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B: Applications

Europe Launches Full Galileo Procurement
August 11, 2008

Europe Launches Full Galileo Procurement

The European Commission (EC) — with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) — has launched the procurement process for Galileo with an invitation to companies to submit requests for participation as prime contractors for six work packages (WPs) valued at €2.145 billion (US$3.39 billion).

The deadline for replying to the invitation is August 7.

The European Commission (EC) — with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) — has launched the procurement process for Galileo with an invitation to companies to submit requests for participation as prime contractors for six work packages (WPs) valued at €2.145 billion (US$3.39 billion).

The deadline for replying to the invitation is August 7.

In a resolution on space and security passed by a large margin on July 10, the European Parliament endorsed the use of Galileo, particularly the public regulated service or PRS, as necessary for autonomous operations under the European Security and Defense Policy — perhaps the most forthright statement of support for prospective use of the civil-controlled GNSS system for military purposes.

In the meantime, Galileo program scientists and independent researchers continue to track and test the signals being transmitted by the latest Galileo experimental satellite, GIOVE-B. Articles in the forthcoming September/October issue of Inside GNSS will discuss the latest results of in-orbit tests of GIOVE-A and –B, drawing in part on data collected using a 25-meter dish antenna at Chilbolton in the United Kingdom.

Two Delft University of Technology faculty members, Christian Tiberius and Hans van der Marel, working with engineers at Belgian GNSS receiver manufacturer Septentrio, have reported successful calculation of Galileo-only double-difference carrier phase integer ambiguity measurements using L1 Open Service signals from the two GIOVE spacecraft. That work will also be described in an article in the September/October issue [of Inside GNSS magazine].

ESA will act as the Galileo procurement and design agent for the EC, which is the program manager and contracting authority of the publicly financed project. The process will follow a distinctively European process that includes a “competitive dialog” between ESA and the prospective prime contractors.

Under the current schedule, within seven weeks following the RTP deadline ESA will approve a short list of companies that will be invited to submit preliminary proposals on the work packages and take part in a dialog. After vetting during an intermediate dialog phase, selected companies will offer “refined proposals.”

The new procurement plan seems to relegate non-European companies to subcontract status. But some U.S. companies would like to be able to compete for the lead contracts for the Galileo satellites, for instance.

However, the tender guidelines limit prime contracts in the Galileo FOC procurement to “natural or legal persons established in one of the Member States of the European Union.” Moreover, subcontractors providing goods or services related to EU or national security must also be from the EU. In “exceptional circumstances,” ESA may authorize the use of non-EU subcontractors.

The competitive dialog phase is projected to take 15–30 weeks at the end of which successful companies will be invited to submit best and final offers (BAFOs) and supporting documentation. Contract awards would follow within three weeks, according to the current plan; however, the EC and ESA emphasize that the proposed timeline is “purely indicative” and may be shortened or lengthened.

Individually, the following estimated values have been earmarked for the six work packages:
• WP 1: System Support: €120 million
• WP2: Ground Mission Segment: €270 million
• WP 3: Ground Control Segment: €45 million
• WP 4: Space Segment (satellites): €840 million
• WP 5: Launch Services: €700 million
• WP 6: Operations €170 million

The overall program objective for Galileo is the deployment, by 2013, of a full operational capability (FOC) GNSS system comprising 30 satellites and ground facilities. The FOC Galileo system will provide five main services: Open Service, the Safety of Life Service, the Commercial Service, the Public Regulated Service (PRS), and the Search and Rescue Service.

Wanted: GNSS Advisor. Earlier, the EC Directorate-General for Energy and Transport (DG-TREN) issued an invitation to tender (ITT) for an advisor on the European GNSS program.

With a one-year term renewable up to three times, the contract will be designed to provide a pool of experts and organizations for review and counsel on administrative, financial, strategic and technical matters.

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Lost in the Noise: The Need for Longterm Infrastructure Development
July 30, 2008

Lost in the Noise: The Need for Longterm Infrastructure Development

You know how people talk louder when asking something of a person who doesn’t speak their language? (As if the failure to communicate is a simply matter of volume and not frequency or modulation.)

So, here we are in the GNSS world: a community that depends on radio waves so faint they might as well be Atlantic Ocean breakers rippling up on the Florida beach when a Daytona car race is roaring in the background.

Lost in the noise.

You know how people talk louder when asking something of a person who doesn’t speak their language? (As if the failure to communicate is a simply matter of volume and not frequency or modulation.)

So, here we are in the GNSS world: a community that depends on radio waves so faint they might as well be Atlantic Ocean breakers rippling up on the Florida beach when a Daytona car race is roaring in the background.

Lost in the noise.

From time to time, that has stood in as a metaphor for the U.S. GPS program, and it could be a permanent description of the state of our national public infrastructure — deferred maintenance.

