“We have far too many fatalities and injuries in traffic, and that’s something we cannot tolerate,” Robert Bosch Director of Autonomous Driving Christian Scharnhorst said during his keynote address. Scharnhorst cited global figures of 1.35 million fatalities per year, which is 3,700 per day, and 50 million injuries. “I’m totally convinced that automated mobility can provide a safer traffic environment.”

That said, the European Union (EU) automotive industry has not been as successful as hoped in its transition toward the mobility of the future. “It’s not a secret,” Scharnhorst said, “at Robert Bosch, as with our competitors and other automotive players, we are laying people off. On a daily basis, we are losing talent and important capabilities needed to materialize automated mobility.”

If the trend continues, doors will be open for competitors in other regions. In Asia, for example, competitors are eager and able to take the lead in automated driving (AD), but also in electric vehicles (EVs), artificial intelligence (AI) and the software defined vehicle (SDV).

“We are in a fierce competition, “Scharnhorst said. “Many EU startups have disappeared and many others are struggling to survive. The EU-based AD-ecosystem is under the highest ever financial pressure, and here, in Brussels, some have been hesitant to acknowledge that.”

After an especially difficult period, Scharnhorst said, signs out of the European capital are slowly turning more positive: “For years it has been a kind of game for certain politicians to cultivate mistrust against the automotive industry, and there may have been reasons for not trusting some automotive managers, a few of whom actually infringed law.”

In the latter half of the 2010s, executives at a large European auto maker were found to have committed fraud as they tried to deceive emissions regulators in the United States. The case made headlines across the globe and was a major embarrassment for the EU.

“That cannot be an argument to ban automotive in general,” Scharnhorst said, “to cultivate a mistrust of everybody in the sector. I believe there are some elements of hope that the key message is finally getting through, that without automotive in Europe we have a real problem. We can and we should sharpen the narrative for automated mobility, and we have the Draghi and Heitor reports that give us valuable arguments to set a new course.”

On Paper

Published in September 2024, the so-called Draghi Report (‘The Future of European Competitiveness—A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe”), penned by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank and Prime Minister of Italy, lays out a comprehensive strategy to address Europe’s competitiveness challenges. At issue is Europe’s economic viability in the face of global competition, specifically with respect to the U.S. and China.

The Heitor report, led by Manuel Heitor, former Portuguese science minister, also appeared in the fall of 2024. It recommends changes in the European Union’s current Framework Program for Research and Innovation (FP10, 2028-2035). The report criticizes the EU’s approach to research funding, arguing most of its support goes toward incremental advances rather than paradigm-shifting initiatives.

“We need to invest in R&D that leads to applications, getting to scaling,” Scharnhorst said, “preserving existing startups and getting big enterprises back into the investment arena. We live in a world that’s changing. We went from a nice globalization, with a task sharing approach, to a more fragmented, geopolitically tense situation, where we once more need to stand our ground. There are critical control points where we have to be independent and rely on ourselves, not on foreign technology.”

Money and Market Matters 

The automotive industry is a big deal for Europe, and it is working hard to maintain its position. Meanwhile, the Union has ambitious plans for future mobility, in particular in urban environments. Underlying the success of all foreseeable solutions, present and future, including every manner of unmanned vehicle, are key technologies, especially PNT. Here, it seems, Europe is also lagging. And then, one has to ask, why?

Shedding light was Gonzalo Martin de Mercado, PNT Competitiveness Manager for the European Space Agency (ESA) Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP). “NAVISP focuses on supporting European industrial R&D,” Martin de Mercado said, “and particularly in PNT. Now, you might wonder why a space agency is doing this. Aren’t we supposed to develop space systems? It’s because we see Europe falling behind the rest of the world in everything that is PNT.

“We have this amazing system, Galileo, that is paid for with European taxpayers’ money. It’s a technical marvel, but the problem comes on the business side. How do you sell something that’s free? Everyone has it in their smartphones, they use it, they don’t pay anything, so how can you sell that?”

