GEODESY

Galileo Enhanced Operation Drone SYstem

The drone market is booming and is set to outstrip any other GNSS user base in aviation and open up new business opportunities for application developers. GNSS is no longer just an option for drones, but a necessary asset. GNSS is essential for the safe and reliable navigation of drones, and GNSS receivers are implemented on almost all new commercial drones as standard. With increasing demand for BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations, GNSS (possibly with various augmentations) is the most obvious technology choice for navigation, although it is not the only one.

European GNSS (EGNSS) provides significant added value to drone navigation, positioning and related applications, with respect to other systems. To this end, several drone navigation receiver manufacturers already offer EGNSS capabilities in a multi-constellation suite, and the number of models is increasing continuously. 

In this context, the GEODESY Project (Galileo Enhanced Operation for Drone Systems) comes into play, with the development of a navigation solution for drones, based on a Galileo multi-constellation / multi-frequency receiver.

The GEODESY Project aims to develop a navigation solution for drones, based on a Galileo multi-constellation/multi-frequency receiver, which could support drones achieve robust navigation performance and enable them to meet stringent technical and operational requirements.

The solution is integrated with INS (Inertial Navigation System) and other sensors, in order to achieve a sufficient technology level of maturity (TRL 7), validated within flight tests in a real operational environment.

Challenge and technical solution

The starting point was the elaboration of a common understanding of UAV operational environment challenges as key to validate the GEODESY navigation algorithms. 

This enabled the validation of the prototype for different Unmanned aerial platform types. The result is the consolidation of the added value brought by the use of Galileo and its differentiators for the performance of aerial drones. Furthermore, it highlights the features of integrity, authentication and reliability given by OSNMA and EGNOS corrections.