The European Union and the United States will provide an improved civil signal design that will be common to their respective satellite navigation systems, officials announced July 26. The effort builds on a June 2004 agreement in which the two sides pledged to make signals on Europe’s Galileo system interoperable with GPS.

The GPS L1C signal and Galileo L1F signal will use the multiplexed binary offset carrier waveform, allowing receivers to be able to track signals from both systems. The new civil signal will be implemented on the Galileo Open Service and the GPS 3A civil signal.

The agreement “underscores Europe’s commitment to interoperability between Galileo and GPS and to managing the Galileo program in an innovative partnership with the United States,” EC Director General Matthias Ruete said in a statement. “… This should facilitate the rapid acceptance of Galileo in global markets side-by-side with GPS.”