Europe Building Their Own GPS

An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Europe is planning to build their own satellite-navigation network that will be backward and forward compatible. There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)! Provision is also being made for a search and rescue mode where a signal can be sent to confirm that help is on the way. The system will supposedly even work with existing US network after upgrades to the network."

Comments

... and the reason is:

[Troed]

(To stop all US comments about why we Europeans don't need this)

GPS is a military-run programme; its signals can be degraded or switched off. Yes, the service is free, but its continuity and quality come with no guarantees

Galileo will be a civil system. It will be run by a private consortium and will offer guaranteed levels of service

(from the article)

Re:... and the reason is:

[Scarblac]

GPS was also expensive, but it made the investment back several times over in benefits to US industry. That is expected for Galileo too, for instance by the commercial service. It's an investment.

Re:... and the reason is:

[JanneM]

How would it be different from the current system, except for some marginally useful increases in accuracy and the inability to shut it off during a war if it's being used by enemy missles?

One big benefit (as the article clearly stated; I can recommend reading it), is the much improved accuracy - 1m or so on the open, free channel, 1cm with error estimation for subscribed service, whereas 5-10m is normal for GPS.

A second benefit is that it works better in restricted environments, like beneath a forest canopy, or among high-rises. As anyone using GPS to navigate big cities know, accuracy can rapidly drop to 20 meters or worse, which is frankly no longer all that useful when you're trying to locate a particular adress. A third, associated benefit is that the system takes a lot shorter time to lock on when you start your receiver. Again, in a city, you may have to wait for upwards of five minutes, moving around all the while, before the receiver finds four satellites and figures out where you are.

Re:... and the reason is:

[Dun Malg]

seems to be a mistake in summary - in article i could find only "High accuracy at the cm scale" which isn't exactly 1cm

Indeed, "high accuracy at the cm scale" has a specific meaning, and that is "accuracy at a scale of less than one meter". The summary writer is a dunce, as they usually are. I mean, come on! The antennas for these devices are bigger than 1 cm! You're not likely to have accuracy greater than the size of your antenna.

Seems reasonable enough

[Mike1024]

I can see why governments would like the idea of more accurate GPS; vechicle navigation.

Knowing a location to plus-or-minus-10-meters might be fine for a guided missile, but for navigation it's pretty lousy; it couldn't tell which side of the road you were on, let alone whether you were in the right lane. With centimeter-level accuracy, though, you could practically make a car drive itself.

Michael

Re:Prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

They did not get a "kill switch". What did happen was that the operating frequency was moved further apart from a common US military band so that the US could jam the signal (locally) without inadvertantly jamming their own military communications.

Re:Anyone else worried about Vehicle Monitoring?

[pnewhook]

Just because you have a GPS receiver doesn't mean a 3rd party can use it to track you. A GPS is receive only, you need additional hardware to rebroadcast your position for someone to track you.

Re:very old news

[click2005]

Try here http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html

Re:very old news

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/368/1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1718125.st m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1862779.st m
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/spac-j25 .shtml
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_44a.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fa/fa_mayjune01a.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/163821 2&tid=215
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/2 5/1356202&tid=160
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/12/16/1324209.shtm l?tid=126&tid=103
and in particular : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/01/122620 7&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=99&threshold=-1

just what i found with a little effort....

Re:Prediction

[Keebler71]

The US demanded, and got, a kill switch for it in the event they need to disable it during military action against someone. Great eh?

There was no "kill switch" as you describe. The original design of Galileo had it operating in the exact same frequency range as GPS. This was an intentional (and arguably malicious) design decision that would have prevented the US from jamming Galileo without simultaneously jamming GPS. What was negotiated was for the European system's frequency to be moved slightly, such that the US or Europe could jam each others signals without interfering with their own.

As long as your starting assumption is that at some point a country might deem it necessary to degrade (note necessarily deny) full position fixing accruacy to a given region or theater of operations, this is actually a "play fair" agreement.

Re:Answer: European billions: 10^9

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

10^9 is used in english speaking countries, most others actually use 10^12. I assume you meant UK when you said Europe.

Economic benefits far outweigh costs

[FreeUser]

But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.

First, 3-4 billion is chump change when it comes to government spending, and particularly so when it comes to international consortia spending. The economic value far outweighs the cost, by orders of magnitude.

Second, while you may find it merely inconvinient to have your GPS stop working, try telling that to a pilot (or 300 passengers) on a plane that is landing on a GPS precisions approch with weather at minimums and terrain all around, when the government decides to get into a tizzy and "disable" their approach. WAAS is intended to counteract that, but the point remains: they are having to deploy another multi-billion dollar system to offset the deliberate design issues and unreliability of the first multi-billion dollar system.

The Europeans are spending the money once, and getting a better, more reliable system they, instead of we, control. It makes all the sense in the world, and will probably allow their planes to land in near zero-zero conditions (unlike GPS+WAAS), and certainly with more precision than GPS (1 cm accuracy!).

Finally, fuck the US if we don't like it. We have no business, and no right, to dictate to the rest of the world what technology they may, or may not, deploy. As for our "reserving the right" to shoot down their satelites, I'm sure they (and the Russians, and the Chinese) reserve the "right" to nuke us back into the stoneage if they feel sufficiently threatened. That so-called "right" (talk about orwellian doublespeak!) to destroy something or someone suddenly becomes a lot less appealing when one is on the receiving end, doesn't it?