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The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. Since it was declared operational in March 2011, the EGNOS SoL Service has been supporting civil aviation by enabling approaches down to LPV (Localiser Performance with Vertical guidance) minima at airports across Europe.

The EGNOS SoL Service consists of timing and positioning signals intended for transport applications in domains where lives could be endangered if the performance of the navigation system is degraded below specific accuracy limits. The SoL service is based on integrity data provided through the EGNOS satellite signals. 

With over 700 EGNOS-based procedures at 367 airports and helipads, the EGNOS services increase safety, accessibility and efficiency for operators and pilots approaching airport and helipads in Europe. More accessible airports equal more commercial opportunities for airlines and new flight routes at regional and international level, with minimum costs for ground infrastructure and its maintenance.

Read this: Helicopter Medical Emergency Flight lands at Motol Hospital thanks to EGNOS

The aviation sector has developed the certification scheme for EGNOS services, as well as the approval process for avionics and approach operations needed to use the SoL Service. Organisations implementing EGNOS-based procedures include air navigation service providers (ANSP), aerodrome operators and rotorcraft operators. However, the SoL Service is also intended to support applications in a wide range of other domains such as maritime, rail and road.

Significant environmental impact

“Since its launch in 2011, the EGNOS Safety of Life Service has been making the aviation sector safer and more efficient for European operators. Apart from the increased safety, it has made remote airports more accessible and is helping to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of aviation. As uptake increases, these benefits will be increasingly felt in other safety-critical sectors also, such as maritime or rail” said GSA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa.

The most obvious environmental impact of aviation is CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. With the aim of contributing to a “clean sky”, a methodology has been defined for air operators to calculate the reduction of CO2 emissions thanks to EGNOS-enabled LPV approaches. 

Two main sources of fuel savings have been identified, the first being related to the airport approach. Today, many airports require airplanes to make their approach step by step, levelling off at each stage and thus burning more fuel. EGNOS enables smooth and continuous glide path approaches that are more fuel efficient. 

Watch this: EGNOS for Aviation - Making Europe's airports more accessible

The second is the avoidance of go-arounds due to poor visibility (aborted landings) in EGNOS capable airports thanks to the lower decision height, down to 200 feet or 60 meters, for pilots to evaluate if the visibility is good enough to continue the landing process.  Minimizing diversions equals less fuel consumption, a win-win solution for both, the environment and the airlines. By 2025, 80,000 flight delays and 20,000 diversions will be avoided across Europe thanks to the contribution of EGNOS to the landing procedure of EGNOS-equipped airports.

Navigation operations based on the EGNOS SoL Service may require specific authorisation issued by the relevant authority. In the EU, the requirements governing the implementation of an EGNOS-based procedure are set down in the Single European Sky (SES) Regulation, and all related EU regulatory provisions applicable to the implementation of Performance Based Navigation (PBN) operations.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. Since it was declared operational in March 2011, the EGNOS SoL Service has been supporting civil aviation by enabling approaches down to LPV (Localiser Performance with Vertical guidance) minima at airports across Europe.

The EGNOS SoL Service consists of timing and positioning signals intended for transport applications in domains where lives could be endangered if the performance of the navigation system is degraded below specific accuracy limits. The SoL service is based on integrity data provided through the EGNOS satellite signals. 

With over 750 EGNOS-based procedures at 386 airports and helipads, the EGNOS services increase safety, accessibility and efficiency for operators and pilots approaching airport and helipads in Europe. More accessible airports equal more commercial opportunities for airlines and new flight routes at regional and international level, with minimum costs for ground infrastructure and its maintenance.

Read this: Helicopter Medical Emergency Flight lands at Motol Hospital thanks to EGNOS

The aviation sector has developed the certification scheme for EGNOS services, as well as the approval process for avionics and approach operations needed to use the SoL Service. Organisations implementing EGNOS-based procedures include air navigation service providers (ANSP), aerodrome operators and rotorcraft operators. However, the SoL Service is also intended to support applications in a wide range of other domains such as maritime, rail and road.

