EGNOS TRAN (Terrestrial Regional Augmentation Networks) – Personal Protection

Due to the low elevation of the EGNOS satellites, their signal is difficult or sometimes impossible to receive in certain regions. Many present and also future applications require a high accuracy and also a high reliability of the position determination, which can easily be performed by EGNOS. If the EGNOS signal cannot be received, the requirements of those applications can no longer be satisfied.

To reduce this problem the EGNOS TRAN (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service - Terrestrial Regional Augmentation Networks) project team evaluated various technical methods to broadcast the EGNOS signal via terrestrial networks, like GSM/GPRS, Loran-C or Ground Regional Augmentation System (GRAS).

In the frame of the EGNOS TRAN personal protection application, a demonstrator was built. The user interfaced with a service centre located in Rome through a Personal Digital Assitant (PDA) equipped with AGPS cell guide and GPRS SIMcard.

The service centre localised the person upon request or in automatic mode. The user sent the GPS raw data and the service centre which tracks the EGNOS Signal-In-Space combined EGNOS data with the user data to compute an EGNOS position and a Horizontal Protection level that provided a confidence in the accuracy of the computed position.

The EGNOS-Tran Personal Protection project was initiated in July 2001 and concluded in July 2003.