Galileo update

Europe weighs Galileo-compatibility mandate for Smartphones

The European Commission is now weighing whether to mandate Galileo adoption not only in European critical infrastructures but also in selected areas including smartphones. The European Union is adopting a system called eCall, which when installed in automobiles automatically sends out a signal to emergency-service providers when a crash or other anomaly is detected. The European Parliament is preparing eCall regulations that are based on satellite positioning, navigation and timing signals. What the commission is considering is to take that a step further by requiring that mobile phones and perhaps other devices such as tablets as well, be equipped with Galileo receivers that would automatically send location information as part of an emergency call using Europe’s 112. www.spacenews.com

Maritime trial route of Galileo

The Belgian frigate Leopold I-F930, participating in the end-of-year trials, carried the most up-to-date equipment possible, with multiple Galileo receivers for both its public Open Service (OS) and secure Public Regulated Service (PRS). The frigate sailed first from the Dutch marine base of Den Helder to Stavanger in Norway. From there it progressed north in very rough seas with 10m high waves, coming close to the Arctic circle – a first for Galileo PRS observations – before heading home. The testing provided tangible in-situ evidence of Galileo signal stability across both its operating frequencies up at high latitudes, equaling low satellite elevations in the local sky. The trials were performed by the Royal Military Academy of the Belgian Ministry of Defense, the UK Space Agency in collaboration with satnavspecialist company Nottingham Scientific Ltd and ESA, serving to ensure PRS signals were available whenever the four Galileo satellites currently in orbit came into view.

GMV – Consortium considerations for Galileo

The European Commission has awarded the contract for the development of the Galileo Commercial Service Demonstrator to a GMV-led consortium. The technology multinational will take on the tasks of developing and testing different Commercial Service (CS) solutions, including real Galileo Signal In Space (SIS) tests, and facilitating the testing of other solutions by external service providers. This 30-month project has a total budget of 4 million Euros. The CS is one of the services offered by Galileo which will provide improved performance and data with greater added value than Galileo’s Open Service and other GNSS signals. GMV will take on responsibility for the design, development, testing, integration, operation and maintenance of the CS Demonstrator with the overall aim of validating Galileo’s capacity of providing commercial high-accuracy (HA) and positioning-authentication services. www.gmv.com