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US GPS, EU Galileo to Work Together
saintory writes "The US and EU are in talks to allow their separate GPS systems to work together. The future uses would allow enhanced location information based on two readings, among other benefits. 'The market probably will drive dual-use receivers. We think probably that single (U.S.) GPS-specific, or Galileo-specific receivers — the market will phase out in time [...] It just doesn't make sense to limit yourself to just one system'."
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Global Positioning Systems
I like the way that sounds!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
...refreshing. Seriously, I've gotten rather sick of the acrimony that seems to be building across the Atlantic. It's nice that people see this as a chance for better technology (at least in some respect) rather than pure nationalistic chest-thumping.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I hope these two combined work better than GPS alone, because I've used GPS quite a bit and have resorted back to map and compass more than once. Between poor reception in mountainous terrain or during bad weather or while in the woods and bad information from the satellites I've pretty much given up. Heck I've seen readings that were more than 100 miles off! And this was not a single device. We had a Magellan with WAAS and a Garmin with a powered external antenna and both gave absurd readings while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail even when they had access to 5 or more satellites.
Get a web developer
International cooperation is a good thing. And it's nice to share a standard frequency.
But I also think this is nothing more than a recognition of reality. Unless they deliberately enforced licensing restrictions preventing it, I'm quite sure the market would have provided a dual-system device very shortly after Galileo was operative.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Where does this leave the US ability to jam the GPS signal whenever they wanted?
I thought the reason that Europe wanted their own satellites is that the US basically reserved the right to scramble the signal whenever they wanted, and the EU didn't want to be beholden to US technology. If they broadcast on the same frequency, does this make it easier or harder for the US military to degrade the signal when they wish?
Is this a good thing in terms of assuring access? Or is this a backdoor for the US to exert more control over it? TFA is vague on that point. It would kinda suck if all they've done is water down the reasons they had for wanting to do it in the first place
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And I thought the whole point in Galileo was to be independent of USA's mercy. The US can turn off GPS at any time they want. The EU don't want to be dependent on the USA and so they build their own system.
Now perhaps this story refers to times when both Galileo _and_ GPS are working. Would that increase the accuracy so that both systems together are more effective? I don't really think so. I don't think that Galileo (which has an accuracy of 0.1 meters afaik) can be enhanced by some GPS satellites (which has an accuracy of 15 meters). They are way too old, the GPS satellites (at least, most of them).
Receivers that use both GPS and GLONASS satellite signals have been available for years. Maxim just announced a new receiver chip which receives both and only costs $2.95 in quantity, so that capability is likely to become more available.
GLONASS was in bad shape after the USSR tanked, but new GLONASS satellites are being launched again, and the constellation is currently about half populated. As of today, 11 GLONASS satellites are functioning, 5 are down, and one new one is being brought into position. 24 operational satellites are a full set.
The earlier GLONASS sats only had a two year design life, but the latest models have a 7 year design life, and they're going for a 10-year model. They launch a new batch every December, so they're starting to catch up.
Misguided or not, the missile shield is not intended to divide you. If you want to argue that will be an unfortunate side effect, that's one thing, but if you seriously believe that it's part of a strategy of divide-and-conquer, then I truly think you're putting motives in there that don't exist.
Now, assuming that you merely meant that it would be an unfortunate side effect, you also should realize that Poland and the Czech Republic dearly want us to put the missile shield in their countries (or at least their governments do). I'm not arguing that's a sufficient reason to do so - I'm just pointing out that we're not imposing this on them. They want it. This came out quite strongly after Putin suggested that it be put in Azerbaijan instead, if the goal was truly to protect Europe from a Middle East attack.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Has ESA actually launched any of the Galileo satellites yet? Last I heard the program was having management and budget problems.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I'm just reporting what's been in the news. I definitely wasn't say it was a good idea - I was just trying to clarify the context around it.
OTOH, playing devil's advocate, a missile shield would (theoretically) stop missiles coming from a terrorist group were they to acquire one. It would presumably not be meant to stand alone but rather be part of an entire well thought out system (stop giggling). You could scan for dirty bombs at the border, have great devices for detecting pathogens, make your airline passengers fly naked, but none of that will stop a missile coming towards your country any more than a missile shield would prevent the discreet release of poisons into the drinking water.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It's amazing how this Galileo topic ALWAYS ends up in people slagging off against America. OK moving on: The American GPS system is a fantastic FREE product (free to uses, not free to US citizens who pay through their Federal Taxes). The rest of the world has used the system for years and benefited. Then a European venture (made up of several disparate partners) decided there was a business opportunity to launch a rival system and pay for it by offering PAY services to users, in return for increased accuracy. Unfortunately while the tests went OK the European partners did not step up to formally fund the venture. Possibly fearing the financial numbers didn't work. This alliance of the existing US service and a likely "rightsized" Galileo, probably makes huge sense. The new Galileo Satellites can be launched, in far less numbers, while accuracy can be improved by combining the signals from both systems. In other words, everybody wins here. So enough of the bickering posts please and let's congratulate the new American/European alliance and improved future GPS products.