The open signal delivered by Galileo is indeed free, but the equipment needed to receive it is not. Martin de Mercado said, “If we think about GNSS chips, the chips you need to use Galileo services, we can say, ‘OK, let’s make some chips and sell them. That’s a way to make this huge investment pay.’”

It’s not a new idea. EUSPA, the European Agency for the Space Program, formerly the GSA, has long provided support for European R&D aimed at capitalizing on Galileo services, including the development of new applications and chipsets.

“Looking into that,” Martin de Mercado said, “we see that the first producer of chips for Galileo in the world is an American company.” The second producer is an American company. The third producer is a Japanese company. The first European producer of chips for PNT is somewhere around number 10, a Swiss company called u-blox. “And this brings us to our point,” Martin de Mercado said. “We all agree that PNT is foundational for our digital technologies and society, but our dependence on non-European PNT chipsets is astonishing.

“And this is why we’re supporting your R&D,” he said, “because we want you to develop new products, to catch the competitiveness in PNT, and we’re also supporting the development of complementary and alternative PNT technologies.”

To be fair, Martin de Mercado said, European players do undertake some very big and important GNSS-related research activities, often successfully, but just as often aimed at developing highest-level solutions for the most demanding applications, which are not easy to carry around in your pocket.

“There is a difference in approach between Europe, the U.S. and Asia,” he said. “They tend to focus on business-to-consumer, while in Europe we tend to focus on business-to-business. Americans will tell you you have to listen to the consumer, because this will allow you to scale.” Martin de Mercado challenged anyone in the audience to call out a Fortune 500 company that does not address the consumer market or work with someone who addresses the consumer market. Everyone looked around but no one said anything.

“In Europe,” he said, “because we don’t have the ability to scale, because we lack the consumer orientation, we tend to address the professional market. We develop super-good and very expensive technologies, and we don’t sell much.”

A secondary issue, he said, remains the fragmentation of the European market. In the U.S., any company can potentially access 350 to 400 million customers immediately. If you start a company in France, you have a potential market of 60 to 65 million people. “We are the European Union,” Martin de Mercado said, “with a single market, yes, but I’m a French company and I want to do business in Germany, I still have to establish a company in Germany, I have to pay taxes in Germany, and there’s more, which you know about. All this costs time and money, putting European companies that want to scale at a disadvantage.”

More Success, More Hurdles

The picture was plain, not for the faint of heart. The Europeans (i.e. all the participants) at the meeting were riveted. Aside from defense and the consumer markets, including things like smartphones, Martin de Mercado said, “the automotive sector is the largest user of PNT technologies, and Europe produces, as of today, more than half the worldwide PNT solutions for automotive. That’s a fantastic achievement, but in 2022, 26 million cars were produced in China, 12 million cars were produced in the U.S. and 7 million cars were produced in Japan, while Germany, the largest European manufacturer, made only 3.5 million, and Spain 3.3 million.

“So we have an ecosystem that produces half the PNT technology for automotive in the world, but the vast majority of cars in the world are produced in China. It’s not hard to imagine those supply chains sooner or later leaving Europe to join that other ecosystem. That’s why we’re here today. We want to hear what you’re going to do about this.”

The call was registered, deep breaths were taken. Well considered responses, we believe, will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, attention turned to the skies, where that key enabling technology continues its triumphant rise.

No Mobility Without PNT

Cécile Deprez, researcher next generation GNSS at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), briefed attendees on plans for future Galileo satellites. “Today, our satellites communicate with a network of ground stations, but they don’t communicate with each other. It is very expensive to run and maintain those ground facilities, so our solution is to introduce satellite-to-satellite communications.”

On that subject, Rafael Lucas Rodriguez, head of NAVISP Program Office at ESA, said “Satellite-to-satellite communication is something we need to add to the next generation. These links could be radio frequency [RF]-based, like other systems are doing, or they could be optical, which is more advanced. A constellation is like a mesh, and with inter-satellite links you can really keep control of that mesh. The measurement of distances, for example, from satellite to satellite, can be more precise, because you don’t have to go through the atmosphere, which can always introduce errors.”

“In the immediate future we are likely to use RF links,” Deprez said, “but certainly in the third generation of Galileo, a bit farther on, we will introduce optical technologies, where we get high data rates, 50 to 100Mb per second of data communication, and we can also get very precise ranging between the satellites, at the millimeter or sub-millimeter level, plus the possibility of transferring time information at the picosecond level.”

One of the biggest challenges for satellite positioning is clock synchronization. The ability to synchronize satellite clocks directly, in space, will represent a huge advance. “We can greatly improve orbit estimation and reduce dependence on the ground segment,” Deprez said, “so we won’t need as many expensive-to-maintain ground stations. Ultimately, the robustness of the system will increase, with improved precision, PPP convergence time and other benefits.”

DLR is leading a number of Galileo projects, including the upcoming OpSTAR, working in close cooperation with ESA and partners to test Galileo satellite ranging, data dissemination and time synchronization, via satellite-to-satellite optical link.

Driving Toward Automation

Back on Earth, Aria Etemad of Volkswagen Group Research and Innovation talked about an important ongoing project led by his company. The Hi-Drive project, co-funded by the European Union, is the largest European effort in automatic driving, where the objective is robust and reliable AD. “Today’s automated driving is interrupted when you go from A to B,” Etemad said, “by fog, by accidents, by road works, you name it. There are GNSS occlusions, complex traffic situations, merging and exiting.”

Hi-Drive wants to defragment and extend AD operations, while advancing interoperability across countries and brands. The project introduces the concept of “enablers” aimed at closing gaps where AD is typically interrupted. “These enablers could be things like vehicle communication with cybersecurity,” Etemad said,” or high-precision positioning and localization, vehicle AI and machine learning.”

Other enablers include a geo-referenced cloud-based positioning service, forecasting GNSS signal quality in challenging environments such as urban canyons, tunnels and parking garages. The project is leveraging sensor fusion for localization, including simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) geometry identification, seamless positioning for low-speed maneuvers in close quarters, and object detection in urban environments.

“We’ve put a big team together, working in four thematic areas, to come up with 12 technical solutions and 63 implementations and tests,” Etemad said. In a recent demonstration, one Hi-Drive-equipped vehicle navigated the eight-kilometer-long Rennsteig Tunnel, the longest tunnel in Germany, operating in AD mode at about 80km per hour and without, of course, a GNSS signal.

“At automation level three, L3, the driver is still in charge and is responsible for everything that is happening,” Etemad said. “We are just now introducing levels 3 and 4. Daimler has introduced L3 for traffic jams and VW has announced we will pick up the robotaxi in Hamburg, a full-automation L4 service.”

Robotaxi services, initially without passengers, have been testing in Hamburg since 2021. Volkswagen Group is planning to operate the service through its mobility subsidiary MOIA, using fully electric ID.Buzz vans.

“For L4, we are using tons of sensors in our vehicles, to understand the environment, and this is expensive, so it’s not something you can produce for mass market. We need to reduce the complexity, and we think one solution would be to get information from outside the vehicle, and this is what we’re moving toward.”

Worth It

We return to where we started, the cost in lives of traditional driving. “Over 90% of traffic accidents are caused by human errors or behavior,” Etemad said. “But we also know that humans drive safely for millions of kilometers for every accident that occurs. That’s the level of reliability we’ll need to achieve with our automated systems.”

ESA’s Lucas Rodriguez believes it can happen, and he will have the last word here: “Yes, we need automated driving, because the future of urban mobility is mixed modality, with vulnerable users like pedestrians, bicycles and so on, all sharing the infrastructure with cars and larger vehicles. I know all about that because I live in Holland. Automated mobility will certainly improve safety there.”

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Focusing on anonymization, homomorphic encryption and secure multiparty computation (SMPC), the project addresses key use cases such as collaborative positioning, crowd management, and secure GNSS signal correlation.

