Recently, I came across an impressive statistic from the U.S. Department of Commerce in “Trends in Space Commerce” relating to the GPS (and GNSS) industry. It indicated that for the past few years over 100 Million GPS receivers have been sold annually with a value in excess of $20b!

This, to me, is indeed impressive but it also demonstrates that the design, technology and manufacturing advances in the production of GPS receivers has resulted in a dramatic reduction in their prices. When we consider that in-dash GPS units for automobiles are at about $1,000- 2,000; receivers for commercial aircraft are about $5,000-15,000; equipment for survey and geodesy is about $5,000- 30,000; it is somewhat surprising to find that the average price for a GPS receiver (from the DOC data) is at $200. This “skewing” of the data is because of the extremely large number of low cost GPS receivers in mobile phones for E911 and other location-based services. There is a virtual army of clever, competent engineering folks working very hard in a highly competitive industry to drive down the cost and improve the capabilities of GPS receivers. Many of these inexpensive units incorporate thousands to millions of correlators for reducing acquisition time; have sophisticated processing to improve operation in low signal conditions (such as indoors) and provide other techniques for enhancing overall performance. These technologies are becoming widely accepted and used.

At NavtechGPS, we waited a number of years (into the 1990’s) until some GPS receivers reached the one to five thousand dollar price range before we took them on as viable products. It’s a testament to the acceptance and rapid advancement of GPS and its related technologies that there are now some GPS units in production that (in quantity) cost about a dollar. As time progresses, the impact of GNSS devices and location-based services will escalate to be an even more significant influence in our lives. With the new, modernized GPS signals and the resurgence of international systems, such as GLONASS and Galileo, GNSS will play a larger role. It is likely that the future convenience and high value of GNSS data and applications will have a revolutionary impact on the way we manage ourselves, our relationships and our work.

The combination of the very low cost GPS position, velocity and time sensors, the improvements in related solid state devices, such as inertial sensors, and the increasing availability and use of map data bases will continue building in importance. The growth in the applications for these integrated systems appears unlimited.

It is amazing to see the industry investing millions of dollars to provide Galileo capability without definite assurance that a signal will be in space anytime soon. The situation in the professional GNSS markets has become quite strange. Customers ask for products for which their full potential can only be realized in 2012 or later. Would anyo ne buy a car that would require fuel additives that are not available for another 4 years? I would guess the answer would be no.

I think we have to ask ourselves, how did the professional GNSS market get into this situation? For me the answer is simple. Galileo is the driver for modernization and this influences the buying behaviour. But there is too many powerpoint presentations, and no firm decisions within Galileo. I would like to use Frank van Diggelen’s (Broadcom) provocative little study where he computed the ratio between powerpoint presentations and number of satellites. He simply googled for “Galileo.ppt” and all the other satellite systems. The outcome was that Galileo clearly had the highest ratio, followed by GPS, Beidou and GLONASS. GLONASS and Beidou have fewer political obstacles than Galileo, but they also have the money to fulfil their ambitious plans by the end of the decade.

The technological challenges for the professional GNSS market are obvious. The race has just started for chips with even more channels, less power consumption, tighter integration, support of at least 3 GNSS systems and higher accuracy. 72 channels will certainly not be enough for the future. We as a technology leader are obliged to design products with Galileo capability, even though the user will not benefit until at least 2012. Leica Geosystems is the only manufacturer that can already offer a compliance upgrade path to all four satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou) which is based on publicly available system definitions.

The increasing demand for ubiquitous positioning and navigation requires sustainable mobility in market. Although GNSS and assisted GNSS will be the core of global location technologies, the most promising technology will be made by the digital convergence with other positioning technologies such as WLAN, RFID and UWB. One of the remarkable trends will be context-sensitive services via Internet. The next phase in Web 2.0 will require the location information for sustaining the mobility. In this regard, the standardization in the mobile terminal architecture can be expected. The Software Defined Radio can make the standardized receiver architecture (both in hardware and software) implemented effectively and accommodate the interoperable GNSS signals as well. The GNSS technology milestones should include the Software Defined Radio technology which will be accelerated by the digital RF technology