May/June 2007

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New boss in town? The GNSS Supervisory Authority and Galileo.

The People's Republic of China is beginning to look like a GNSS service provider in a hurry. The nation has already launched two satellites this year for its Compass system - the most recent on April 13, a middle earth orbiting (MEO) spacecraft that quickly began broadcasting signals. A team of researchers at the French Space Agency, CNES, have taken a close look at three of those signals. Here's what they saw.

Badly burned by the dot.com meltdown a few years ago, would-be providers of location-based services have carefully been finding their way back to the consumer marketplace. Amid the search for viable LBS business models, killer apps, and customers, positioning technology seemed like the easy part. But it's harder than it looks, and GNSS is only one piece of the LBS puzzle.

Germany is taking advantage of its rugged Alpine mountains, which usually pose an obstacle to GNSS signals, to install transmitters that broadcast Galileo signals for use in testing receiver equipment in the field.

So, anyway, about this likelihood of the European Union discarding the public-private partnership (PPP) concept for Galileo. People seem pretty nervous about it. Others are gleefully ready to say “I told you so.” Still others are looking for political cover. But it’s really just business as usual. . .

Radio frequency is a scarce commodity. No one’s making any more of it. L-band, the home for most GNSS signals, is particularly crowded. Some suggest that C-band, where Europe has filed for an allocation, could be an upscale solution. But will it cause more problems than it solves?

If IGS Director Ruth Neilan had just one magic GNSS wish, it would be that everyone understood the importance of tying into the international grid.