Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/6981-indra-leads-egnos-satellite-navigation-system-study

Indra Leads EGNOS Satellite Navigation System Study

October 1, 2008

Indra is heading the industrial group in charge of studying the feasibility and definition of the current EGNOS satellite navigation system towards a future Multiconstellation Regional System (MRS) for the European Space Agency (ESA). The team is composed of Astrium-EADS (Germany), Deimos Engenharia (Portugal), INECO (Spain), Novatel (Canada) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), in addition to Indra (Spain). The project budget is €1.5 M and the execution period is 18 months.


The EGNOS system currently provides air, sea and land information, using the North American GPS system. The objective of the study is to analyze how it should evolve so that it can take advantage of the greater number of satellites and constellations that will be in place in a few years’ time, which will offer a greater volume and quality of information.

The industrial team will define the system requirements, technical specifications, design of the necessary navigation algorithms, both for the system and the end user application, features verification simulations and system architecture. The aim is to analyze the possibility of evolving the current EGNOS system, turning it into a multiconstellation system, capable of improving regionally, within the European zone, the features offered on an individual basis by the different satellite systems separately.

It will combine the signals of the future constellations of the American GPS, the Russian Glonass, the Chinese Compass/Beidou and the European Galileo systems to offer more advanced services to a greater number of users in critical, high-performance or commercial application areas. Once the study has been completed, the team will develop a preliminary prototype, based on a simulator of the various system components.