GNSS System
Galileo Will No Longer Require Special Manufacturer's License
October 28, 2009 By: Alan Cameron

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN — The International Association of Institutes of Navigation, meeting in Sweden this year, forms the occasion for what has become ritual in all such meetings: the updating of status on each GNSS. Today, for the first time in my memory at least, all three major systems must confess to and make commitments to get around looming obstacles. GPS and GLONASS both have errant satellites emitting aberrant signals, and Galileo has yet another construction delay.

As it turned out, only the Galileo program brought anything significant to announce at the IAIN conference, making a clean breast of schedule postponements and a clear statement of cause for possible division of the upcoming satellite work order. Galileo’s biggest news popped out, however, in response to a question posed to the GPS program. Paul Verhoef told the audience that the EU plans to announce within weeks that a special license to manufacture and sell Galileo receivers will no longer be required.

The GPS presentation made no allusion to that system’s current satellite and signal problems; a substitute speaker for GLONASS, which did not send a personal representative, acknowledged a problem with that system’s satellite(s), but had no details to offer.

Galileo. Paul Verhoef, program manager of the European Union (EU) satellite navigation programs, opened the IAIN second morning session with an update on EGNOS and Galileo.

“There is a lot going on, as you know.  I’m going to give you a bit of insight into the kitchen.”

Before his planned remarks, however, he paused to refer to the opening keynote given by David Last of the University of Wales (these remarks may be presented in an upcoming edition of GPS World magazine).

“I agree with David’s message. It would be an illusion to think that setting up satnav systems is the one and only solution.  Other solutions are necessary. It may well be that there is no business case for eLoran, but this does not mean that we do not do backup solutions.  There are things like jamming, solar flares, and other things.  It becomes more and more important to discuss and agree on suitable backup solutions.”

He then proceeded with his prepared remarks on EGNOS and Galileo.

“EGNOS is in operation since October 1.”  Verhoef displayed plots of results of comparative measurements taken at the DG-TREN headquarters in Brussels, demonstrating a “substantial improvement on position” accomplished by EGNOS, closely approximating the accuracy rendered by differential GPS (DGPS).

“To us a very stringent requirement is to meet the safety-critical aspect of operations for the Single European Sky [aviation] regulatory package.  It will be authorized next year by the French authority, based in Toulouse.” This will be the first step for wider certification and implementation, eventually to be taken over by a European aviation authority based in Cologne, Germany.

“We are currently putting in this service with a rather long-term perspective.  It will be quite a while before Galileo is there, completely there.  We have to take a number of margins with that.  We will need to have EGNOS for at least a 20-year perspective, even if Galileo is there.  Later we will decide whether to integrate it, whether Galileo should take it over; this is not the moment to have this debate.  Somewhere in that 20-year period, we will have a discussion on where we go with EGNOS. The aviation community needs at least a 7-year notice of any change, so that is well taken into account with this 20-year perspective.”

Galileo FOC on the Move. “This is a slide we are shortly going to change. It says full operational capability (FOC) in 2013.  You now know we are not going to meet that date.”

IOV phase call for 4 satellites, while FOC calls for 27 (+3 in-orbit spares). Five uplink stations for IOV, later to reach nine for FOC.  Two telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C) stations in IOV, five in FOC. Thirty sensor stations at FOC, Norway will be the host of three facilities, and the U.S. a similar number.

The first two satellites will be launched in November 2010, and the next two in April 2011.  The launch pad is under construction in Kouro, Equatorial Guinea, for the Soyuz launch rockets.  The control center in Kouro should be ready in two weeks from now. 

“Then we come to the procurement as it stands at this moment.  We are procuring the capacity through six main work packages. We are on track to announce the satellite contracts before Christmas, as well as the system support contract. Perhaps the launch contract, but perhaps not until after Christmas. The other contracts are not time-critical at this point, therefore we have delayed them slightly; to be announced in the first quarter of 2010.”

“We have split the total of the 28 satellites we will order into two work orders. In the first work order we will procure up to 22 satellites, and in the second work order the rest.  The industry bidders are to submit their best and final offer for 8, 14, and 22 satellites.  The most crucial decision in the whole procurement will then be for us to go single-source with one of them, or dual-source with both.” He referred to the similar process in GPS procurement, although in that case alternating block-to-block, not within blocks.  “A double supplier would mean spending extra money, but it would bring some risk reduction.  Will it be worth the extra money we will have to pay for it? By the end of the year we hope to have the answer for that.

