ESA Navigation Applications Development Facilities to support new projects

This is the second call under management of the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU). To support the development of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and Galileo applications, the Navigation Applications and User Services Office of ESA is making available a number of tools and facilities to external projects.

The tools are distributed between two sites:

• The Radio Navigation Laboratory, at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands
• The EGNOS Applications Specific Qualification Facility (ASQF) at the EGNOS Master Control Centre of Torrejon, near Madrid, Spain.

The Radio Navigation Laboratory is a test and simulation facility. It supports main ESA navigation projects; namely Galileo and EGNOS. It routinely monitors Signal-in-Space health and performance for satellite navigation systems such as GPS, GLONASS and EGNOS. It hosts a wide variety of hardware and software assets; most of them developed under ESA contracts. The use of those assets allows for the support of a detailed characterization of receivers to be used in actual applications.

The ASQF is a support facility developed under the EGNOS project with the objective of supporting the qualification of multi-modal applications. It is composed of a number of tools that together allow the acquisition of field trials data, the archiving of those data, comparison with reference user data and the carrying out of comprehensive performance assessments. The ASQF simulation capabilities also make it possible to predict performance and to compare the results of real data with the results of simulators. ASQF operation support is provided by AENA, the hosting entity of the facility.

Costs for using the facilities are limited to the manpower required to support the use of the tools. Those projects interested in using the facilities are invited to contact the Navigation Applications Office Helpdesk.