The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service
The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is Europe's first venture into satellite navigation. It was developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) under a tripartite agreement between the European Commission (EC), the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) and ESA.
Several air traffic service providers are supporting the development programme with their own investments. In April 2009, the ownership of the EGNOS assets have been transferred from the European Space Agency to the European Commission which now manages and finances the entry of EGNOS into the Service Provision phase
EGNOS is the European Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) that complements the GPS system. It disseminates, on the GPS L1 frequency, integrity signals in real-time, providing information on the health of the GPS constellation. In addition, correction data improves the accuracy of the current GPS services from about 10 m to about 2 m. The EGNOS Service Area includes all European states and has the system-inherent capability to be extended to other regions, such as EU neighbouring countries, North Africa and more generally regions within the coverage of three geostationary satellites being used to transmit the EGNOS signal.
The EGNOS coverage area will be Western Europe, but could be readily extended to include other regions within the broadcast area of the geostationary satellites, such as Africa, Eastern European countries, and Russia. EGNOS is the first element of the European satellite-navigation strategy and a major stepping-stone towards Galileo, Europe's own global satellite navigation system for the future.
Initial Operations Phase
ESSP began the Initial Operations in July 2005, under contract with the European Space Agency (ESA). This period was used to ramp-up the operations activities, stabilise the system and processes and finally prepare the qualification of the system.
This phase was concluded in April 2009
EGNOS Signal Provision Phase
Since April 2009, The European Commission has assigned the service provision of EGNOS Signal to the ESSP. The ESSP is committed to the following main objectives in the course of the ESP Contract:
- EGNOS Service Provision, Operations and maintenance (including network connectivity and geostationary transponder leases)
- To finalise the ESSP Certification process as Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) under the Single European Sky (SES) Service Regulation
- The EGNOS signal and data provision for Open Service (OS) and Safety of Life Service (SoL)
- The support to the European Commission for the implementation of the promotion of enabling actions for the EGNOS signal and services mainly in the civil aviation market
ESSP Certification
The Single European Sky Certification of ESSP has being organised by the French National Supervisory Authority, which is mandated to do so on behalf of the European Commission. This certification was achieved on July 2010.
Certification is necessary to use the EGNOS Safety-Of-Life Service in industry segments where lives are at stake. Once certified, EGNOS can be used in Civil Aviation as a navigation aid. In particular it can be used for non-precision approaches (NPA) and for approaches with vertical guidance (APV)
EGNOS Services
EGNOS offers all users of satellite radio navigation high-performance navigation and positioning services, superior to that currently available in Europe. The three services available are:
- Open Service
- Safety-of-Life Service
- EGNOS Data Access Server (EDAS)
For the EGNOS Open Service, the signal-in-space is already continuously available since October 2009. EGNOS Open Service provides unprecedented positioning precision by improving the accuracy of GPS. For the past several months, EGNOS has demonstrated excellent signal quality throughout Europe.
The continuing monitoring of the augmentation signal shows it improves the accuracy of GPS to within one to two meters and is available more than 99 percent of the time. By comparison, someone using a GPS receiver that is not EGNOS enabled can only be sure of their position to within 17 metres.
A second key milestone has been achieved in 2010, when the ESSP has been certified in compliance with the Single European Sky regulations.
Since March the 2nd 2011, the EGNOS SoL service is declared available for use.
EGNOS is also providing a terrestrial commercial data service: EDAS (EGNOS Data Access Service). EDAS disseminates EGNOS data in real-time and is the single point of access for the data collected and generated by the EGNOS infrastructure. EDAS allows users to "plug in" to EGNOS by providing access to satellite navigation data generated by ground stations distributed over Europe and North Africa.
Address
ESSP - European Satellite Services Provider - sas18, avenue Edouard BELIN - BPI 602
31401 Toulouse
Cedex 9
FRANCE
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Tel: -
Email: communication@essp-sas.eu
URL: www.essp-sas.eu