GLONASS

GLONASS (Russian: - ; tr.: GLObal'naya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema; English: Global Navigation Satellite System) is a radio-based satellite navigation system, developed by the former Soviet Union and now operated for the Russian government by the Russian Space Forces. It is an alternative and complementary to the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) and the planned Galileo positioning system of the European Union (EU). Development on the GLONASS began in 1976, with a goal of global coverage by 1991. Beginning on 12 October 1982, numerous rocket launches added satellites to the system until the constellation was completed in 1995. Following completion, the system rapidly fell into disrepair with the collapse of the Russian economy. Beginning in 2001, Russia committed to restoring the system, and in recent years has diversified, introducing the Indian government as a partner, and accelerated the program with a goal of restoring global coverage by 2009 GLONASS was developed to provide real-time position and velocity determination, initially for use by the Soviet military in navigating and ballistic missile targeting. It was the Soviet's second generation satellite navigation system, improving on their Tsikada system which required one to two hours of signal processing to calculate a location with high accuracy. In contrast, once a GLONASS receiver is tracking the satellite signals a position fix is available instantly. It's stated that at peak efficiency system's standard positioning and timing service provide horizontal positioning accuracy within 57-70 meters, vertical positioning within 70 meters, velocity vector measuring within 15 cm/s, and time transfer within 1 s (all within 99.7% probability).

Ground control
The ground control segment of GLONASS is entirely located within former Soviet Union territory. The Ground Control Center and Time Standards is located in Moscow and the telemetry and tracking stations are in Saint Petersburg, Ternopol, Eniseisk, Komsomolskna-Amure.[6]

Receivers
Topcon, JAVAD, Magellan Navigation, Novatel, and Trimble Inc produce GNSS receivers making use of GLONASS.

Current status

As of February 2008, the system is not fully available, however it is maintained and remains partially operational with 14 operational satellites and 2 satellites in their commissioning phase.[7] In recent years, Russia has kept the satellite orbits optimized for navigating in Chechnya, increasing signal coverage there at the cost of degrading coverage in the rest of the world. As of January 2007, GLONASS availability (the amount of the day when a position can be calculated) in Russia was 66.2% and average availability for the whole Earth was at 56.0%

Galileo
Galileo is a planned Global Navigation Satellite System, being built by the European Union (EU) and European Space Agency (ESA). The 3.4 billion project is an alternative and complementary to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS. On November 30, 2007 the 27 EU transportation ministers involved reached an agreement that it should be operational by 2013. When in operation, it will have two ground operations centers, one near Munich, Germany, and another in Fucino, 130km east of Rome, Italy. Since 18 May 2007, at the recommendation of Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot, the EU took direct control of the Galileo project from the private sector group of eight companies called European Satellite Navigation Industries, which had abandoned this Galileo project in early 2007. Galileo is intended to provide: more precise measurements to all users than available through GPS or GLONASS, better positioning services at high latitudes, and an independent positioning system upon which European nations can rely even in times of war or political disagreement. Named for the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the positioning system is referred to as "Galileo" instead of by the abbreviation "GPS" to distinguish it from the U.S. system. The first stage of the Galileo programme was agreed upon officially on May 26, 2003 by the European Union and the European Space Agency. In 1999, the different concepts (from Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom) for Galileo were compared and reduced to one by a joint team of engineers from all four countries. The system is intended primarily for civilian use, unlike the United States system, which the U.S. military runs and uses on a primary basis. The U.S. reserves the right to limit the signal strength or accuracy of the GPS systems, or to shut down public GPS access completely (although it has never done the latter), so that only the U.S. military and its allies would be able to use it in time of conflict. Until 2000, the precision of the signal available to non-U.S.-military users was limited (due to a timing pulse distortion process known as selective availability). The European system will only be subject to shutdown for military purposes in extreme circumstances (though it may still be jammed by anyone with the right equipment). It will be available at its full precision to both civil and military users.