Significant environmental impact

“Since its launch in 2011, the EGNOS Safety of Life Service has been making the aviation sector safer and more efficient for European operators. Apart from the increased safety, it has made remote airports more accessible and is helping to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of aviation. As uptake increases, these benefits will be increasingly felt in other safety-critical sectors also, such as maritime or rail” said GSA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa.

The most obvious environmental impact of aviation is CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. With the aim of contributing to a “clean sky”, a methodology has been defined for air operators to calculate the reduction of CO2 emissions thanks to EGNOS-enabled LPV approaches. 

Two main sources of fuel savings have been identified, the first being related to the airport approach. Today, many airports require airplanes to make their approach step by step, levelling off at each stage and thus burning more fuel. EGNOS enables smooth and continuous glide path approaches that are more fuel efficient. 

Watch this: EGNOS for Aviation - Making Europe's airports more accessible

The second is the avoidance of go-arounds due to poor visibility (aborted landings) in EGNOS capable airports thanks to the lower decision height, down to 200 feet or 60 meters, for pilots to evaluate if the visibility is good enough to continue the landing process.  Minimizing diversions equals less fuel consumption, a win-win solution for both, the environment and the airlines. By 2025, 80,000 flight delays and 20,000 diversions will be avoided across Europe thanks to the contribution of EGNOS to the landing procedure of EGNOS-equipped airports.

Navigation operations based on the EGNOS SoL Service may require specific authorisation issued by the relevant authority. In the EU, the requirements governing the implementation of an EGNOS-based procedure are set down in the Single European Sky (SES) Regulation, and all related EU regulatory provisions applicable to the implementation of Performance Based Navigation (PBN) operations.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. Since it was declared operational in March 2011, the EGNOS SoL Service has been supporting civil aviation by enabling approaches down to LPV (Localiser Performance with Vertical guidance) minima at airports across Europe.

The EGNOS SoL Service consists of timing and positioning signals intended for transport applications in domains where lives could be endangered if the performance of the navigation system is degraded below specific accuracy limits. The SoL service is based on integrity data provided through the EGNOS satellite signals. 

With over 700 EGNOS-based procedures at 367 airports and helipads, the EGNOS services increase safety, accessibility and efficiency for operators and pilots approaching airport and helipads in Europe. More accessible airports equal more commercial opportunities for airlines and new flight routes at regional and international level, with minimum costs for ground infrastructure and its maintenance.

Read this: Helicopter Medical Emergency Flight lands at Motol Hospital thanks to EGNOS

The aviation sector has developed the certification scheme for EGNOS services, as well as the approval process for avionics and approach operations needed to use the SoL Service. Organisations implementing EGNOS-based procedures include air navigation service providers (ANSP), aerodrome operators and rotorcraft operators. However, the SoL Service is also intended to support applications in a wide range of other domains such as maritime, rail and road.

Significant environmental impact

“Since its launch in 2011, the EGNOS Safety of Life Service has been making the aviation sector safer and more efficient for European operators. Apart from the increased safety, it has made remote airports more accessible and is helping to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of aviation. As uptake increases, these benefits will be increasingly felt in other safety-critical sectors also, such as maritime or rail” said GSA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa.

The most obvious environmental impact of aviation is CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. With the aim of contributing to a “clean sky”, a methodology has been defined for air operators to calculate the reduction of CO2 emissions thanks to EGNOS-enabled LPV approaches. 

Two main sources of fuel savings have been identified, the first being related to the airport approach. Today, many airports require airplanes to make their approach step by step, levelling off at each stage and thus burning more fuel. EGNOS enables smooth and continuous glide path approaches that are more fuel efficient. 

