Integrity Complemeting High Accuracy Service via EGNSS

With the advent of new positioning based applications, and most importantly, new safety-critical and precise positioning applications (like autonomous transport), the European Commission is assessing the possible evolutions of the EGNSS to introduce new services. One of these evolutions could be an integrity service complementing the EGNSS High Accuracy in the 2030+ timeframe to meet the needs (e.g. integrity, precision, , availability and continuity) in autonomous transport.

EGNOS and Galileo are today the main components of the European GNSS environment. 

EGNOS is the European SBAS that provides corrections and integrity information to GPS L1 C/A civilian signals for safety-of-life users over Europe. In particular, integrity information is provided as part of the EGNOS Safety of Life (SoL) service to meet the demands of safety-critical applications in the civil aviation sector (e.g. landing procedures) requiring enhanced and guaranteed performance to GPS standalone positioning solutions. The next generation of EGNOS, EGNOS V3, will augment GPS and Galileo constellations in the L1 and L5 bands and extend the service area to the entire landmasses of EU member states. 

Galileo is the European Union’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), providing an accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control. It is operational since the Initial Service declaration at the end of 2016. Galileo will be the first Core constellation to broadcast global (and then enhanced regional) high accuracy corrections through its High Accuracy Service (HAS). 

Autonomous transportation applications drive the need for enhanced precision, high availability and continuity, low Time To First Fix, low Latency, and most importantly, reliability and integrity for SoL. 

How shall this EGNSS environment evolve to answer the needs of these applications?

The ICHASE project will assess feasibility and added-value for EGNSS systems and services evolutions to meet the target performances for autonomous vehicles, leveraging on:

• EGNSS
  • GNSS as a source for absolute  positioning, obviously complemented by other non-GNSS technologies
  • The Galileo foreseen HAS service, over the E6 band, as a precise positioning service,
  • The EGNOS SoL ready infrastructure, as an enabler for the introduction of a new integrity service complementing high accuracy for SoL applications,

• Non GNSS
  • Additional enabling technologies for positioning in harsh environments (like non-GNSS positioning sensors, threats detection and mitigation technologies, in addition to GNSS positioning).

The foreseen developments target a twofold objective:

• Definition of an integrity concept customised to an autonomous vehicle for road,  particularly considering the various constrained environments applicable to these applications (e.g. urban environments).
• Definition of EGNSS service(s) in the 2030+ timeframe, which will efficiently support these applications, providing the necessary commitments on EGNOS (and Galileo) new messages used in such an integrity concept.

All of the ICHASE developments build on a fully established fact, where no single solution or positioning source can answer all of the needs raised by autonomous vehicles.