As PNT technologies become critical for both civilian and military applications, ensuring user privacy without sacrificing accuracy is essential. Adversaries, including criminals, hackers, state actors and/or agents of industrial espionage, can exploit unprotected GNSS signals to disrupt or manipulate PNT information, leading to potential breaches of privacy and security.

VALLE uses SMPC to perform privacy-preserving density calculations that enhance crowd management while protecting individual identities, while homomorphic encryption enables GNSS signal correlation in encrypted domains, offering a secure alternative to conventional processing methods. Anonymization techniques can also be employed to facilitate collaborative positioning, yielding high-accuracy PNT outcomes while safeguarding user data.

The project’s demonstrator and performance benchmarks have confirmed the computational feasibility of these techniques, with analyses verifying robustness against privacy vulnerabilities. These promising results point to potential applications in a number of non-space applications.

Satisfying conclusion

At the recent VALLE final project presentation hosted by ESA, GMV Big Data Engineer Jedrzej Mosieznyn highlighted methods that balance data privacy with strong PNT performance. The VALLE team consolidated various use cases for privacy-preserving positioning services based on collected user PNT data, developing multiple processing concepts validated by a flexible demonstrator.

Key achievements included the use of SMPC for fast, secure computation of user density on personal computers, enabling efficient data sharing for location-based services. Partially homomorphic encryption allowed IQ sample correlation within encrypted domains on a single server-class system, opening opportunities for further algorithm enhancements. In addition, anonymization of GNSS observables supported a collaborative positioning solution that delivered high-accuracy results.

Network traffic analysis during the project revealed consistent patterns in ICMPv6, mDNS, and ARP protocols, with no vulnerabilities detected. Looking ahead, the VALLE solution shows real potential for use in a broad variety of applications such as crowd management, contact tracking, IoT, and smart city services. GMV intends to further refine these privacy-preserving PNT concepts and advance their technology readiness level (TRL) for next-generation, secure PNT systems.

The VALLE project ‘Novel Privacy-Preserving PNT Processing Techniques’, was funded under NAVISP Element 1, which supports innovation and disruptive technologies across the European PNT value chain.

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Working in partnership with GNSS and timing experts Fondazione LINKS and INRiM, Origosat developers based their new GTSA system on a patented, anti-spoofing algorithm that integrates data from different sources, including the automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) system. This is an advanced technology used in aviation that combines an aircraft’s positioning source, aircraft avionics, and ground infrastructure to create an accurate navigation interface between aircraft and air traffic control. Under ADS-B, aircraft broadcast a variety of messages at irregular intervals, with information on position, altitude and speed, along with other data. It is the irregularity of these messages that make the system particularly resilient against spoofing.

The GSTA algorithm also integrates independent GNSS data for timing and positioning, and it integrates alternative timing and synchronization data through a secure communication channel.

Step forward

GSTA team members presented their final results at a recent event hosted by ESA, where they explained how combining this unique set of data elements enables detection of the most common types of spoofing attacks, including attacks based on signal retransmission, so-called ‘meaconing’, and those based on signal simulation, for example using commercial GNSS simulators. Partners designed and built a robust, spoofing-resistant GNSS receiver, which they then tested in diverse, urban and open-field scenarios.

GSTA is a follow-on to a previous project, also funded by ESA, the GALIST project (‘Galileo Smart Traceability’). Its aim was to implement spoofing-resilient GNSS technologies for establishing the location of food production events in support of ‘made-in’ certification. The GALIST project has already put into operation some of the capabilities it developed for detecting and counteracting spoofing in this context.

Further actions following the GSTA project will be aimed at exploiting new market opportunities, not limited to food production applications. In particular, project partners said the GTSA spoofing detection and mitigation system is likely to be of interest in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications, in the automotive sector, including in autonomous vehicle applications and in vehicle tracking and fleet management, and in ‘internet of things’ (IoT) applications.

