GPS World, December 2017

DIRECTIONS 2018 2018 Galileo Ascendant T he European Space Agency ESA and the European GNSS Agency GSA are starting 2018 with the commissioning and In Orbit Testing IOT of four new Galileo satellites This work is fairly routine for us as we have achieved the process successfully many times But the impact of four new satellites for Galileo services is a different story This batch of satellites provided by OHB of Germany 19 20 21 and 22 will bring our constellation to 22 satellites Together with the necessary ground segment delivered by Thales Alenia Space TAS and Airbus Defense and Space ADS and their many subcontractors throughout Europe this will be providing availability to users anywhere in the world in order to achieve a high quality position solution 998 of the time High quality is hereby meant that the position dilution of precision PDOP will be smaller than 5 with our final accuracy for a full 24 FOC satellites operating at full potential being PDOP 24 This achievement will create a step change in the ability of service providers and equipment manufacturers to utilize the Galileo service For all intents and purposes it means the Galileo signal can always be relied upon to be there and industry can sell products and design the power budget of devices based upon that fact Dual Frequency The first mass market GNSS receiver chip for smartphones and mobile devices that is able to utilize dual frequency Galileo signals was released by Broadcom in September able to employ both L1 E1 and L5 E5 signals In 2018 dual frequency technology like this will provide an order of magnitude increase in the performance of mobile device locationbased services LBS especially in urban environments and Broadcom advertises a 50 reduction in power consumption The world of mobiledevice LBS is going to change in 2018 and it will be due to the availability of Galileo It will not be the first time the partnership of ESA the European Commission EC and the GSA has made a service available that has changed the nature of the marketplace The GSA already has in service the ESA designed EGNOS LPV200 aircraft approach service performing so well that countries like France have taken the decision to phase out the terrestrial Instrument Landing System that has burdened the capital expenditure budgets of airports in the past We have had discussions with 14 GPS WORLD WWW GPSWORLD COM DECEMBER 2017 several commercial organizations that are interested in building products around Galileo and I am excited to see what they are going to come up with With Galileo Initial Services the world had a new navigation signal to study and trial In 2018 the world will have a new star to navigate by well a new constellation of 22 to 24 stars I should say FOC In the summer of 2018 we will launch the final part of the Galileo FOC constellation geometrically speaking with four more satellites taking us beyond the 24 needed for 100 coverage and minimum performance limitation from satellite geometry The launch will also provide our first inorbit spares enabling us to plan for the end of life of our old validation phase satellites or otherwise supplement the constellation to improve performance What might we do with these inorbit spares Our first priority is to complete a constellation of 24 satellites BY Paul Verhoef DIRECTOR O F THE GAL I LEO PROGRAMME AND NAVIGATION RELATED ACTIVITI E S EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY