Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Inside the ESA pavilion – Access to space. ESA photo.The European Space Agency (ESA) is seeking ideas for innovative future navigation concepts and products from European industry and academia, and these ideas can come together at the ESA pavilion at the Paris Air & Space Show. There attendees can talk with the team overseeing the new program seeking to drive Europe’s state-of-the-art in finding one’s way.
By Inside GNSS
Sferic Maps empowers emergency management and business continuity professionals with real-time collaboration capabilities to make intelligent weather-related decisions. Photo source: Earth Networks.Advanced weather data is crucial to safeguarding business assets from severe weather. For example, energy companies build outage models utilizing their real-time hourly forecasting for every point in the country. These companies can then plan field teams accordingly, and plan drone operations to be conducted after the weather event to assess infrastructure damage that may have occurred.
By Inside GNSS
Last week marked a significant step toward providing a boost to the accuracy and reception of the existing GPS in Japan and to delivering a better positioning reading for the people in that country.
By Inside GNSS
Two further satellites — increasing the total number to 16 — have formally become part of Europe’s Galileo satnav system, broadcasting timing and navigation signals worldwide while also picking up distress calls across the planet.
These are the 15th and 16th satellites to join the network, two of the four Galileos that were launched together by Ariane 5 last November, and the first additions to the working constellation since the start of Galileo Initial Services in December.
By Inside GNSS
Trimble RTX-based correction services now support the Galileo constellation. Photo source: Trimble.Trimble announced that its Trimble RTX-based correction services now support the Galileo constellation. As a true five-constellation technology that uses GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS and now Galileo satellites, Trimble RTX is designed to deliver improved real-time positioning performance to its users worldwide.
By Inside GNSS
The VG380 vertical gyros modules. Photo source: MEMSIC Inc. MEMSIC Inc., with headquarters in Andover, Massachusetts, recently announced the addition of the VG380 to its portfolio of inertial modules. These new vertical gyros are designed to provide highly accurate pitch and roll (with respect to gravity), in both static and dynamic conditions. The static and dynamic accuracy is specified at +/-0.2 and +/-1.0 degrees (respectively) over the -40C to +85C temperature range.
By Inside GNSS
The engineering team behind the signal technology underpinning Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system has reached the final of this year’s European Inventor Award.
The European Patents Office has nominated a team led by Spanish engineer José Ángel Ávila-Rodríguez – now part of ESA’s Galileo team – and his French colleague Laurent Lestarquit from France’s CNES space agency. Ávila-Rodríguez and Lestarquit are each regular contributing writers for Inside GNSS.
By Inside GNSS
The Virginia firm that had been hoping to use satellite frequencies near the GPS band to support a terrestrial broadband network has changed its pitch to regulators. Ligado, previously named LightSquared, is working to convince the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that its frequencies are the way to provide connectivity to the broad internet of things (IoT) including unmanned aircraft, driverless cars and other unmanned systems.
By Dee Ann Divis
The output value of BeiDou, China’s satellite navigation and location-based service industry, increased more than 22% year on year and has topped 211 billion yuan (about 30.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, according to news reports on a recently released industry white paper.
By Inside GNSS
The new GSS200D Interference Detector was developed as part of Spirent’s partnership with Nottingham Scientific Limited. Photo source: Sprirent.Spirent Communications has announced a solution that enables the civil aviation industry to evaluate the growing threat of GNSS interference, jamming and spoofing. The new GSS200D Interference Detector was developed as part of Spirent’s partnership with Nottingham Scientific Limited.
By Inside GNSS
The growing demand for precise location information, in combination with the ongoing evolution of GNSS technology, means that today’s GNSS market is bigger than ever. In the recently released European GNSS Agency (GSA) 2017 GNSS Market Report —the fifth edition of the agency’s popular report — it indicates the global GNSS market is expected to grow from 5.8 billion devices in use in 2017 to an estimated 8 billion by 2020.
By Inside GNSSFor several years the European Union (EU) has sought a waiver for its Galileo system from Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing requirements — the so-called Part 25 rule to operate in this country.
Long-overdue approval of the request should be expedited by the FCC.
By Inside GNSS
No longer consigned to predicting what might one day happen, the folks at the Galileo program can now look at and talk about what is happening right now, starting with initial services. To help us understand what’s going on, we enlisted no less than Matthias Petschke, Galileo Program Director at the European Commission (EC).
By Peter Gutierrez