GTSA was funded under ESA’s NAVISP program, dedicated to strengthening the competitiveness of European positioning, navigation and timing (PNT)-related industries.

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The JRC is now inviting stakeholder input towards shaping the initiative.

Timing has long played third fiddle to positioning and navigation in the PNT triumvirate, in spite of the fact that it underpins every PNT function. Without accurate timing, satellites can’t deliver precise locations, power grids and other critical infrastructure falter, stocks can’t be traded and financial transactions lose sync. Call accurate timing the glue holding all these functions together. At a time when GNSS vulnerability is in the spotlight, resilient timing services via terrestrial networks, fiber, or alternative signals would provide a much-needed safety net.

Piecing together

Underpinning the JRC’s proposed timing backbone are elements in the complementary PNT (C-PNT) ecosystem, comprising a range of terrestrial timing systems, which would:

• Link European infrastructure, interconnecting national metrological institutes (NMIs) and research networks across the EU in a cohesive, resilient network;
• Support critical entities, enhancing timing services for vital infrastructure under the EU’s resilience directive while boosting GNSS redundancy;
• Drive competitiveness, unlocking new commercial applications and cementing Europe’s leadership in timing technologies.

The timing backbone initiative builds on the 2023 European Radio Navigation Plan and reflects years of groundwork by the European Commission (EC), the European Space Agency (ESA), and EU member states. The JRC has also drawn on its own in-depth analyses of Sweden’s distributed timing approach and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) clock network, and has studied vulnerabilities recently exposed by Russian GNSS jamming activities in Ukraine.

The EU isn’t alone in its focus on timing resilience. China’s sprawling high-accuracy, ground-based timing system will eventually feature 20,000 km of fiber optics and a nationwide network of eLoran stations. Similar strategies are being pursued in the US and elsewhere.

The JRC market consultation report, issued late last year (2024), emphasizes the JRC’s role in fostering a robust and resilient PNT ecosystem, evidenced by its recent work in support of the development of new, alternative PNT technologies. The need for resilient timing is undeniable. The clock, as they say, is running, and the benefits are likely to be enormous.

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HydroGNSS is one of a series of ESA missions, the so-called Scout missions, part of the agency’s FutureEO program, designed to quickly and cheaply demonstrate new Earth observation techniques using small satellites.

GNSS signals are differentially reflected or scattered by the Earth’s surface, as affected by water content, specifically permittivity, surface roughness and overlying vegetation. Once analyzed, these reflected signals can provide information about various geophysical properties. Special innovations introduced by HydroGNSS are to include dual-polarization and dual-frequency (L1/E1 and L5/E5) reception, and collection of high-rate coherent reflections.

Compact but powerful Earth observation platform

HydroGNSS uses the SSTL-21 platform, measuring 45 cm x 45 cm x 70 cm and weighing around 65 kg total per satellite. The payload will be operated at near 100% duty, and can support high data download rates using an X-Band transmitter. Star cameras provide precise attitude measurements, and a xenon propulsion system permits orbit phasing, collision avoidance and supports satellite disposal at the end of the mission. The two HydroGNSS satellites will take a ride-share launch into a 550 km sun-synchronous orbit, phased apart by 180 degrees to maximize coverage.

The SGR-ReSI-Z payload is a delay Doppler mapping receiver, tracking the direct GPS and Galileo signals through a zenith antenna and processing the reflected signals from a nadir antenna to create delay Doppler maps (DDMs). The zenith and nadir antennas employ all-metal patch technology, enabling the reception of dual-frequency and dual-polarized signals. Low noise amplifiers include blackbody loads to provide calibration for the amplitude measurement. Generated measurement datasets can be stored in the satellite’s data recorder and downloaded to ground stations at allocated passes several times per day.

