2. The “b” in station names indicates one of the two data streams available from each station. The figure shows that most of the stations were up for more than 98% of the time, while only few have uptimes close to 95%.

FIGURE 2. Station uptime for all FinnRef stations for the year-long data set.

According to EGNOS Open Service (OS) horizontal and vertical accuracy requirements, the 95% Horizontal Navigation System Error (HNSE) should be less than 3 meters, and the 95% Vertical Navigation System Error (VNSE) should be less than 4 meters in the EGNOS service provision area. The horizontal and vertical position errors at a defined time epoch are computed as the difference between the estimated navigation position and the actual position in horizontal and vertical planes, respectively. The HNSE (95%) and VNSE (95%) were computed for all FinnRef stations with the year-long data set.

The yearly EGNOS performance in terms of HNSE (95%) and VNSE (95%) are shown in FIGURES 3 and 4, respectively. It can be observed that GPS+EGNOS offers significant accuracy improvement compared to GPS stand-alone solutions for all of the stations. Vertical accuracy improvement for EGNOS is greater than the horizontal improvement, mostly due to the better mitigation of ionospheric error compared to stand-alone GPS. We also observed that the Rx-decoded EGNOS performance is not as good as the performance when corrections are obtained from the EDAS server. This might be due to the poor visibility of the EGNOS satellites at northeastern latitudes, which resulted in data aging or partial data loss of EGNOS messages.

FIGURE 3. HNSE (95%) for all FinnRef stations.

FIGURE 4. VNSE (95%) for all FinnRef stations.

In FIGURES 5 and 6, the daily EGNOS performance in terms of VNSE (95%) are shown for the two cases: 1) applying EGNOS corrections from EDAS-provided EGNOS messages, and 2) applying EGNOS corrections from Rx-decoded EGNOS messages, respectively.

FIGURE 5. VNSE (95%) performance over time with GPS+EGNOS (EDAS) corrections.

FIGURE 6. VNSE (95%) performance over time with GPS+EGNOS (Rx-decoded) corrections.

For a better understanding, the percentage of EGNOS OS requirement failure when analyzed on a daily basis with EDAS offered corrections is presented in FIGURE 7.

FIGURE 7. Percent of EGNOS OS requirement failure with EDAS-provided EGNOS correction messages.

The percentage of EGNOS OS requirement failure was computed from the number of days where the HNSE (95%) ≥3 meters in the case of horizontal navigation solution error and VNSE (95%) ≥ 4 meters in the case of vertical navigation solution error. As observed from Figures 5 and 7, the EDAS offered EGNOS corrections fail to meet the OS requirement only in a few instances. Similarly, the percentage of EGNOS OS requirement failure when analyzed on a daily basis with Rx-decoded corrections is presented in FIGURE 8. It can be easily seen from Figures 6 and 8 that the Rx-decoded EGNOS performance fails to meet the OS requirement in many instances. However, the daily fluctuations are averaged out when the year-long data is taken into account, providing satisfactory performance on the whole.

FIGURE 8. Percent of EGNOS OS requirement failure with Rx-Decoded EGNOS correction messages.

The yearly EGNOS performance in terms of VNSE (99%) is shown in FIGURE 9.

FIGURE 9. Sorted VNSE (99%) performance with GPS+EGNOS (EDAS) corrections for all FinnRef stations.

The three stations with the worst accuracy are highlighted in red in Figure 1. These stations are located on the northeastern border of the EGNOS coverage area. The EGNOS User Differential Range Error Indicator (UDREI) figure for three stations (FINb, VIRb, and SAVb) is shown in FIGURE 10(a), 10(b) and 10(c), respectively.

FIGURE 10. EGNOS UDREI as seen at (a) FINb, (b) VIRb and (c) SAVb.

