The EGNOS programme made a strong showing at this year's 'Aerodays' conference in Madrid. The message, delivered by researchers and policy makers, was that EGNOS is up and running and ready to serve the aviation community.
Big crowds at this year's Aerodays event. © Peter Gutierrez"Our pre-operational work, trials and demonstrations are at an end," said Luis Chocano of Spain's INECO, "With the EGNOS Safety-of-Life service now available for aviation, the time has come for wide-scale adoption of airport landing approaches based on EGNOS on a daily basis."
Chocano has been leading the GIANT-2 project, which established the feasibility of safety-critical landing approaches using EGNOS-augmented satellite navigation signals. "What we need now is to get approach procedures published for more landing strips, and we need to see more aircraft being equipped with the appropriate avionics."
For Chocano, EGNOS is facing a chicken-and-egg problem: before airports will invest the time and energy in the publication of new procedures, they want to know which airlines are equipped with EGNOS-ready avionics; meanwhile, before airlines will invest in EGNOS avionics, they want to know which airports have published EGNOS-based approach procedures.
"Already today, new aircraft are being equipped not simply with a GPS receiver, but with GPS/EGNOS-ready avionics," Chocano said. "However, retrofitting existing aircraft is expensive, so that could slow the process of adoption in the short term."
Global agreement
There is no denying the fact that satellite navigation is the way of the future in aviation, and not just in Europe. Speaking at a high-level Aerodays plenary session about the United States' new 'NextGen' system for air transport, Steve Creamer of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) explained how GPS-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services will aid pilots and controllers in the United States during all flight phases, including en route, terminal, approach, and surface navigation.
"PNT services," Creamer said, "will allow the US to overcome deficiencies in today's air traffic infrastructure." The FAA's plan to provide these services requires implementation of two GPS augmentation systems, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and the Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS). Like EGNOS, both of these improve the accuracy, availability, and integrity of GPS (and later, Galileo) signals as a primary means of navigation and automated surveillance.
EGNOS will play a similar role in Europe, supporting the implementation of the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) programme. "EGNOS is part of SESAR," affirmed Hans de With of the European GNSS Agency (GSA). "It is a key enabling technology for Europe's future air traffic management system. But it is important to remember that it will be completely compatible with other augmentation technologies such as the US WAAS and the MSAS in Japan. That means pilots flying from New York to London will not have to change systems in mid-flight."
EU-funded research getting EGNOS off the ground
Giant-2
Following on the original Giant project, researchers have carried out a number of landing approach trials using real aircraft at real airports, supported by the EGNOS augmentation signal.
Hedge
This project has focussed specifically on non-fixed-wing aircraft, testing EGNOS avionics in difficult conditions like those faced by helicopters operating near off-sea oil rigs, in mountain rescue operations and in the medical services.
Accepta
This project is co-funding to airlines and operators to aid them in the design, development and publication of approach procedures for selected airports throughout Europe.
Making change easy
"Our Giant-2 trials have demonstrated that there is very little impact on the pilot", says Chocano. "What we have developed is a 'look-alike' system that feels the same as the navigation systems pilots have been using for decades."
Aviation by its very nature is a global activity, he added. This means equipment and procedures should and will be standardised. "In Europe, we have long experience in harmonisation. Unlike in the US where they have one aviation authority, one ATM system, one way of doing things, in Europe we live with the richness of many systems, many authorities and many nations that all need to work together.
"The new acronym 'GNSS' says it all," said Chocano. "In the future we will not talk so much about GPS, Galileo, EGNOS, WAAS, etc. These will all be part of GNSS, 'Global Navigation Satellite Systems'. They will all be compatible, standardised and interoperable. And all aircraft will be equipped with the avionics to use any of these systems."