Speaking at his annual press briefing in Paris earlier this month (January 2025), ESA Director General Joseph Aschbacher said, “We now expect to launch HydroGNSS in the fourth quarter of 2025, as one of the three so-far-identified Scout missions, which is a series based on smaller satellites, lasting three years of development work and with a relatively limited budget of roughly 30 million for industrial contracts. We see the Scout missions as something very important for our space science work. The scientific community is evaluating them and these are the ones selected and endorsed by them.”

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Led by the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), the system integrates GNSS, stereo and infrared cameras, and inertial measurement units (IMUs). The system aims to address challenges in precision agriculture, offering reduced costs and greater efficiency.

Precision agriculture minimizes harmful pesticide and fertilizer use, mitigates soil depletion and erosion, conserves water, and lowers energy and labor costs. However, equipping with current GNSS-RTK-based solutions whole collections of individual farm tools such as trailing tillers, box blades and mowers, can be prohibitively expensive.

To overcome this, the PAALI project developed a unique coupling unit that mounts between a tractor and its trailing tool. This system uses multiple sensors and sensor fusion algorithms to determine both the relative positions of the tractor and tool and the absolute positions of tool components.

FGI Research Group Manager Tuomo Malkamäki explained the objective: “We wanted to be able to estimate the pose of the trailed vehicle with minimal or no components placed directly on that vehicle.” The result is a cost-efficient, adaptable prototype for various agricultural applications. The Precision Agriculture Demonstrator (PAD) was successfully tested in a number of real farming scenarios.

Design choices

Among other components, the PAD prototype includes:

• Septentrio SBi3 Pro+ with IMU: A high-precision GNSS/INS receiver with RTK positioning and robust anti-jamming.
• Flir Grasshopper cameras: Monochrome cameras with onboard image processing capabilities.
• Flir thermal camera: Captures infrared radiation to display temperatures and temperature changes.
• Sick Visionary B stereo camera: Provides 3D vision for complete scene capture in outdoor environments.

Tests demonstrated high accuracy in absolute orientation and real-time performance at 20–30Hz frame rates, with 80Hz available for recording. Visualization output matched trailer movements seamlessly, with no noticeable latency. The PAD withstood mechanical stress and vibrations, delivering precise, low-noise camera-based pose estimations. Some weaknesses were also identified, particularly with regard to calibration-related errors.

Malkamäki noted the broader potential of this technology: “The system has significant applications within the agricultural field, but going beyond agriculture as well, in logistics, things like trailer hitching, also marine approaches and docking, and in many other autonomous operations.”

The PAALI project was funded under ESA’s NAVISP program, aimed at supporting new, commercial developments in the European PNT sector.

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Researchers from Fraunhofer and TeleOrbit delivered the project final presentation at a recent ESA-hosted event. Johannes Oeffner of Fraunhofer’s Center for Maritime Logistics and Services said “We wanted to look at different categories of biosensors and investigate the integration potential for PNT. The project brought together knowledge and expertise from a variety of scientific fields, looking at a range of different potential use cases and applications.”

Biosensors typically comprise a biological element, detecting specific biochemical reactions mediated by enzymes, immunosystems, tissues, organelles or whole cells, to detect chemical compounds. These elements are then coupled with a physical sensor or transducer that converts the biological-chemical signal into an electrical or optical signal. Biosensors are widely used in a number of applications, but are mostly seen in the healthcare field, in the monitoring and testing of medical events, in medical diagnosis. They are also used in environmental monitoring, for quality control in the pharmaceuticals and process industries, and in forensics.

Putting it together

The BIO.PNT first undertook an extensive analysis of different categories of biosensors, focusing on their potential for PNT integration. Field-effect transistor based biosensors for environmental monitoring were found to be very good candidates for combination with PNT. From there, the project developed the BIO.PNT sensor for the detection of pesticides within freshwater.

The selected bioreceptor is an organophosphate pesticide-cleaving enzyme combined with a transducer. The transducer comprises a modified field-effect transistor (FET) with amperometry, voltammetry or electrochemical impedance spectrometry (EIS).