Watch this: EGNOS for Aviation - Making Europe's airports more accessible

The second is the avoidance of go-arounds due to poor visibility (aborted landings) in EGNOS capable airports thanks to the lower decision height, down to 200 feet or 60 meters, for pilots to evaluate if the visibility is good enough to continue the landing process.  Minimizing diversions equals less fuel consumption, a win-win solution for both, the environment and the airlines. By 2025, 80,000 flight delays and 20,000 diversions will be avoided across Europe thanks to the contribution of EGNOS to the landing procedure of EGNOS-equipped airports.

Navigation operations based on the EGNOS SoL Service may require specific authorisation issued by the relevant authority. In the EU, the requirements governing the implementation of an EGNOS-based procedure are set down in the Single European Sky (SES) Regulation, and all related EU regulatory provisions applicable to the implementation of Performance Based Navigation (PBN) operations.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) together with the European Commission have published an Information Note on the Galileo High Accuracy Service, providing an overview of the main characteristics of the service, along with information on features such as service levels, target performance, an implementation roadmap, and an overview of the target markets for the service. You can download the Information Note here.

The market for high-accuracy positioning is very dynamic, driven by various factors, including emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles and drones; technological advances such as dual-frequency chipsets for the mass-market; and the market situation, with cheap or free-of-charge augmentation services available in some countries. These factors are resulting in the democratisation of high accuracy, which is becoming a more widespread commodity, rather than the exclusive domain of professional applications.

With the Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS), Galileo will pioneer a worldwide, free high-accuracy positioning service aimed at applications that require higher performance than that offered by the Galileo Open Service.

Benefitting several markets

Target markets for the HAS include geomatics, agriculture or consumer solutions. Transport is also a major potential target market, with possible applications in aviation, road, rail and maritime and inland waterways. In these markets, the HAS will provide high-accuracy precise point positioning corrections for Galileo and GPS free of charge, in the Galileo E6-B data component and by terrestrial means, to achieve real-time improved user positioning performances, with a positioning error of less than two decimetres in nominal conditions.

Read this: Galileo enabling infrastructure development in harsh environments

“With its High Accuracy Service, Galileo will be the first satellite constellation able to provide a high-accuracy precise point positioning service globally, directly through the Signal in Space,” said GSA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa. “This will be another key differentiator of the Galileo system, giving it a competitive advantage over other systems and allowing it to foster innovation in both consolidated and emerging markets,” he said.

HAS Initial Service

HAS Phase 1 will cover the provision of an initial Galileo High Accuracy Service resulting from the implementation of a high-accuracy data generation system processing Galileo data only.  Phase 2 will see full provision of the Galileo High Accuracy Service, meeting its target performance of 20 cm worldwide positioning accuracy after 2024.

Through the HAS, Galileo will offer a unique service with the transmission of corrections directly via Galileo satellites, allowing free high-accuracy positioning globally, for everyone.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) together with the European Commission have published an Information Note on the Galileo High Accuracy Service, providing an overview of the main characteristics of the service, along with information on features such as service levels, target performance, an implementation roadmap, and an overview of the target markets for the service. You can download the Information Note here.

The market for high-accuracy positioning is very dynamic, driven by various factors, including emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles and drones; technological advances such as dual-frequency chipsets for the mass-market; and the market situation, with cheap or free-of-charge augmentation services available in some countries. These factors are resulting in the democratisation of high accuracy, which is becoming a more widespread commodity, rather than the exclusive domain of professional applications.

With the Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS), Galileo will pioneer a worldwide, free high-accuracy positioning service aimed at applications that require higher performance than that offered by the Galileo Open Service.

Benefitting several markets

Target markets for the HAS include geomatics, agriculture or consumer solutions. Transport is also a major potential target market, with possible applications in aviation, road, rail and maritime and inland waterways. In these markets, the HAS will provide high-accuracy precise point positioning corrections for Galileo and GPS free of charge, in the Galileo E6-B data component and by terrestrial means, to achieve real-time improved user positioning performances, with a positioning error of less than two decimetres in nominal conditions.

