First Signal-In-Space tests of the Galileo Commercial Service Demonstrator
date: 27/06/2014
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It was the first of a series of tests to be conducted during the summer by the AALECS (Authentic and Accurate Location Experimentation for the Commercial Service) project, aimed at demonstrating future Galileo services, some of which may be commercial.
This is a promising achievement for Galileo, as the capability of broadcasting external data will add flexibility to future services.
The external data, that is, data generated outside of the Galileo perimeter and later injected into the system, were broadcast through the Galileo E6B signals for a period of some minutes, before self-repeating.
While these data were only generated to test the transmission channel, future tests during the summer will include authenticated satellite orbital and clock information.
The data were generated offline before transmission, but future architectures under analysis may allow continuous real-time transmission with a latency of some seconds.
The data were generated offline before transmission, but future architectures under analysis may allow continuous real-time transmission with a latency of some seconds.
These tests have been possible thanks to a collective effort by the AALECS consortium together with the European Commission, The European GNSS Agency, the European Space Agency and Spaceopal, the Galileo operator.
AALECS:
The European Commission launched the AALECS project in January 2014. The project was awarded to a consortium formed by GMV, CGI, Qascom, IFEN, Veripos and KU Leuven.
The AALECS project is building a platform to connect to the GNSS Service Centre and transmit real time CS data through the Galileo satellites.
This platform will be operational by 2015 and will demonstrate the real
performance of future high accuracy and authentication services of Galileo.
performance of future high accuracy and authentication services of Galileo.
As a previous step, the project has developed an Early Proof-Of-Concept platform aimed at testing external data transmission through offline means.
The project will last for around two and a half years.