System architecture is straightforward. One or more underwater sensor boxes contain physical biosensors for calibration and reference measurements, with pre-processing and signal processing via a microcontroller or analog front end specifically developed for the purpose. On the water’s surface, a communication box, powered by a solar panel, contains a low-power microcontroller serving as the primary control unit, and a GNSS/PNT module, with data storage handled via microSD card, and a communication module to send data to the user.

In summation, Oeffner said, “The BIO.PNT solution allows users to continuously detect organophosphate contamination in fresh water without sample preparation, in combination with PNT parameters that can be assigned to each measured value. This data would allow for environmental monitoring assessing water quality in natural ecosystems, lakes, and rivers, to locate, understand and mitigate the impact of human activities.

BIO.PNT was funded under ESA’s NAVISP program, supporting technology innovation in the European PNT industry.

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The forestry sector is in need of reliable and accurate positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions. In tree harvesting, logging trails need to be generated and then found again by large, heavy-duty logging machines, so they and their human operators can stay safe and on track. Individual cut tree positions need to be plotted by harvesters so that forwarders, specialized vehicles that extract cut logs from the forest, can locate them. The current logging-trail demand is for a positioning accuracy of about 0.5m, with high availability.

The SRX project was carried out by satellite navigation specialists IFEN and IGASPIN. Speaking at the project final presentation, hosted by ESA, IFEN’s Jürgen Pielmeier said, “We have no precise GNSS PVT [position, velocity, and time] technology that works the way we need it to work in the forest. Today, the best we can do is about five- to ten-meter accuracy. So we have to find a better solution to support today’s digital flow chain requirements.”

The main problem, it goes without saying, is the trees. In a typical timber forest, a limited amount of degraded GNSS signals from satellites above about 32 degrees elevation in the sky are usable, while only signals coming from above 60 to 80 degrees are open sky.

New generation SDR

Using a previously existing IFEN GNSS receiver as a starting point, the project developed a new prototype software-defined receiver (SDR) that features improved size, weight, and power (SWaP), and increased flexibility and scalability.

This robust, vector tracking-based solution for reliable, high-precision PNT uses Galileo E5ab and BeiDou-3 B2, ACE-BOC (asymmetric constant envelope binary offset carrier) wide-band signals, integrated with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensor measurements. The receiver also features the latest, state-of-the-art hardware innovations in radio frequency application-specific integrated circuits (RF-ASICs), with a system-on-a-chip (SoC) digital processor. High processing scalability enables coverage of the increasing number of GNSS satellites in orbit, while high processing flexibility allows the implementation of very complex signal and navigation processing algorithms.

At the heart of the system is a sophisticated RTK-enabled vector-tracking algorithmic solution, which project partners have described as ‘beyond the state-of-the-art’. The new SRX receiver provides improved PVT capability based on RTK and a multi-correlator approach, with environmentally-adaptive tracking loops and innovative strategies against anomalies.

Summing up, Pielmeier said field tests show the new prototype receiver enhances precise GNSS positioning in challenging environments, with effective multipath mitigation enabling excellent the meeting of our accuracy targets in forests but also in urban canyons and similar settings.

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Some governments, it was noted, remain less than optimally aware of the significance of such technologies, not just for emerging mobility applications, but across the board in sectors various and sundry.

“There is a bridge required,” said Rajesh Tiwari, Senior Scientist at QinetiQ, and SAE PNT Committee member, “From the research community to elements in government, like the standardization bodies, for example. We all know there are lots of services that depend on GNSS, and if GNSS went out there would be heavy consequences.”

Tiwari asked permission to tell a story. The group assented. “The UK has a national risk register,” he said, “and up to just a couple of years ago, GNSS was not entered in that risk register.”

Chuckles were heard. Gonzalo Martin de Mercado, PNT Competitiveness Manager for the European Space Agency, said what everyone was thinking: “Losing GNSS, as of today, is the most important non-catastrophic risk for any country.”