30 spacecraft orbital altitude: 23,222 km (MEO) 3 orbital planes, 56 inclination (9 operational satellites and one active spare per orbital plane) satellite lifetime: >12 years satellite mass: 675 kg

Services
There will be four different navigation services available:

The Open Service (OS) will be free for anyone to access. The OS signals will be broadcast in two bands, at 11641214 MHz and at 15631591 MHz. Receivers will achieve an accuracy of <4 m horizontally and <8 m vertically if they use both OS bands. Receivers that use only a single band will still achieve <15 m horizontally and <35 m vertically, comparable to what the civilian GPS C/A service provides today. It is expected that most future mass market receivers, such as automotive navigation systems, will process both the GPS C/A and the Galileo OS signals, for maximum coverage. The encrypted Commercial Service (CS) will be available for a fee and will offer an accuracy of better than 1 m. The CS can also be complemented by ground stations to bring the accuracy down to less than 10 cm. This signal will be broadcast in three frequency bands, the two used for the OS signals, as well as at 12601300 MHz. The encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS) and Safety of Life Service (SoL) will both provide an accuracy comparable to the Open Service. Their main aim is robustness against jamming and the reliable detection of problems within 10 seconds. They will be targeted at security authorities (police, military, etc.) and safety-critical transport applications (air-traffic control, automated aircraft landing, etc.), respectively.

In addition, the Galileo satellites will be able to detect and report signals from CospasSarsat search-and-rescue beacons in the 406.0406.1 MHz band, which makes them a part of the Global Maritime Distress Safety System.

ALTERNATIVE TO DGPS

WAAS/EGNOS
Very much simplified, WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) is a satellite based differential GPS system (DGPS ). The difference is, that no additional long-wave receiver is necessary to receive the correction data

and there is no need for an endless number of DGPS beacons that transmit these correction data.

Differences between WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS

In principle, all three systems are the same and even more astonishing, the three systems are compatible to each other. This can be called astonishing since WAAS is maintained by north America, EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) is maintained by the European community and MSAS (MultiFunctional Satellite Augmentation System) is developed by Japan and other Asiatic countries. While WAAS is operational (IOC = Initial Operational Capability) since January 2003 (although not yet approved by the FAA), the EGNOS system made some huge steps forward during 2002 but is still (May 2005) in test operation (ESTB = EGNOS Satellite Test Bed). The development of the MSAS system had a major drawback in 1999 after the first of two satellites planned for the system was lost during launch because of a malfunction of the rocket. The start for the replacement satellite was initially planned for August 2004 but was delayed until further notice to investigate the reasons for the malfunction of the rocket in 1999. Upto-date information on the project are sparse (see here) While all systems can be called SBAS (Satellite Based Augmentation Systems), this name is seldom used.

How the SBAS work

Background
It is no surprise that WAAS, EGNOS and MSAS have not been developed to the increase the accuracy of GPS for hikers and geocachers. The main reason is to increase the safety for aviation. The GPS system is neither accurate nor reliable enough to be accepted as a sole means of navigation. One of the reasons is that there is no reliable and quick (within seconds) information to the user if problems with the system occur. As a consequence, for landing approaches, GPS cant be used. Airplanes still have to use ILS-systems (Instrument Landing Systems) if visibility is poor. But the installation and maintenance of ILS-systems on every airport is expensive. With the SBAS systems, CAT I approaches (limited visibility) will be possible without additional ILS systems. For CAT III approaches (zero visibility) even the SBAS will not suffice and ILS are still required.

Infrastructure and Principle of the System

The SBAS shall provide additional accuracy and reliability for the GPS system. To achieve this, a number of GPS receiving stations are necessary. In the US , 25 station are used, Europe uses 10 stations during the test operation and will have 34 when EGNOS is fully operational. The position of these RIMS (Ranging and Integrity Monitor Stations) must be known very precise. This means that the position of the receiving antenna needs to be know exactly to a few centimetres. The RIMS station receive the standard GPS signal

(and also the signal from the russion GLONASS system and the GALILEO system in future). That way it is possible to calculate the difference between the known position of the station and the position as calculated by the GPS receiver. And since the RIMS use receivers that use both GPS frequencies (L1 and L2), the signal delay through the ionosphere can be calculated for every single satellite. Additionally, if the signals from more than four satellites are received, more information than needed for a position determination is available and this information may be used to check for possible problems with the satellites or deviations in their orbits or time. The data from all RIMS are sent to a Central Processing Centre. For the EGNOS test bed (ESTB) this centre is in Toulouse ( France ) and a backup system is located in Hnefoss ( Norway ). Once EGNOS is fully operational there will be control centers, called MCC (Mission Control Centre) in Germany (Langen near Frankfurt ), Spain (Torrejon near Madrid ), Italy (Ciampino near Rome ) and Great Britain (Swanwick near London ). At these stations, the data will be collected and the following data will be calculated:

o Long term errors of the satellite orbits o Short term and Long term errors of the satellite clocks o IONO correction grids o Integrity information
By use of the integrity information, it is possible to inform the users within 6 seconds on problems that occur with the GPS system.