The stations were chosen so that they represent a wide geographical spread over Finland. According to Figure 10, the satellite UDREI values are in the range of 14 and 15 (marked as blue) at the northeastern edge of the sky plot. A UDREI of 14 indicates “not monitored” and 15 indicates “do not use” for a particular satellite. Even though the satellites had a moderate elevation angle with respect to the user, the EGNOS system was unable to offer corrections to those satellites in the northeastern sky. Relatively lower availability of GPS satellites coupled with the lower number of EGNOS Ranging and Integrity Monitoring Stations (RIMS) at northeastern latitudes contributed to the poorer than expected positioning performance in the northeastern coverage area of EGNOS.

CONCLUSIONS

In this article, we presented a summary of an analysis of EGNOS in Finland for a year-long period, and we explained our automated data collection and data analysis procedure. The following key observations can be made based on the analysis of the year-long data set:

  • The use of EGNOS significantly improves the positioning performance compared to GPS stand-alone operation.
  • The vertical accuracy improvement for EGNOS is higher than the horizontal improvement compared to GPS stand-alone performance.
  • The performance of EGNOS with the receivers’ own decoded message corrections is not as good as the performance obtained through EDAS-provided EGNOS corrections.
  • EGNOS does not offer corrections for those GPS satellites that are setting in the northeastern sky of the EGNOS coverage area.
  • The percentage of EGNOS OS requirement failure when analyzed on a daily basis with Rx-decoded corrections is significant. This is mostly due to the poor visibility of GEO satellites from northeastern latitudes.

These findings emphasize the fact that there is a great need at northeastern latitudes for an alternative solution to the GEO satellites broadcasting EGNOS corrections. The existing alternative solution is to download the corrections from the Internet through EDAS at the cost of an additional communication link. The other possible alternative could be to broadcast corrections via inclined geosynchronous orbit satellites, or by some other means.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is based on the paper “Performance of EGNOS in North-East European Latitudes” presented at the 2017 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation held Jan. 30–Feb. 1, 2017, in Monterey, California. The research was conducted within the FEGNOS project, funded by the Finnish Transport Agency and the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute at the National Land Survey of Finland. More information about the FEGNOS project can be found at www.fegnos.net.

MANUFACTURER

The receivers in the FinnRef network are JAVAD GNSS Inc. Delta-G3Ts and the antennas are JAVAD RingAnt_DMs with SCIS radomes.


MOHAMMAD ZAHIDUL H. BHUIYAN received his Ph.D. degree in 2011 from the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Finland. He is a research manager in the Department of Navigation and Positioning at the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI) of the National Land Survey of Finland in Kirkkonummi. He is also the acting deputy head of the institute’s Satellite and Radio Navigation Research Group.

HEIDI KUUSNIEMI is the director of FGI’s Department of Navigation and Positioning. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Built Environment at Aalto University in Espoo and in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering at Tampere University of Technology. She is also the current president of the Nordic Institute of Navigation. She received her M.Sc. and D.Sc.(Tech.) degrees from Tampere University of Technology in 2002 and 2005, respectively.

AURYN SODERINI is an M.Sc. student in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Tampere University of Technology. He received his B.Sc. in 2012 from the Department of Electronics Engineering at The Third University of Rome.

SALOMON HONKALA is a researcher at FGI. He holds an M.Sc. (Tech.) degree in electrical engineering from Aalto University.

SIMO MARILA is a research scientist in FGI’s Department of Geodesy and Geodynamics. He received an M.Sc. degree in 2011 from Aalto University.

FURTHER READING

• Authors’ Conference Paper

“Performance of EGNOS in North-East European Latitudes” by M.Z.H. Bhuiyan, H. Kuusniemi, A. Soderini, S. Honkala and S. Marila in Proceedings of the 2017 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Monterey, California, Jan. 30–Feb. 1, 2017, pp. 627–636.

• Authors’ Related Work

“Performance Comparison of Differential GNSS, EGNOS and SDCM in Different User Scenarios in Finland” by S. Marila, M.Z.H. Bhuiyan, J. Kuokkanen, H. Koivula and H. Kuusniemi in Proceedings of ENC 2016, European Navigation Conference 2016, Helsinki, Finland, May 30–June 2, 2016, doi: 10.1109/EURONAV.2016.7530550.

