Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Moscone CenterThe 47th American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting will take place from December 15-19, 2014 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Registration information can be found here.
By Inside GNSS
Cospas–Sarsat’s extension to MEOSAR (Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) will extend its search and rescue coverage (the area outlined in red). On the ground the Galileo programme is contributing a Toulouse-based test bench, and a networked trio of MEOSAR ground stations – known as Local User Terminals (LUTs) – to cover Europe, based in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, Cyprus and the Canary Islands. Existing LUTs are distributed on a per country basis, but it is an advantage of MEOSAR that fewer ground stations will be needed for greater coverage. Cospas-Sarsat illustration The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced completion of tests that indicate the readiness of the European component of a modernized, GNSS satellite–aided search and rescue service known as Cospas-Sarsat.
ESA has completed construction and testing of a trio of located on three islands at the far corners of the continent, ready to pick up distress calls via satellite from across Europe and its surrounding waters.
By Inside GNSS
As a navigation satellite transmits multiple signals on single frequency (e.g., Open Service and Restricted Service over L5 Band), these are combined on a common carrier to comprise a composite signal. This composite signal passes through navigation payload subsystems such as an up-converter, traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA), filters, and so on. These subsystems may introduce adverse effects on the signal, such as amplitude and phase distortion, nonlinear effects, gain imbalance, IQ imbalance, and phase noise.
By Inside GNSS
GPS Space Service Volume (SSV) Requirements/Performance ParametersNew space missions such as the robotic repair and recovery of damaged or errant communication satellites may become possible with the aid of an emerging class of receivers that is able to use GPS signals for navigation in orbits thousands of kilometers above the middle Earth orbit (MEO) GPS constellation itself.
By Dee Ann Divis
Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis has turned much of public opinion in the West against that country, in particular souring the relationship between the European Union (EU) and Russia. And, while the ceasefire signed in September technically is still in force, the EU-Russia rift is far from smoothed over.
By Peter Gutierrez
Implementation of code-Phase structures for GLONASS signals ?/?, L2C and L3Topcon Positioning Group has announced that its latest GNSS reference receiver has tracked a new signal from the GLONASS constellation.
The GLONASS-M 55 satellite was launched in June and is equipped
with an experimental payload capable of transmitting CDMA signals in the
Russian GNSS system’s L3 frequency band centered at 1202.025 MHz. According to the company, Topcon engineers successfully tracked the signal using the NET-G5
receiver during a series of recent tests at the Topcon Technology Center
in Moscow, Russia.
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced plans today (November 10, 2014) to implement a series of maneuvers to reposition one of two Galileo full operational capability (FOC) satellites left in the wrong orbit this summer, as a prelude to its health being confirmed.
The aim is to raise the lowest point of the satellite’s orbit — its perigee — to reduce the radiation exposure from the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth, as well as to put it into a more useful orbit for navigation purposes.
Technology to counter the threat of GNSS jamming is now available at Dover and along the east coast of the United Kingdom as the island nation continues to implement an enhanced Loran (eLoran) system that is setting an example for the world.
By Inside GNSS
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) has gone Big Time.
Unlike past years, when product designers and engineers from small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) have walked away with the top prize, this year’s overall winner was Airbus Defence & Space (Airbus DS GmbH), a division of the Airbus Group (formerly EADS). Headquartered in France and generating annual revenues of €14 billion, Airbus DS was established last year by the merger of the parent company’s Airbus Military, Astrium, and Cassidian units.
By Inside GNSS
Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director-General of DG Enterprise. EC photoThe European Parliament voted yesterday (October 22, 2014) to accept President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker’s “last-chance” leadership for the European Commission (EC).
But the 11th-hour reshuffling of posts appears to leave Galileo without a clear-cut leader, at least at the political level — even as the Commission and its European Space Agency (ESA) partner have decided to give up the prospect of a December launch of two satellites.
By Inside GNSS
The IGNSS 2015 symposium on GPS/GNSS and industry exhibition will take place at the Outrigger Hotel in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia from July 16 to 18, 2015. The conference venue is one block from the famous Surfer’s Paradise Beach.
The deadline for abstracts is February 9, 2015.
Registration will be open at the end of March, 2015. Early bird registration ends May 18, 2015.
By Inside GNSS
A confluence of technology, policy, and applications is turning indoor venues into the next big frontier for positioning and navigation.
Recent market studies have heralded the prospects for positioning, navigation, and tracking inside buildings where GNSS signals are often attenuated or blocked entirely. Many products and conceptual designs combine the indoor technologies with GNSS to provide “ubiquitous” positioning.
By Inside GNSS
GPS pseudolite used in experiment at University of New South Wales Satellite Navigation and Positioning LabInternational aviation officials have asked U.S. experts to consider updating standards for GNSS aviation receivers to improve their ability to withstand interference from repeaters, pseudolites, and jammers.
Repeaters — generally used to extend navigation signals inside buildings where they would otherwise be blocked — rebroadcast GNSS satellite signals and therefore operate in the same frequency band. Although useful within a building, care must be taken to confined the repeater’s signal lest it confuse other receivers operating nearby.
By Inside GNSS
