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EU and US Agree on Galileo
An anonymous reader writes "The EU and USA have reached an agreement over the Galileo satellite positioning system, ending several years of negotiations." We had some good Galileo information in a story last month.
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It's about time that the US give up on what was clearly becoming an impossible task: stopping the surge of demand for high accuracy civilian GPS. Kudos to them for reaching an agreement. :)
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
After ReadingTFA and looking at some of the past stuff on this issue, there is still not a clear reason (at least for me) to duplicate GPS. Why does Europe want to spend all that money? Couldn't they put up other sats with the money, like Internet, etc? Is it just a control thing i.e. the EU doesn't want to be at the mercy of the US on this (wouldn't blame them)?
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
"We have reached completion of a GPS-Galileo cooperation agreement," a US State Department official told reporters, calling the deal a "landmark" accord that would reap "profound benefits" for both the United States and Europe in the highly competitive satellite positioning market.
Let me first say that it's nice to see the USA cooperating with Europe, but I have to wonder how much Blair's involvement in the Iraq war had to do with this agreement. Either way, it's nice to see the USA and other countries (like France) getting along.
- a common signal structure for so-called "open" services, and a suitable signal structure for the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS).
This should be nice to see at work. I'd like to hear more about those open services, and what they will be exactly.
- a process allowing improvements, either jointly or individually, of the baseline signal structures in order to further improve performances.
Nice feature of the agreement. I think this will benefit all involved if nobody tries to improve their side into incompatibility.
- confirmation of inter-operable time and standards to facilitate the joint use of GPS and Galileo.
Does this mean they'll use the UNIX timestamp, with micro time enabled? Or is this something else entirely?
All in all, this almost appears like these governments are using the Open Source philosophy, or at least a small part of it. Hey, any step towards progress sounds great to me!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
As different systems evolve, maybe we will see more devices hit the civilian market and prices drop, which could mean a win-win for all consumers.
It's a win-win scenario because Galileo will greatly improve GPS accuracy and Galileo will benefit from the experience of the GPS system.
Too bad it took so long to reach an agreement and too bad the US never stopped to criticize a project that they are finally supporting.
Iraq: war to save the U
The "lockout" is already ended. During the first Gulf War, there was such a shortage of military GPS units that soldiers brought their own, and the military bought piles of civilian ones. At the same time, they turned off the intentional perterbatio of the signal, so that all the GPSes would work with the same degree of accuracy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I can easily see products that incorporate both systems and pull coordinates from both at the same time - any GPS types here want to theorize on what hypothetical dual system devices can do for spatial accuracy in the field without having to do the whole fixed station - correct back at the lab stuff to get sub-meter resolutions?
Europe and the USA acting together could do this world a hell of a lot of good. Shame things have been so negative of late.
What I'd really like to see is co-operation on reducing arms sales globally. The USA and Europe are currently the world's biggest arms merchants. And the mad thing is, we're selling them to countries that could easily turn around and bite us on the ass. Saudi Arabia for instance. If they turn against us - which isn't outside the realms of possibility at the moment - they will be able to put up one hell of a battle because we've been selling them advanced weaponary for decades. Madness.
Seriously, I can understand Europe not wanting to be at the mercy of the US's whims for something that can become very important. But this is going to be a subscription service, and I can't imagine too many people are going to be willing to pay for something they already get free. Sure, they may have a slightly better accuracy, but I do not see that GPS is bad enough to be worth paying for slightly better service.
aQazaQa
My Despair, Inc. calendar indicates that today is an auspicious anniversary date for Galileo:
"Galileo recants absurd theory about the Earth revolving around the sun. (June 22, 1633)"
I guess the Vatican used it influence to get Galileo to revolve around the Earth!
And remember that tin foil makes you more easily detectible by radar. To be really safe, you should use a tin foil hat that has sharp angles instead of a smooth curve.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Galileo used frequencies which were interleaved with the US military use of gps, meaning that the US couldn't jam galileo without jamming gps for their military at the same time. The US was adamant that this was unacceptable, that they wouldn't be able to disable galileo whenever they wanted, so the EU backed down, and promised to use frequencies which are more easily jammed.
While I understand what you're trying to say, you're not entirely correct.
The "lockout" is known as selective availability (SA) and has been shut off since 1996 or so, not "at the same time" as the first Gulf War.
However, there is an extra band for military use only (someone else can get the exact details). There are also "survey grade" GPS devices that manage much greater accuracy than your $100 Garmin.
All GPSes don't work with the same degree of accuracy.
This will be interesting because I think we will see dual band recievers. Often for one reason or another (interference most likely) GPS will give you incorrect position or non at all. However if you have a reciever that can switch over to galileo then this could greatly help all who use GPS. Just think of all the current applications currently using GPS. Shipping, personal aircraft, recreation, wardrivers! Suddenly WiGle will become a lot more accurate.
What could possibly go wrong?
"highly competitive satellite positioning market"
who else is in the market? dont you need at least two players actually in the market to call it a competitive one?
Whats the US going to do? shoot them down? I don't think so, Europe could have done better than this rather than just give in sheepishly. Ive seen bush standing next to the queen he looks a kid standing next to the head-mistress, she could have come in there and said "i think we would quite like these frequencies" and then just walked out. One of the major points of galileo is that it is a system not to undermined by the us gps, it needs an equal footing to say "were here, you're not the only country in the world, get over it".
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Not quite right.
The "lockout" was known as selective availability which was used to intentionally make the civilian code, called C/A for coarse acquisition, less accurate than it could be.
But there is still P(Y), p for precision, code which is military only. The encryption keys for using this code are classified. P(Y) code is more accurate than C/A code because it is a much, much longer sequence before it repeats.
C/A code repeats every 1 ms. P(Y) code lasts 1 week (it doesn't repeat every week, but the difference is not important here). Therefore, the pseudorandom number sequence that the GPS receiver correlates against is much, much longer allowing for better accuracy.
One part of the article almost gets it right,
Unfortunately, it looks like the EU caved in, so it will not be safe to assume that Galileo will be operational for the safety critical applications which it is designed for, such as air traffic control.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
You're partly correct. The P(Y) codes do allow greater precision in position, but not because the PRN codes are longer. The long PRN codes are primarily for security. The reason you get better accuracy with the P(Y) codes is they are dual frequency, unlike the C/A codes which operate on a single frequency. The dual freqency system allows the receiver to make corrections for ionospheric delays, as the two frequencies are delayed by different amounts by the ionosphere. By correcting for these delays, more accurate positioning is possible.
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