GATE is a ground-based realistic test environment for developers of receivers, applications and services for the future satellite navigation system Galileo. GATE is currently being builtup and as from beginning of 2008 – several years before Galileo becomes fully operational – Galileo signals will be emitted by 6 earth-fixed transmitters in the area of Berchtesgaden, located in the southeast of Germany in the German Alps. This will provide the opportunity for receiver, application and service developers to perform realistic field-tests of hardware and software for Galileo at an early stage. In this way GATE will also support German and European products for Galileo entering the market.
While the motivation of the US groundbased ranging test bed Yuma in the 70’s was to prove the concept of satellite navigation, no one doubts that Galileo will work from a conceptual point of view. However, it is still an ambitious technological project, introducing a signal structure far more sophisticated than the GPS C/A Code. In fact there are three major mission objectives to be covered by GATE – Signal Experiments, Receiver Testing and User applications.