Magazine BEAST #12 2018

#Science | Space
69
for professional and government users. Another service to
be provided is Authentication: it will allow users to make sure
that the signals they are using in their solutions do come from
legitimate sources (the GNSS satellites). Our constellation will
also support efforts to improve the coverage of satellite-based
Search And Rescue (SAR) services that allow to better localize
users in distress situations. Finally, there will be additional services
that will allow users to have even higher precision via the third
frequency,» explains Omar Valdés, who’s currently responsible
for fostering the adoption of the European GNSS in the Space
and IoT market segments.
«Incorporating Galileo is the hot topic in the GNSS world»
For years, the main challenge for the adoption of Galileo was the
incompleteness of the constellation. After the Initial Services
declaration in December 2016, the situation changed dramatically:
there has been an explosion of chipsets (the electronic circuits
that «listen» to GNSS satellites and provide the device with
the PNT – Position, Navigation & Timing), receivers, and fully
integrated devices that support Galileo. Proof of the success of
the European GNSS, Galileo, is that it is increasingly supported in
mobile devices. It first started in July 2016 with the BQ Aquaris
x5, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 chip, which was the
first Galileo-enabled phone ever released. Since then, leading
brands Apple, Huawei and Samsung have joined the movement
and are currently using the European geolocation system in
their latest smartphones. «It seems that incorporating Galileo is
now the hot topic in the GNSS world!» highlights Omar Valdés.
The next steps are the completion of the constellation to bring
it towards its full-operational capability configuration. For this
purpose, the European Union has been launching the necessary
satellites: the latest four took off from the Europe’s Space Port
in Kourou, in French Guyana, on the 25th of July. Once all of
the recently launched satellites will be commissioned for service,
the constellation will have 24 operational satellites. As M. Valdés
puts it, «a key principle in GNSS is that the more satellites a
receiver uses for computing the PNT solution, the better.
Therefore, on top of the enhancement of services discussed
previously, the interoperability of Galileo with the other GNSS
allows the devices configured to use it to increase dramatically
the amount of satellites they use improving in this way the PNT
solution provided to their users».
Facilitating the development of smart cities and autonomous
mobility
EGNSS (the European GNSS: Galileo and also EGNOS – European
Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) technologies and
location-based services are now becoming ubiquitous in urban
areas. All mass market electronic devices, from smartphones
and wearable devices, such as fitness monitors, to traffic
lights and other components of the expanding Internet of
Things, now have the capability to broadcast their location.
IoT is actually categorized into four building blocks: sensing,
processing, connectivity and finally actuation. When it comes
to outdoors location, the first one can notably be provided by
a GNSS receiver acting as an enabler. IoT wouldn’t be possible
without sensors, and is deeply interlinked with new concepts
where location is essential: smart factories, big data processing,
tracking objects and people, drones, but also smart cities and
autonomous vehicles.
Therefore, GNSS is key for IoT applications that require location
outdoors: it is a reliable, cheap, and precise means to know where
an object, “a thing,” is while outdoors. It acts as an enabler for
IoT applications that require tracking, location, or navigation by
providing a cost-effective, high-precision solution for PNT that
can then be used to generate data that can be exploited by
the devices themselves or in other devices remotely.
This enables the provision of a new generation of locationbased
smart services for citizens and corporations that includes
health and well-being monitoring and security applications and
the control and optimization of energy systems. He adds: «IoT
is very interesting, especially when it comes to smart cities
and tracking of goods and persons: tracking children or senior
citizens that might get lost or need support is recognized as
an important need as well as the tracking of dangerous goods
that go through the streets of towns and cities. Making it short:
Galileo applications are all around us and the system is now
available to support them».
Finally, mobility also benefits from Galileo as it uses the PVT
information not only to find its way but also to report to its
owner where it is at any time. As a matter of fact, mobility has
taken a growing and important part of everyone’s daily lives.
EGNSS aims at making life on the road easier by significantly
reducing congestion and, consequently, reducing greenhouse
gas emissions such as CO2. EGNOS and Galileo are helping urban
authorities to improve the efficiency of road transportation
through navigation, fleet management opportunities and
satellite road traffic monitoring. Moreover, it is also bound to
allow the development of autonomous mobility as geolocation is
a key component of such self-driving systems, along with other
sensor like inertial navigation systems (INS), odometers, radar,
cameras, gyroscopes and others. GNSS plays a key role in most
connected car applications, ultimately leading to autonomous
mobility: «[Autonomous driving] is an excellent example of an
application in which a device, in this case the vehicle, uses the
PVT information not only to find its way but also to report to its
owner where it is at any time,” adds Omar Valdés. Some other
of those applications being integration with home networks,
data exchange with insurers, manufacturers and third parties,
improved navigation and positioning, payment integration,
police warnings and location, and many more. Autonomous
driving is the final step of a long automation process, as selfdriving
vehicles are capable of sensing their environment and
navigating without human input. Yet, autonomous cars exist
today mainly as prototypes and demonstration systems.
BEAST MAGAZINE #12