ENCORE
Enhanced Code Galileo Receiver for Land Management in Brazil

Background & Objectives

There is an increasing demand for topographical surveys of rural areas in Brazil. Despite the advances in mapping and surveying fields, the Brazilian market still lacks information, mainly from geo-referencing rural real estates, and commercially available professional GPS receivers are limited and expensive.

In addition, specific government regulations and laws have been issued to promote proper cadastre, geo-referencing and urban planning in Brazil. These regulatory aspects have created a great demand for geo-referencing equipment, and the need for geo-referencing and cadastre information.

In current GNSS terminals, there is a gap in terms of performances, receiver complexity and price between mass-market and professional devices. Accuracies up to five meters are achieved in mass-market GNSS terminals using pseudorange observables. In professional receivers, with high precision requirements, carrier phase measurements are also processed to output the user position with errors below one decimetre, at a cost of higher complexity, price and operational requirements.

Land management applications require precision and accuracy levels from a few to several decimetres that are under-met with current pseudorange-based receivers and over-met with phase observations. This situation leads to either a waste of resources or a lack of accuracy.

Description

The project will cover the different phases of an application development, including requirement definition, design phase, implementation, testing, demonstration to potential users and dissemination activities. The main high-level tasks are:

  • Prototype Development: DEIMOS Engenharia will lead the implementation of the Galileo receiver prototype and the application software for the end-user interface;
  • Validation and Testing: the University of Nottingham will provide the required facilities to perform the prototype testing activities, using both signal simulators and real Galileo GIOVE and IOV satellites.
  • Demonstration Activities: on-field demonstrations and data collection in Brazil will be performed by UNESP to check performance in real environments;
  • Business and Market Analysis: Santiago & Cintra, the most important geo-technology distributor in Brazil, will perform the exploitation and business plan, targeting potential users and markets;
  • Dissemination Activities: MundoGEO will use its infrastructure to achieve the greatest dissemination of the project results.

Objectives

The main objectives of the ENCORE project are the following:

  • introduce Galileo terminals in the Brazilian market for land management applications (geo-referencing and cadastre), with possible future expansion to other South American countries and related applications;
  • stimulate the participation of international entities from Brazil;
  • develop a high-precision and low-cost land management application based on Galileo signals, using beneficial novel Galileo signal characteristics.

The proposed land management application aims to cover the following needs of the Brazilian market:

  • geo-referencing: due to the 10267/2001 Federal Law, all properties in Brazil must be linked to the Geocentric Reference System for the Americas;
  • urban/rural cadastre: Brazil has millions of hectares for farming, but many are either not properly identified or present serious discrepancies.

The proposed land management application will cover these needs in terms of geo-referencing and cadastre planning, using a low-cost Enhanced Galileo Code Receiver as a baseline. 

The proposed European-Brazilian consortium brings together technological companies, application dealers, research centres, universities, and geo-information providers to cover all of the required aspects for the successful commercialisation of the ENCORE application.

Coordinator: 
Silva Pedro Freire
Deimos Engenharia S.A
Av. D. João II, Lote 1.17.01, 10º, Edificio Torre Zen
1998-023 Lisboa
Portugal
EUSPA Project Officer: 
Carmen Aguipedro
Total Cost: 
952 708 €
EU Contributions: 
590 000 €
Project Call: 
FP7 2nd Call
Contract Number: 
247939

Work performed & results

ENCORE’s main expected results are as follows:

  • A land management application based on an innovative low-cost GNSS receiver using novel characteristics of MBOC/AltBOC Galileo signals;
  • Designed and developed algorithms for signal acquisition and tracking, and specific positioning algorithms;
  • Successful co-operation with international partners during the project development, with involvement in application development, market analysis, demonstration and dissemination activities.
  • Transfer of the technical expertise acquired in this technology project by the partners to a successful commercial product with the support of Brazilian companies already positioned in the market.
  • Contributing to the adoption of Galileo in Brazil, identifying the main obstacles, possible solutions and understanding user requirements, legal, regulatory, standardisation and market aspects of surveying applications.
  • A dissemination plan, and a business and exploitation plan for optimal exploitation and internationally visible project results.

ENCORE
Photo Gallery

  • ENCORE System ArchitectureDEIMOS Engenharia, S.A

  • ENCORE application example

Partners
Editora MundoGeo LTDA
Brazil
Orbisat Da Amazônia Indústria E Aerolevantamento
Brazil
Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio De Mesquita Filho (UNESP)
Brazil
The University of Nottingham (UNOTT)
United Kingdom

Updated: Oct 10, 2018