Read this: Galileo enabling infrastructure development in harsh environments

“With its High Accuracy Service, Galileo will be the first satellite constellation able to provide a high-accuracy precise point positioning service globally, directly through the Signal in Space,” said GSA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa. “This will be another key differentiator of the Galileo system, giving it a competitive advantage over other systems and allowing it to foster innovation in both consolidated and emerging markets,” he said.

HAS Initial Service

HAS Phase 1 will cover the provision of an initial Galileo High Accuracy Service resulting from the implementation of a high-accuracy data generation system processing Galileo data only.  Phase 2 will see full provision of the Galileo High Accuracy Service, meeting its target performance of 20 cm worldwide positioning accuracy after 2024.

Through the HAS, Galileo will offer a unique service with the transmission of corrections directly via Galileo satellites, allowing free high-accuracy positioning globally, for everyone.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) organised an online workshop on 3 March to provide an in-depth analysis of the performance of Galileo and show how this performance is evaluated and how it is crucial for service provision in every user application.

The workshop focused in particular on the Galileo Open Service (OS) as defined in the OS Service Definition Document (SDD) and the Programme’s needs for performance monitoring against the defined Minimum Performance Levels (MPLs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Attention was also paid to publicly available data, products and tools that can be used for GNSS monitoring. In addition to the GSA, the workshop involved representatives of the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA) and of the EU Member States and gathered nearly 500 participants. 

Workshop outcome

At the workshop, a number of technical topics were addressed.

• All presenters confirmed that the Initial Services commitments as described in the OS SDD are met, some events were observed and discussed, but the Galileo performance, also compared to other GNSS, especially in terms of accuracy is good. 
• When monitoring the performance of Galileo, it is important that the satellite health status should be verified for F/NAV and I/NAV ephemerides using broadcast navigation data consolidated from a global network. However, there is no standard on how to generate a consolidated navigation message from publicly available data– the quality and availability depends on latency of this data. 
• It is important for users to check the status of the navigation messages as specified in the Galileo OS Signal-in-Space (SiS) Interface Control Document (ICD) and the SDD. This requires that the receivers monitor the Signal-in-Space health flags: signal health status (SHS), data validity status (DVS) and Signal-In-Space accuracy (SISA). The Galileo system uses these three SiS health flags to protect users, and all of them need to be monitored and appropriate actions taken as specified in the ICD. Both the ICD and SDD are available for download on the website of the European GNSS Service Centre (GSC).

Read this: EUSW - status of Galileo services

• With respect to using reference stations for performance monitoring, it is recommended to use a geodetic grade receiver connected to a geodetic antenna. This generates high-quality data using multiple frequencies and signals. 
• Real-time data provides an overview of GNSS status in nominal situations. However, not all information from the signals required for monitoring is available in the real-time streams using the RTCM standard. Some sources also provide real-time broadcast orbit and clock corrections in the state space representation (SSR) format, yet unusual events and anomalies might not be reflected properly in these streams, as the underlying processing software might not be able to handle those events well.
• The Galileo Service Operator runs the system to maintain the performance specified in the SDD. Performance may vary within set margins due to operational, maintenance or deployment constraints. In light of this, interpretation of results is key for proper GNSS performance monitoring. It is good practice to make use of redundancy and always to confirm results with other sources, when possible. 

Galileo Reference Centre

The GSA has established the Galileo Reference Centre (GRC) with a primary mission of providing an independent means to monitor and evaluate the performance of the Galileo services and the quality of the Signal-in-Space. The GRC is the European hub for these activities, integrating contributions from European national entities, such as research centres, timing laboratories, and national space agencies.

Watch this: Galileo Reference Centre

Performance is measured against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the computation of which depends on GNSS data measurements and derived reference products (e.g. precise orbits, satellites clock corrections). It can also be assessed based on publicly available data and products, which exist with various levels of quality, reliability and latency. To be able to compare results obtained by independent sources, it is important to have a common understanding, guidelines for monitoring and a sound assessment methodology. This is what the Galileo performance workshop aims to provide.

All the presentations delivered during the workshop are now available here.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).