GEM
Galileo mission implementation
Background & Objectives
To gain acceptance in the world community, Galileo must not only be developed, deployed and operated; many complementary activities have to also proceed in parallel with the development and deployment of Galileo to ensure its success. These include its international standardisation for a wide range of applications, its certification and spectrum management. Galileo spectrum usage must go unchallenged and its signal in space performance, as expressed to the user through its positioning data, must be attractive to gain acceptance alongside GPS. Galileo must be seen as a global system. Many of the issues Galileo is facing apply to elements beyond the satellites and their supporting ground infrastructure. GEM built on numerous activities undertaken in earlier phases within projects like GALILEI, GALA and SAGA. GEM activities are now continued mostly within the GARMIS project.
GEM provided engineering support to the GJU in a range of crucial activities needed to ensure the success of Galileo, e.g. standardisation, certification, frequency issues, optimisation and validation of services, time service provider, search and rescue, regional integrity, service centre and integration of EGNOS.
Description
The work was structured into five Work Packages (WP): WP1000 ensured the management for the entire GEM contract, its coordination and the deliverables’ progress management. GEM’s diverse but related activities required a close coordination to maintain quality and reduce duplication of work. WP2000 addressed the standardisation issues facing Galileo. This area has been divided into safety-of-life applications, where regulation and certification would be involved, including the aviation, maritime and rail domains, and the mass-market applications, where commercial interests dominate, covering location-based services and road. Priorities were given to aviation and location-based services, then to maritime.
Progresses on standards have been performed in particular through participation to the related standardisation groups (EUROCAE, RTCA, ICAO, IMO, RTCM SC104, IEC, EMRF, IALA, ERTMS/ETCS CG, 3GPP, CEN and ICTSB/ITSSG.) WP3000 addressed the certification issues facing both EGNOS and Galileo. It was divided between the system certification issues i.e. the certification of combined and augmented services, and the certification of specific application i.e. those faced by aviation and maritime user groups.
WP 4000 aimed at fully establishing the Galileo spectrum, at ensuring that when Galileo is providing RNSS it does not harmfully interfere with the system of any other service but also that the performance of Galileo signals are not degraded due to transmissions of other systems in the various frequency bands. WP4000 provided active technical support on frequency/regulatory issues at national, regional (CEPT, APT, CITEL) and international (ITU-R) level.
WP5000 comprised a set of self-contained sub-Work Packages (SWP) aiming at ensuring that a consistent Galileo mission implementation approach was put in place.
The SWP addressed the following topics:
- assessment and optimisation of the Galileo service’s signal in space as well as the user segment;
- development of a proposal for the role of time service provider;
- technical and operational interfaces of Galileo with the search and rescue community;
- regional integrity capability of Galileo, and the Multiconstellation Regional System (MRS) concept;
- preliminary definition of the service centres which will provide an interface to the users and added-value service providers;
- methodology for the validation of Galileo services as seen by the users;
- integration of EGNOS into Galileo.
Objectives
The objective of the GEM project was to provide engineering support to the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) for a range of complementary activities to be carried out in parallel with the development and deployment of Galileo and its success needed to be ensured. The purpose of the project was to present the right experts to support the GJU in areas of standardisation, certification, spectrum management and development of the Galileo mission.
Work performed & results
The work performed enabled significant progress in various fields. - The standardisation work area enabled a swift introduction and use of Galileo in various user communities such as aviation, maritime, location-based services, rail and road through the development of receiver standards and the active participation to the related standardisation groups. - The certification task allowed the certification framework to be used as a basis for service guarantees for both commercial and safety-of-life applications. - The frequency Work Package contributed to fully establish the Galileo spectrum and to ensure that Galileo when providing RNSS does not harmfully interfere with a system or any other service and also that the performance of Galileo signals are not degraded due to transmissions of other services. - The Galileo mission task enabled: - developing a Galileo service ICD based on a preliminary assessment and optimisation of the Galileo services performance; - defining a global approach for implementing the Galileo system by specifying the Galileo role in a broader information system concept; - developing a Galileo service validation plan, which will be needed to support the mission validation and the system acceptance phase, and which is also a prerequisite for certification activities; - to analyse the integration of EGNOS into Galileo and to elaborate an EGNOS service ICD.