Inadequate investment is nothing less than not-so-benign neglect. The road to second-class status.

Designing an industrial policy and restoring the U.S. industrial base isn’t a short-term project. If we think of longitudinal time as the RF spectrum of history, infrastructure development requires lots of bandwidth. It took us a decade to agree on launching a GPS III program and it’ll take us another decade to roll it out. Infrastructure is implicitly a long-lead item, and driving the process forward requires sustained human will, expertise, and vision.

Recently, I asked Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, about the state of public investment and planning to maintain an industrial base. Cooning mentioned the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy (ODUSD-IP) and observed that he hadn’t seen much involvement by that office lately.

“I don’t know what accounts for that,” Cooning added, “but I think it’s something to turn the gain up on.”

The ODUSD-IP mission “is to sustain an environment that ensures the industrial base on which the De-partment of Defense (DoD) depends is reliable, cost-effective, and sufficient to meet DoD requirements.” An admirable national goal, especially if we broaden the focus to the wider economy.

We tend to think of infrastructure as bricks and mortar, steel and concrete, satellites and ground control. But it also includes social systems such as education and health care. If we neglect to teach and heal, we lose national capability just as surely as when a power line falls down or GPS goes off the air.

Good infrastructure pays back an investment many times over, but infrastructure itself isn’t free and, as Europe discovered with the Galileo program, it doesn’t really fit within the usual financial planning timelines of private industry.

After Boeing lost its bid for the GPS III contract, the company laid off around 700 development engineers — not to be confused with production engineers. Both kinds of engineering skills are needed to produce a complex system such as GNSS. But development engineers come up with the imaginative designs, challenge the paradigms, take the innovations for a spin around the block.

They must create something from nothing and, when a contract eludes them, that’s what their employers are often left with — nothing.

And there’s only so long a company can stay in business earning nothing . . .

This is not, however, a defense of bailouts or a plea for larger outlays for military programs. It is a plea for more comprehensive planning, good judgment in choosing among alternatives, prudent investment, and staying the course in matters of sustaining the U.S. industrial base.

Given this situation, the long-running dialog on creating a rational and comprehensive National Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Architecture with a 20-year horizon comes as a welcome relief.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether the overarching and somewhat abstract vision can be converted into programs, timelines, and budgets — in short, into a PNT industrial plan and policy. PNT systems are not, after all, just technologies; they are also political turfs, and totems, and talismans.

But the intention is good and the experience just a foretaste of what would be in store if the United States actually got serious about creating an industrial policy.

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NXP/STMicroelectronics JV Launches
July 29, 2008

NXP/STMicroelectronics JV Launches

ST-NXP Wireless, a new company bringing together key wireless operations of STMicroelectronics and NXP, will begin operations August 2 following completion of a deal announced earlier this year.

Owning thousands of communication and multimedia patents, the new joint venture will bring key technologies for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) and for the emerging TD-SCDMA standard, as well as other cellular, multimedia and connectivity capabilities — including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, USB, and UWB (ultra-wideband).

Read More >

By Glen Gibbons
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GPS Southern Africa Conference and Exhibition
July 6, 2008

GPS Southern Africa Conference and Exhibition

The GPS Southern Africa Conference and Exhibition – the first of its kind in Africa – takes place from 20 August to 22 August 2008 at the Indaba Hotel, Fourways, Johannesburg.

The conference will highlight the many new applications of GPS technology across the board and the penetration of GPS in transport, safety and security, mining, government, and mining.

Read More >

By Inside GNSS
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ESA Opens Galileo Procurement: Let the Games Begin!

ESA Opens Galileo Procurement: Let the Games Begin!

Giuseppe Viriglio, ESA’s Director of Telecommunication and Navigation. ESA photo, A. Le Floc’h

Today (July 1), the European Commission (EC) — with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) — launched the procurement process for Galileo with an invitation to companies to submit requests for participation as prime contractors for six work packages (WPs) valued at €2.145 billion (US$3.39 billion).

Read More >

By Glen Gibbons
Frequency Electronics Gains GPS IIIA Clock Contract
June 19, 2008

Frequency Electronics Gains GPS IIIA Clock Contract

Frequency Electronics, Inc. (FEI) has received an authorization to proceed (ATP) on a new contract to provide master clocks and microwave sources for payloads on the next-generation GPS IIIA satellites. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company leads a team that will build the IIIA spacecraft under a recently announced Air Force contract.

According to FEI, the value of the contract, when finalized, could exceed $10 million with more than half of the work to be completed over the next 18 months.