"By the end of the year we will have under contract the delivery of 22 satellites, and the launch contract. So by the end of the year we will be able to give a very clear schedule on Galileo deployment.

“There remains uncertainty on where it will end.  Budget questions depend on parliament and the EC on these matters, which will drive the final aspects of the work.  We live in difficult economic times, and there are some things to be determined in 2014, when the next funding cycle will begin.

“By the end of 2013, we will have an initial constellation of 16 satellites: 4 IOV and 12 FOC satellites. This is targeted to provide the open service, and parts of the other services: safety of life, PRS, and commercial.  Completion of these will depend on the open funding questions.”

“We have one major problem at the moment, and it is not clear to us why our colleagues are not addressing this issue at the highest importance. I am referring to compatibility with all GNSS systems.”  Verhoef mentioned the U.S. and Russian systems specifically and said all was proceeding smoothly in those respects; he did not mention China or the Chinese Compass system by name, referring to it simply as “the other” or “the others,” and clearly implied that this is where the difficulty lies.

GPS. Jason Kim from U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Coordination PNT office gave background on the American system; however, nothing was mentioned about the current problem with an errant signal from SVN49 and possible solutions under consideration for that satellite. (This was covered under an earlier CGSIC briefing and one later in the afternoon, details below).

The next-generation Block IIF satellite should be ready by January 2010, but because of launch issues, it cannot launch until June of next year.

The IIR-M 20 has activated the CNAV signal on L2C for testing receiver equipment. The third civil signal, L5, is also in broadcast demonstration from that satellite.

The director position for the national coordination office is still vacant (since Mike Shaw’s departure for an industry position).

Kim emphasized the DOC viewpoint that there be a level playing field for all manufacturers across all GNSS, particularly for receiver markets and applications.

“ELoran is being debated in Congress, and that information is making its way to the President.”
SVN49. Mike Shaw from Lockheed briefed this topic during an afternoon talk on GPS Block IIIA, noting the U.S. government's public efforts to understand the impacts of various mitigation techniques. He used the same or similar slides given by Capt Benjamin Barbour at Tuesday's CGSIC meeting, and the latter should be available at www.pnt.gov.  The slides indicated it is "not a question of if, but when" the Air Force will set SVN49 healthy.

Big News for Manufacturers. In response to a question from the audience about the U.S. position on the Galileo interface control document (ICD), Kim reiterated that, for the Galileo open service, an ICD has been published, but in order to use it for commercial purposes, a specific license is required from the EC — however the process for obtaining such a license in far from clear. “We expect Galileo to become a reality very soon. We think it’s going to be real.  We want everyone to be prepared, and to develop applications, and grow that market.  Look at the GPS model, making the information freely and openly available to everyone.  We have an ongoing dialog with our European colleagues to do the same thing.”

Paul Verhoef of the EU then rose from the front row of the audience to take the microphone again and add these remarks.

“We published the ICD so companies could do their initial research, use and test things, but could not sell, since under the previously envisioned public-private partnership, the private operator was envisioned to have some rights to that.  [Since the termination of the PPP effort] we have had further discussion with our member states. We have an ambition to become, after GPS, the second system of choice. In order to reach that, the user market is key.  We are currently putting our hands to the last bits and pieces of the documentation [revising the previous stance], to be published in a few weeks’ time.   We will no longer require a licensing document in order to manufacture and sell devices.  We had to do this bit of work to follow up on the initial [different] preparations made under the PPP.”

GLONASS. Sergey Revnivykh from Russia sent his apologies to the IAIN Conference, along with his powerpoint slide presentation, which was presented by one of the conference organizers, Börje Forssell of Norway.

“The Russians have problems with a specific satellite [on orbit]. The next satellite is still scheduled for December launch. The details of the problem are not known to everyone, but it seems to be quite substantial, because the Russians have set up a task force to solve this problem.”

He then proceeded to give the standard GLONASS presentation that has been seen several times recently, with no new items.  The only note of difference seems to be an attitude of wishing to co-locate GLONASS ground monitoring stations around the world, perhaps with those of other systems. No other GNSS targeted by this effort are called out by name, nor are any specific locations the Russians desire to monitor from — although Diego Garcia would presumably be of interest.