“Low-Cost Precise Positioning Using a National GNSS Network” by M. Kirkko-Jaakkola, S. Söderholm, S. Honkala, H. Koivula, S. Nyberg and H. Kuusniemi in Proceedings of ION GNSS+ 2015, the 28th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Tampa, Florida, Sept. 14–18, 2015, pp. 2570-2577.

“Finnish Permanent GNSS Network: From Dual-frequency GPS to Multi-satellite GNSS” by H. Koivula, J. Kuokkanen, S. Marila, T. Tenhunen, P. Häkli, U. Kallio, S. Nyberg and M. Poutanen, in Proceedings of UPINLBS 2012, the 2nd International Conference and Exhibition on Ubiquitous Positioning, Indoor Navigation and Location-Based Service, Helsinki, Finland, Oct. 3–4, 2012, doi: 10.1109/UPINLBS.2012.6409771.

• European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service

EGNOS Safety of Life (SoL) Service Definition Document, Version 3.1, European GNSS Agency, Prague, Sept. 26, 2016.

EGNOS Open Service (OS) Service Definition Document, Version 2.2, European GNSS Agency, Prague, Feb. 12, 2015.

The Future is Now: GPS + GLONASS + SBAS = GNSS” by L. Wanninger in GPS World, Vol. 19, No. 7, July 2008, pp. 42–48.

EGNOS – the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System – A Cornerstone of Galileo, edited by J. Ventura-Traveset and D. Flament, ESA SP-1303, European Space Agency, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 2006.

• EGNOS Data Access Service

“EDAS (EGNOS Data Access Service): Differential GNSS Corrections for Land Applications” by J. Vázquez, E. Lacarra, M.A. Sánchez and Pedro Gómez in Proceedings of ION GNSS+ 2016, the 29th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, Portland, Oregon, Sept. 12–16, 2016, pp. 3550–3561.

EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS) Service Definition Document, Version 2.1, European GNSS Agency, Prague, Dec. 19, 2014.

EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS) website.

• Finland’s EGNOS Monitoring and Performance Evaluation

Website: https://fegnos.net/

• PEGASUS EGNOS Analyzing Tool

PEGASUS Software User Manual, PEG-SUM-01, Issue M, Eurocontrol, Brussels, Jan. 16, 2004.

• Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems

“Satellite Based Augmentation Systems” by T. Walter, Chapter 12 in Springer Handbook of Global Navigation Satellite Systems, edited by P.J.G. Teunissen and O. Montenbruck, published by Springer International Publishing AG, Cham, Switzerland, 2017.

Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Global Positioning/Satellite-Based Augmentation System Airborne Equipment, RTCA/DO-229E, prepared by SC-159, RTCA Inc., Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2016.

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About the Author: Mohammad Zahidul H. Bhuiyan

Mohammad Zahidul H. Bhuiyan received his Ph.D. degree in 2011 from the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Finland. He is a research manager in the Department of Navigation and Positioning at the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI) of the National Land Survey of Finland in Kirkkonummi. He is also the acting deputy head of the institute’s Satellite and Radio Navigation Research Group.

About the Author: Heidi Kuusniemi

Heidi Kuusniemi is the director of FGI’s Department of Navigation and Positioning. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Built Environment at Aalto University in Espoo and in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering at Tampere University of Technology. She is also the current president of the Nordic Institute of Navigation. She received her M.Sc. and D.Sc.(Tech.) degrees from Tampere University of Technology in 2002 and 2005, respectively.

About the Author: Auryn Soderini

Auryn Soderini is an M.Sc. student in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Tampere University of Technology. He received his B.Sc. in 2012 from the Department of Electronics Engineering at The Third University of Rome.

About the Author: Simo Marila

Simo Marila is a research scientist in FGI’s Department of Geodesy and Geodynamics. He received an M.Sc. degree in 2011 from Aalto University.