Author Archives: Galileo GNSS

ESA certifies first 50 Galileo position fixes

To mark the first anniversary of Galileo’s historic first satnav positioning measurement, ESA plans to award certificates to groups who picked up signals from the four satellites in orbit to perform their own fixes.

Galileo Satnav System

Galileo Satnav System

In 2011 and 2012 the first four satellites were launched, the minimum number needed for navigation fixes. On 12 March 2013, Galileo’s space and ground elements came together for the first time to perform the historic first determination of a ground location (the Navigation Laboratory of ESA’s Technical Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands). Read more…

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The Ionosphere effect to GNSS signals

Interference from the ionosphere can cause a significant error in GNSS observations. The impact of high solar activity and other disturbances in the ionosphere could potentially disable the use of GNSS and lead to low confidence in the use of GNSS for high accuracy applications.

Ionospheric scintillations are fluctuations in the phase and amplitude of the signals from GNSS satellites occurring when they cross regions of electron density irregularities in the ionosphere. Such disturbances can cause serious degradation on GNSS system performance, including integrity, accuracy and availability. At low latitudes scintillations occur very frequently due to ionospheric irregularities caused by high and inhomogeneous electron density. Read more…

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Galileo Mass-market satnav chips on the right way

With the first Galileo services set to begin this year, ESA is working directly with European manufacturers of mass-market satnav chips and receivers to ensure that their products are Galileo-ready.

“In coordination with the European GNSS Agency, we put out an open call to satnav manufacturers offering testing with our laboratory facilities. We have gone on to work with five mass-market chipset makers and a comparable number of professional receivers manufacturers” explained Riccardo de Gaudenzi, head of ESA’s Radio Frequency Systems, Payload and Technology  Division. Read more…

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Galileo to augment aircraft guiding systems

Plans to use Galileo and other satnav systems for next-generation satellite augmentation systems for aviation and other high-performance uses took a significant step forward at the latest gathering of worldwide operators and experts.

Satellite augmentation systems combine additional ground stations and satellite transponders to sharpen satnav accuracy and reliability across given geographical regions – based on the US GPS for now, but with plans to move to a multi-constellation design additionally employing Europe’s Galileo, China’s Compass and Russia’s Glonass systems in the post-2020 era. Read more…

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High Precision Global Navigation Satellite Systems Antenna

Imec and Septentrio have designed an antenna-RF integrated element of a multi-frequency Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) antenna for GALILEO, GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou. Developed under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme project HANDHELD, the compact antenna can be integrated in multi-frequency handheld GNSS devices for high precision location applications (up to 1 centimeter).

Imec and Septentrio co-developed a compact antenna integrating imec’s innovative GNSS antenna and Septentrio’s GNSS RF front-end. Read more…

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Galileo is successful

The in-orbit validation (IOV) of Galileo has been achieved: Europe now has the operational nucleus of its own satellite navigation constellation in place, the world’s first civil-owned and operated satnav system.

In 2011 and 2012 the first four satellites were launched into orbit. These satellites were combined with a growing global ground infrastructure to allow the project to undergo its crucial IOV phase. Read more…

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