Understanding EGNOS

MELANIE VRITSCHAN, UMBERTO GUIDA, JON WESTBROOK

EGNOS service aspects

On the 5th June 2003, the 2515th EU Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council conclusions was: “calling for an optimal of appropriate integration of the EGNOS program in the Galileo program….” The last EC COM(2007)261 on 16th May 2007 to the 7th June 2007 EU Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council “…invites the Council to recognize that EGNOS will achieve operational capability by early 2008 and that immediate action is required to implement its services as a pre-cursor to Galileo”. The activities related to such actions are foreseen to speed-up after such council.

Recently, the resolution n 94550 of the 2805th Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council meeting, held in Luxembourg from the 6th to 8th June 2007, explicitly invites the Commission the continue with the implementation of a certifiable EGNOS in line with relevant requirements, with the initial service availability by 2008.

The preparation of the EGNOS Safety of Life service provision requires involvement of all European Satellite Navigation actors, to defi ne the service environment, and to implement the relative enablers as required by the rules and regulations specific for the applicative domain. In the short term, during the start of the services transitory phase and the uptake of the market, the continuation of EGNOS SIS and data provision would need to be ensured by European Institutions.

The finalization of the EGNOS service provision chain with the final allocation of roles and responsibilities between the concerned actors is required, and the consequent preparation of the legal and institutional environment is under development at European institutional level. As seen, the operational qualifi cation of the EGNOS operations entity is required and under progression as well as the required certification according to EC SES regulations. The development of a suitable operational framework for EGNOS service provision is then ongoing at the European institutional level.

ESSP and EGNOS

ESSP has important assets in view of EGNOS operations and service provision. ESSP has been created to be the EGNOS operator and Safety of Life service provider.

Operating the system since 2005, ESSP has considerableexperience with regard to its operations and is now preparing for the Safety of Life service provision and the Single European Sky certification by engaging itself in introductory activities for EGNOS Service Provisioning.

ESSP is involved in several different projects related to GNSS service introduction in different the transport domain and also in the areas that will be covered by the EGNOS service extension, like MEDA.

ESSP has created a network of institutional entities which play a role in the service provisioning, and also future interested and target user communities, in order to identify and promote the benefi ts, and to defi ne and implement with them the enablers required by the different transport markets.

In the near future, an aircraft, an Air Nostrum CRJ-200 of “Air Nostrum” Regional Airline will be equipped with an integrated SBAS avionics confi guration, including also the modifi cation to the Flight Management System (FMS) required by flying LPV procedures.