“So, about two years ago,” Tiwari continued, “you can look it up, there was a report by a pool of people and companies who work in GNSS, including my own company. It was all about which industries would be affected if GNSS went down, and what would be the loss, and the number they came up with was around one billion pounds per day. Very quickly, GNSS got added to the UK’s national risk register. Sometimes governments need to be scared.”

Funny or alarming?

Martin de Mercado, being familiar with the report in question, said, “This study was done when the UK Brexit process was already underway, and people were saying, ‘OK, we are going to lose access to certain capabilities of Galileo, EGNOS, etcetera’. So they wanted to understand what could happen.”

“The politician doesn’t like all that technical stuff,” Tiwari said, “but if you say ‘a billion pounds’, they understand. They take notice.”

“It’s important for industry too,” Martin de Mercado said. “Without a number, you as an industry don’t have a motivation to say ‘Huh, there’s a market, there’s an opportunity’. The UK has actually been amazing, because the government published that report and there has been a concrete response. We’ve seen the federation of a lot of the industry there, starting to see PNT, mobility, all kind of things, as a market for them, and then launching some commercial things and some projects with the government.

“It’s very curious,” he said. “Nobody in Europe has actually done a similar analysis, to understand the impact of a loss of GNSS for European society.” Some numbers have been floated, suggesting something like seven to eight percent of European GDP, for example, but, Martin de Mercado said, sources for such figures have tended to be vague.

“So it would be very interesting to try to do something similar at European Union level, something high-profile and authoritative, to try to stimulate the initiative of the private industry.” The European Commission would seem to be well positioned  to undertake that kind of study. Were it to do so, we would certainly be among those watching with interest.

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Wide-area safety systems and services are becoming the norm as the world moves towards greater levels of automation and autonomy. Developed economies, including the United States and Canada, Europe, Japan, India and others, have now or will soon have access to high-integrity safety services via SBAS, such as WAAS, EGNOS, MSAS and GAGAN. The UK, on the other hand, since 2021, has not had access to such services, its EGNOS working agreements having been suspended after the UK left the European Union. That means, among other things, safety-critical LPV (localizer performance with vertical guidance) landing approaches have not been available at key commercial airports in the UK.

The objective of the UKSBAS testbed project, led by Viasat, which acquired Inmarsat Navigation Ventures in 2023, was to rapidly establish a UK capability utilizing Inmarsat satellites already in orbit, and a navigation signal generator with associated SBAS data processing and monitoring software from GMV NSL. A UK ground station was used for signal in space (SiS) uplink from Goonhilly Earth Station to the GEO navigation transponder.

In a second phase, the project defined future system architecture options for UKSBAS and conducted live trials in maritime navigation, and in static and dynamic aviation and road and rail transport scenarios.

Delivering the goods

At a final project presentation event hosted by ESA, Paul Ocen of Viasat, in the company of representatives from GMV NSL and consulting firm CGI, said the project has been providing testbed services over the past two years, starting with UKSBAS L1-frequency SiS, since May 2022, delivered by Viasat/Inmarsat 3F5 satellite and through SiSNET (SiS through the internet), and including UKSBAS DFMC (dual-frequency multi-constellation – GPS L1/L5 and Galileo E1/E5a), since June 2023, also through SiSNET. Further, a UKSBAS PPP service has been active since October 2023, delivered over NTRIP (networked transport of RTCM [real time correction message] via internet protocol).

Ocen said results computed over 18 months show that UKSBAS, despite remaining a testbed using non-dedicated reference stations, has achieved impressive performance levels, in terms of accuracy and availability, comparable to current operational legacy SBAS such as EGNOS, and compatible with LPV-200 service level.

The next-generation L5 DFMC SBAS service has shown remarkably superior performance over legacy SBAS L1 augmentation at system and user level. The PPP service has also shown outstanding results in terms of accuracy and convergence time. Viasat now intends to deploy a further three SBAS payloads on satellites of the I-8 class, due in orbit in 2028, to provide global coverage at 178E, 64E and 54W GEO slots.

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