By Jason Bates

Testing of the first Galileo satellites is underway, bringing the promise of improved and new satellite navigation services even closer. While full Galileo operations remain years away, the launch of the first operational Galileo spacecraft in 2008 promises to deliver immediate benefits to users of today’s satellite navigation signals. Down the road, the full Galileo system will bring new benefits.

Europe primarily conceived the satellite navigation system as a commercial endeavor under civilian control, as European officials did not want important civilian uses of the system, such as aircraft navigation, to depend on the continued benevolence of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), which oversees the GPS satellite system. Europe is not trying to compete with or replace GPS or Russia’s Glonass system, rather, the signals will be interoperable, meaning that future generations of consumer satellite navigation units will be able to use signals from all three systems to determine their position on the globe. The availability of more satellites and more robust signals promises better accuracy, as sharp as a meter, and a guarantee of availability that simply cannot be promised by relying on GPS alone, officials say.

The Galileo In Orbit Validation Elements (GIOVE)-A spacecraft, launched in December, is intended to characterize the system’s critical technologies. Further tests will be conducted with GIOVE-B, slated to be launched in April. This will pave the way for the launch of four operational satellites, and the full Galileo system, comprised of 27 active spacecraft and three spares, is scheduled to be in place by 2010.

"Enhanced commercial opportunities will begin before full Galileo operations commence," says Mike Mattner, head of the Galileo Joint Undertaking’s (GJU) business development division. "Due to the inherent lead times in the different markets, much of the market introductory efforts, research and development, standardization, and other added-value activity have been already started. … The Galileo train has already left the station and it is picking up momentum. The successful satellite launch in December nicely complements the progress we made within the Galileo concession process."

The GJU, set up in 2002 by the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA) to manage the development phase of Galileo, is responsible for the management of research and development activities under the EU’s 6th Framework Program, which has a budget of about 110 million euros.

"From our point of view the commercial market is wide open and we already see signs that EGNOS and Galileo will be embraced by many market players on all levels of the value chain," Mattner says.

"At its core, Galileo is intended to provide service to consumer markets for which users, particularly in Europe, are worried that DoD will deny them access to the GPS signal," says Max Engel, satellite market analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "The DoD will say that’s nonsense; that it’s never going to happen. But from a European point of view, there is reluctance to trust vital assets to the military. Galileo will guarantee that signal will always be there.

"The other half is the whole commercial equation. The 800-pound gorilla is national pride. This is taking place entirely because the Europeans want to be big boys. Not to say there aren’t good reasons to do it, and it won’t offer good things. In some ways like the Apollo program, there were lots of good reasons to do it on a number of fronts, but had it not been for national pride, we wouldn’t have done it. Same thing. Many good reasons to do it, but form the most general level. This represents an effort by the Europeans to join the top tier of space-using nations, which they have not been."

Market Potential

"The consumer market for GPS in 2000 was valued at about $3 billion and was projected at about $15 billion in 2005, according to Jean-Claude Dardelet, Galileo program manger for Alcatel-Alenia Space. "If we continue these trends, this market will continue in the double-digit dollar/euros per year, and it already is enormous," he says. "What Galileo will bring on top of that is that if anything happened to GPS that could pose problems for a number of market segments, such as railway, maritime, aviation or roads, Europe can rely on its own service, which also will serve the world."

Alcatel-Alenia is part of the Galileo Operation Co., which was approved by the GJU in June to oversee Galileo operations. The concessionaire is comprised of Europe’s AENA, Alcatel, EADS, Finmeccanica, Hispasat, Inmarsat and Thales, which combined all of their various bids. While the system is a European program, the companies and countries beyond the system have been actively recruiting other nations to the program. To date, China, Israel, Ukraine, India, Morocco and South Korea have officially signed on, while discussions are underway with Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Chile, Malaysia, Canada and Australia.

"One of the other good things coming out of this is consumer visibility of these navigation systems," says Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for Sirf Technology, which supplies GPS chipsets to manufacturers of consumer units. "More and more countries come onboard, and China and India offer much higher visibility for these systems, which translates into easier acceptance of Galileo by mainstream consumers. As more consumers become familiar with the benefits of location, navigation and other kinds of applications, the heightened visibility also increases the market potential for applications."

The one obstacle to Galileo’s success on the commercial market could actually come from the plan to charge for some of the services, satellite navigation industry officials say. Galileo’s basic service will be provided free of charge to users, while the EU plans to charge user fees for applications requiring a higher quality of service. "They have a problem because GPS is free, so it is important from a business standpoint that Galileo does not hurt itself by trying to put fees on things that have been taken for granted as free," Chadha says. Sirf is one of the few GPS companies actively involved in the Galileo architecture, helping define both the technology and the business model.