Read More >

By Glen Gibbons
Real-time Kinematic with Multiple Reference Stations

Real-time Kinematic with Multiple Reference Stations

Multiple reference station RTK (real-time kinematic) is a complex, yet natural extension of single reference station RTK. Single reference station RTK actively and dynamically measures GNSS measurement errors, most notably satellite orbit, troposphere, and ionosphere errors.

Multiple reference station RTK (real-time kinematic) is a complex, yet natural extension of single reference station RTK. Single reference station RTK actively and dynamically measures GNSS measurement errors, most notably satellite orbit, troposphere, and ionosphere errors.

These measurement errors are characterized by their spatial correlation. To this end, in single reference station RTK, the errors are assumed to be constant everywhere around the reference station. In reality however, because the errors are not constant, the quality of these error estimates degrade as a function of distance and can reach an unacceptable level for ambiguity resolution after tens of kilometers.

One approach to ensure an acceptable level of measurement error over a wide geographic region is to deploy many reference stations, each operating independently. Once this infrastructure is in place, users select the reference station that will provide them with the greatest reduction of measurement errors and apply the corresponding corrections in the traditional single reference station RTK approach.

Unfortunately, the decision of which reference station to use can be problematic especially when the user is located between reference stations with nearly equally spacing. The estimated measurement errors at each of the reference stations may be different but the user is forced to discretely choose one or the other.

The solution to this problem is multiple reference station RTK. Instead of choosing the solution from one reference station or another, the multiple reference station solution allows users to combine the estimated measurement errors at each of the reference stations and smoothly transition from the errors at one reference station to another.

The multiple reference station solution is not only better because of the ease of use when transitioning between reference stations but also because the smooth combined solution is more likely to represent the user-observed measurement errors. This provides an even further reduction of user measurement errors, relative to the single reference station case.
. . .
The main advantage of multiple reference station RTK stems from the improved user performance. However, the improvement in performance can also be analyzed in an opposite manner, namely, as a way to increase the spacing between reference stations while still achieving the same level of performance. The performance improvement depends on many factors, including the variability of the measurement errors in the region and the ability to successfully resolve network ambiguities.

Multiple reference station RTK is more robust against station outages because a network solution can still be calculated even if individual reference station data is missing. However, due to the current trend of sparse network station spacing, the absence of any individual reference station would likely cause pockets within the network with less than desirable performance. Even under these conditions, the network solution is still more likely to provide a solution better than that from a single reference station.

This improvement comes at a cost of increased complexity and infrastructure. The data from all of the network reference stations must be collected in a central location for processing and then redistributed to network users. The cost of maintaining a processing center and data communication links for each reference station may be significant, depending on the number of reference stations and the country and region in which the network is located.

(For the rest of Paul Alves’ answer to this question, including figures and graphs, please download the complete article using the pdf link above.)

GNSS Solutions is a regular column featuring questions and answers about technical aspects of GNSS. Readers are invited to send their questions to the columnist, Prof. Mark Petovello, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, who will find experts to answer them.

Download this article (PDF)
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New Company, New Time Code Generator
June 17, 2008

New Company, New Time Code Generator

ORCA Technologies’ GS-101

ORCA Technologies LLC, a recent start-up company — but one whose principals come with a long background in GPS timing instrumentation — has introduced the Model GS-101 GPS/IRIG-B Synchronized Time Code Generator (STCG).

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By Glen Gibbons
GNSS Hotspots | June 2008
June 6, 2008

GNSS Hotspots | June 2008

One of 12 magnetograms recorded at Greenwich Observatory during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of 1859
1996 soccer game in the Midwest, (Rick Dikeman image)
Nouméa ground station after the flood
A pencil and a coffee cup show the size of NASA’s teeny tiny PhoneSat
Bonus Hotspot: Naro Tartaruga AUV
Pacific lamprey spawning (photo by Jeremy Monroe, Fresh Waters Illustrated)
“Return of the Bucentaurn to the Molo on Ascension Day”, by (Giovanni Antonio Canal) Canaletto
The U.S. Naval Observatory Alternate Master Clock at 2nd Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB in Colorado. This photo was taken in January, 2006 during the addition of a leap second. The USNO master clocks control GPS timing. They are accurate to within one second every 20 million years (Satellites are so picky! Humans, on the other hand, just want to know if we’re too late for lunch) USAF photo by A1C Jason Ridder.
Detail of Compass/ BeiDou2 system diagram
Hotspot 6: Beluga A300 600ST

1. CANADA AND U.S. FIGHT OVER OREGON – AND GPS IS THERE!
Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
√ The Canadian navy built the Murney Tower when Canada and the U.S. fought over Oregon in 1846. Cruises of this Kingston, Ontario region feature the world’s first wireless GPS-triggered audio tours — in six languages, no less. The UNESCO World Heritage Site features old fortifications guarding the Rideau Canal.

Read More >

By Alan Cameron
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