Think about it. It's better to have both than one in case a GPS scrambler won't knock out the Galileo signal (once it exists.) It's probably worth spending a few thousand dollars more per tank for that kind of redundancy--accurate positioning information has made a huge difference in how well modern armies fight. Ipsa scientia potest est--Knowledge itself is power.
The concept of combined receivers isn't all that unusual. There are receivers out there, primarily used in aerospace, that combine GLOSNASS and GPS to render a more accurate position.
I think one must be at least 13 to post on Slashdot.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
The GPS system is capable of being re-programmed such that it will give the wrong coordinates to all but the US military. If GALILEO stays independent and keeps giving the correct coordinates a significant advantage is lost. I don't think the US military will accept that, so the getting the systems to work together may very well mean they will give the same wrong coordinates should the US military want that. I don't see the Europeans oposing such a demand.
Also, the article seems to imply that GPS is used for drawing pictures:
:-) /
"work together to provide more accurate images and information"
"would be able to create a more accurate picture especially in areas where reception is weak"
So, farmers ploughing profanities in their fields will be able to use better fonts now.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/31/huge_word
This reply is so ill-informed, it's incredible. (That's it's, not its - illiterate as well.)
1. GIOVE-A, the first Galileo test satellite, was launched on 28 December 2005 from Baikonur Cosmodrome. It transmitted its (not it's) first navigation signal on 12 January 2006 and began transmitting complete navigation messages (i.e. with ephemeris and clock performance data) on 2nd May this year. No Frigidaire (just a commercially available satellite bus), no amateur radio (although SSTL, who built GIOVE-A, got their start building amateur radio satellites at the University of Surrey), two rubidium frequency standards (but no metronome), no baling wire (or bailing wire, either) and definitely no Weird Al.
2. Nobody has hacked any Galileo encryption. They have deduced the previously unspecified content of the signals transmitted by GIOVE-A and made out like they had discovered some big secret. The Cornell GPS lab deduced the PRN codes used by GIOVE-A - which were not secret, just not widely distributed. When the time comes, the two Galileo Public Regulated Service navigation signals will have their ranging codes and data encrypted - and no teenagers will be able to hack them - just like nobody has ever hacked the P(Y)-codes on GPS. In any case, the encryption keys will be replaceable in-service.
3. The agreement doesn't call for the US to rely on Europe. It calls for the systems to be interoperable so that, when they are both functioning, user can get quicker and more accurate fixes by having more satellites visible. Galileo will offer better performance at higher latitudes - won't someone think of the Alaskans?
Europe didn't kill Concorde. British Airways and Air France killed Concorde because it became unprofitable after a modification programme made necessary mainly by an accident caused by a piece of metal that fell off of an American airliner.
Airbus may yet get to eat Boeing's lunch - let's wait for the outcome of the Dreamliner/AB380 death match.
Your only (partially) valid criticism: it turned out that the industrial consortium that was supposed to build Galileo couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone take responsibility for a major space infrastructure project. Most likely, the European Space Agency will act as procurement agent for the system, which will then be operated by someone sensible, like Inmarsat.
Who's the tosser now?
Now I won't have to switch from one system to the other on long drives.
I would tend to think that a GPS tracking system for cars would be land based like what ships and boats use out at sea. Doesn't require the same level of transmission gear and is pretty damned reliable. You could certainly track cars as I believe that is what onStar does here in the U.S. already. Of course I suppose nothing stops car manufacturers from putting the required gear to transmit to a satellite or five.
What are you talking about, in terms of "like what ships and boats use out at sea"?
A GPS receiver is just that -- a receiver. It doesn't transmit. Full stop.
If you want to create a position reporting system, then you need some way to get the positional data back into a network. There have been various ways of accomplishing this.
Amateur radio operators have put together a very nice network called APRS, which uses 2-meter handheld radios, coupled with standard GPS receivers and interface chips, to "ping" your position to ground stations, which then dump the data onto the Internet so you can see it.
Most commercial systems, like those used on trucks, use the cellular phone network in some capacity. (Some of them use analog modems and make voice calls, others use GPRS or CSD to avoid the voice call.) But of course this costs money -- you have to pay for the cellular connection somehow, even if you only use it a few times an hour or day. This is how OnStar works (and you pay a monthly or yearly fee for it).
In order to make a "position beacon" that would work everywhere, you'd need a backhaul that didn't depend on terrestrial infrastructure -- the logical choice would be to use the Iridium network. (A network of low-orbiting, cellular-type voice communications satellites.) I suspect this is used for sea shipping and marine navigation, if you want remote position-reporting. But Iridium equipment and airtime isn't exactly cheap.
Creating a network that could tell you the position of every car on the road, in real-time, would be a big endeavor. It's probably a lot easier just to use E-Z Pass-type RFID sensors and readers at key locations (under bridges, etc.) than to try and create a wide-area network of GPS-equipped position beacons and receivers, just because in a congested area, you'd need a base station pretty much on every lamp-post in order to provide good coverage. If every car in an area was reporting its position ever minute or so, you'd quickly saturate the available capacity of the cellular and APRS networks. RFID would be a much better choice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
If they could somehow make the two systems act as one, and you could read a channel from one system with no extra power cost, then I agree that getting a fix from best available satellites and mixing-an-matching during the process is superior to limiting yourself to one system.
ato