[X] My Assistant

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I hadn't realized that the Eurpean global positioning system was going to be a pay service. I imagine they will have to redesign the codes. Anyone know what the plan is for the Galileo satellites? Will it be illegal to use devices that just receive the American GPS signal?

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[nprev]

Anybody know if ESA (or whoever) plans to implement a service similar to differential GPS (DGPS) once the Galileo constellation is complete? The US Coast Guard runs most of this in the US right now, although the FAA is also moving forward for precision landing applications; DGPS is better than P-code GPS in most cases.

Pragmatically, this would be the best of all possible outcomes. The maritime shipping industry pressured Congress to keep LORAN-C on the air in order to assure that deep-sea navigation would not have to rely on GPS as the single nav system, mostly because of SA & other national security concerns that might take it offline in dire circumstances. Furthermore, high-precision nautical nav capability in crowded ports and/or narrow passages & harbors is a critical need, and again most operators are very uncomfortable with single-system dependency for these functions. If Galileo will offer a worldwide differential service, then they should find a substantial market (presuming that they back off this ludicrious subscription concept and instead collect royalties from Galileo "DGPS" receiver manufacturers, possibly by licensing the differential standard).

[helvick]

Anybody know if ESA (or whoever) plans to implement a service similar to differential GPS (DGPS) once the Galileo constellation is complete? The US Coast Guard runs most of this in the US right now, although the FAA is also moving forward for precision landing applications; DGPS is better than P-code GPS in most cases.

Galileo's non-free services are intended to provide better than DGPS\WAAS data plus level of service\accuracy data for critical services so that systems can know when to trust the data.

There is also a provision for "Local Elements" which are intended to improve upon the service's abilities in various ways - from what I've seen that covers both terrestrial and satellite systems that provide improved cover (e.g for urban areas) and assisted accuracy (like DGPS, WAAS,EGNOS and CWADSNS). It might plausibly also cover extended systems like cellular assisted GPS (A-GPS) which can dramatically improve fix time and indoor\poor visibility operation.