GPS World, December 2014

LEADERSHIP AWARDS 2014 OLIVER MONTENBRUCK PRODUCTS We are only at the verge of making full use of the capabilities offered by the new GNSSs and we still have a stony path ahead changing these days With BeiDou we already have a third operational satellite navigation system offering an at least regional service Europe is actively pursuing the build up of Galileo which will offer another global navigation system with advanced performance features and new service types And last but not least Japan and India are in good progress to establish QZSS and IRNSS as independent regional systems The new systems come with a multitude of new frequencies and a plethora of new signals Industry has already done a great job and nowadays offers a wide range of receivers and antennas for multifrequency multi constellation tracking However we are only at the verge of making full use of the capabilities offered by the new GNSSs and we still have a stony path ahead before we can arrive at a system of systems as Günther Hein once phrased it In view of a rapidly changing GNSS landscape the IGS decided three years ago to launch the Multi GNSS Experiment MGEX as a platform for early familiarization with the new constellations Within three years the MGEX network has grown from zero to more than 100 globally distributed stations and presently supports tracking of all GNSSs with the sole exception of IRNSS MGEX data have helped to gain experience and to characterize the new signals They also served as a basis for pioneering work and various Ed Baron Director Braxton Technologies introduced and awarded the Products Leadership trophy Id like to thank Alan and his GPS World team for organizing this dinner allowing us to take the time to recognize tonights recipients I have the good fortune to be here representing Braxton a small business dedicated to delivering innovative capabilities on the GPS Program along with our partners Lockheed Exelis and Raytheon We are honored to help congratulate the recipients This is a competitive area and to be recognized in this field is a tremendous achievement A strong Well done to every one of you discoveries The GPS L5 signal and CNAV navigation message the Galileo high performance hydrogen masers and the BeiDou triple frequency signals are just a few highlights that could be investigated in detail thanks to the MGEX network Building up on MGEX observations a set of core products is now available for Galileo BeiDou and QZSS These include precise orbit and clock solutions differential code biases as well as cumulative broadcast ephemerides More products and a quality control process will be implemented as we proceed and as we are able to gain new volunteers and workforce All MGEX data and products are freely available to the community and will certainly form a starting point for excellent research and many Ph D theses at universities around the world It is a great honor for me to lead the MGEX project for more than two years now Numerous achievements have already been made in that period but we are also determined to make further progress as more and more satellites are launched and as we learn to better understand the dirty details of multi GNSS processing It has been a great pleasure to lead an experienced and highly motivated team and it is actually they who should be awarded for their great work I take this award today as an encouragement to pursue our work and to expand the IGS to a full featured Multi GNSS Service for everyones benefit Thank you once more and enjoy this fantastic evening www gpsworld com December 2014 GPS World 41