The road to the signals Galileo has today as a baseline has been tedious and long, but has followed a logic from the start. From the very beginning, one of the main challenges that Galileo set for itself was to offer three wide band signals, satisfying the requirements of mass market and pushing the potential performance to its natural limits. The historical Agreement of 2004 between the US and the EC impacted the initially planned signals but has intensified the cooperation between Galileo and GPS. The final touch to the Galileo signal plan was achieved in 2006 when the Working Group on GPS and Galileo Compatibility and Interoperability finally agreed upon the great interest in a new modulation for the E1/L1 frequency, namely the Multiplex Binary Offset Carrier. Galileo has thus accomplished the original objective of providing three wide band signals for the civilian GNSS community.
This paper reviews the status of satellite navigation (as per 11 May 2020)—without claim for completeness—and discusses the various global navigation satellite systems, regional satellite navigation systems and satellite-based augmentation systems. Problems and challenges for delivering nowadays a safe and reliable navigation are discussed. New opportunities, perspectives and megatrends of satellite navigation are outlined. Some remarks are closing this paper emphasizing the great value of satellite navigation at present and in future.
Satellite Navigation has become a keystone for the development of Europe and its citizens. It is then essential to provide adequate educational programmes so to ensure a prepared workforce for the GNSS sector in Europe. In this context, ESA has launched a complete Satellite Navigation Educational program, called EDUNAV, aiming at providing upto-date GNSS based educational material and educational tools. The GNSS-Lab (gLAB) Educational Software Tool is part of this ESA EDUNAV initiative.
gLAB, developed under ESA Contract by the research group of Astronomy and Geomatics (gAGE) from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), is an interactive educational multipurpose package to process and analyse GNSS data. gLAB performs precise modeling of GNSS observables (pseudorange and carrier phase) at the centimetre level, allowing both standalone GPS positioning and PPP. Every single error contributor may be assessed independently, which, in turn, provides a major educational benefit. gLAB is adapted to a variety of standard formats like RINEX-3.00, SP3, ANTEX and SINEX files, among others. Moreover, functionality is also included for GPS, Galileo and GLONASS, allowing performing some data analysis with real multi-constellation data.The gLAB software tool is quite flexible, able to run under Linux and Windows operating systems and is provided free of charge by ESA to universities and GNSS professionals.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.