GPS World, April 2015

EXPERT ADVICE bringing mobile operators government and handset vendors together to provide location data via SMS to the PSAP The advantage of this approach is that no new standards or major infrastructure changes are required and the time to implement is small Further discussions established that future chipsets are likely to use whatever GNSS signals are available regardless of whether they are GPS Galileo GLONASS Beidou and so on This coupled with new signal processing techniques singlefrequency observable for example increasing sensor clustering on devices and user demand for services may make the use of a specific GNSS system above others somewhat redundant Certainly picking up on a point made by Chandu Thota from Google GNSS is not relevant for their indoor positioning solutions and technologies they are working on in both hardware and mapping improvements are looking at meeting indoor accuracy requirements down to a target requirement of 1 meter without GNSS Taking these points into account questions were asked from the floor of the conference about the legal position of the EC mandating Galileo as a positioning method as well as the willingness of the global mobile chipset and device industry to be told what to do Perhaps specifying strong performance criteria as in the United States is the way forward to reboot the European E112 system No one disputes that a properly functioning E112 is a life saver and a good thing to do however the points discussed here detail some of the concerns expressed during and after hours at INC15 In February 2015 the Royal Institute of Navigation hosted the International Navigation Conference in Manchester UK Keynotes at this well attended conference included Harold Martin director of the GPS Coordination Office Gian Gherardo Calini the head of market development at the European GNSS Agency Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas Chandu Thota from Google and others The conference covered multiple technology tracks including indoor navigation autonomy quantum technology and the resilience of GNSS systems ANDY PROCTOR is lead technologist for satellite navigation at InnovateUK the UKs innovation agency He acknowledges RAMSEY FARAGHER Cambridge University for help in the preparation of this article ONLY ONE MEASURES UP UP AGAINST A WALL Centimeter accuracy with Septentrio wherever and whenever you need it www septentrio com www gpsworld com April 2015 GPS World 29