Sal Dhanani, senior director of marketing for Telenav, which provides satellite navigation services via cell phones and other portable devices, also raises the question of how effectively Galileo can penetrate some consumer markets if using the service brings extra costs that are not incurred by using GPS signals. "If that’s the case, our application with GPS is good enough today," he says. "If Galileo adds costs, we may not need to use it. For commercial business services, paying for the higher level service perhaps will be OK, but for consumers who are more price sensitive, the enhanced accuracy may not deliver a lot better performance."

Immediate Benefits

The combination of the GPS and Galileo satellite constellations, with nearly 60 spacecraft between them, will bring immediate benefits in terms of signal availability and strength, Chadha says. "Even with the kind of sensitivities we have in the GPS system, we still have signals blocked by buildings, foliage and other terrestrial objects," he said. "The ability to see more satellites with stronger signals enables us to provide position in tougher environments. For the mass market, that is the most important thing. I think GPS is accurate enough on almost every high-volume application I can think of. The problem with most consumer applications is you never have a clear view in urban canyons or dense foliage, or indoors. For the mainstream consumer, the service either works or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t work for 10 percent, it composes a significant problem for consumer expectations. I think having a more robust system in terms of providing the signal will enable the market to expand."

Applications that require 100 percent availability, such as child location services, will be among the first to benefit from this improve signal reliability, Chadha says. "You want to make sure a child can be located under any kind of environment," he says. "The more robust the system, when combined with some other technologies, will really make possible those applications, which today are in the very early stages but in the long run would be mainstream."

Dual-Use Equipment

Taking advantage of the signal strength and availability provided by both Galileo and GPS will require the development of equipment capable of processing both signals. The U.S. government and the EU have set up a technology framework for the operation of both systems that should make it easier to develop such hardware. "On both sides of the Atlantic, we have spent a lot of time and resources on issues of interoperability and related subjects," Mattner says. "An ongoing joint process was installed, which has high priority for us. It is quite safe to say that we managed to keep any hurdles to a minimum. This is good news for the GNSS community."

The first products that will be able to access signals from both constellations should be on the market by 2008, but it may take several generations of hardware development to work out the bugs of any dual-use receivers, says Engal. "It seems likely that, for at least a couple of generations, the dual-capable units will be clumsier than non-dual units," he says. "It may take a couple of generations of chip design. The early units will be bigger and clumsier than single units. That probably will be less true with the European stuff, because they will be starting from scratch and part of that will be including GPS. But will take a while to refine everything and get the experience to make something that is seamless and transparent, but we will get there."

The real challenge for makers of consumer equipment will be how to make the best use of the added signal availability and strength, and develop new applications, says Dardelet. "The capacity of these companies to invent new solutions for the users will offer really interesting opportunities," he says.

Enabling New Services

Engal does not foresee any so-called killer applications being developed in the short term, but "I think there are tremendous possibilities for satellite navigation given a high enough quality signal. GPS today doesn’t really provide a usable individual human scale navigation, but with Galileo giving you more satellites to draw on, it will give you better accuracy."

This could lead to new applications such as targeted advertising in which a consumer’s cell phone signal picks up an ad as the user nears a store, Engal says. There are also improvement-of-life services, such as centimeter-accuracy navigation for blind users, in which hardware can warn of obstacles such as approaching curbs, he says. "The other good one is the whole self-driving car. You don’t need a fancy highway with lots of sensors and transmitters. If you survey the highway, you know where you are. You tie in collision avoidance, which is a technology that is quite well developed.

"I don’t see this in terms of generating huge amounts of new business, but Galileo paves the way for all these really new applications," Engal says. "Improving the signal a little is not going to get anyone into a new market, but improving the signal is the next step. You can argue where that is, but once you get down the human interaction level, all sorts of things become possible."

The addition of Galileo to the satellite navigation arena also will help drive the development of new applications because the two systems will compete to an extent, says Chadha.

Still, more applications have yet to be thought of, but will become reality in the future, says Dardelet. "We will find new ideas much as how ones are being developed that exploit the [personal computer]," he says. "Thirty years ago, we knew the PC was an important innovation, but no one could figure out how it would be used. With satellite navigation, we are at that point at time. We can touch and see the future, but we cannot describe it precisely."

Jason Bates is the Assistant Editor of Via Satellite mgagazine.