N-GENE presentation @ the Asilomar conference

Today, dr. Fabio Dovis of the NavSAS group presented at the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers 2008 a paper on the novel algorithms implemented in the N-GENE fully software receiver.

The paper is entitled Efficient Signal Acquisition for a Real Time GPS/Galileo Software receiver and is co-authored by Maurizio Fantino, Marco Pini and Fabio Dovis.

It describes some architectural choices for acquisiton, in order match the real time constraints, keeping the performance level high, and for the tracking in order to make it robust to lock loss at low C/N0.l

The presentation was hosted in a special session, where also other papers reated to GNSS signal processing have been presented by University of New South Wales, Stanford University and University of Westminster.

Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer Suite brought to life!

Education on GNSS topics is sometimes difficult and often lacks of practical experience. In order to train students and professionals to face real issues and manage satellite navigation data, the NavSAS group developed Sat-Surf and Sat-Surfer: the Training Board & the Software Suite for GNSS Training!
This solution includes hardware and software facilities as well as practical exercises. It is dedicated to the GNSS students but it can be also useful for all the professionals in the field of navigation.

For a complete GNSS training the theory is provided by the NAVKIT distance learning tool, and the practical skills are trained by means of the Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer suite. The Sat-Surf is a compact, lightweight and versatile device able to accommodate different GPS receiver. It can embed different kinds of GPS receivers, such as: the new uBlox5 Galileo Ready, the uBlox – Antaris4, the Falcom JP13 LP based on SiRF Star III technology and the Falcom JP15 based on SiRF Star II. In the next months the platform will be adapted to accommodate also other chipsets.

Sat-Surf includes communication capabilities using a GSM/GPRS quad-band unit that enables the development of innovative A-GPS strategies as well as the study of DGPS techniques.

The Sat-Surfer software thanks to its flexibility allows the interface to the Sat-Surf and includes the possibility of data collection and storage.Hardware and software are complemented by a set of proposed exercises, included in the package, that ranges from a simple level of usage, to an advanced for development of original navigation algorithms for data processing.

More information are available on the official web site: http://www.navsas.ismb.it/sat-surf or contacting us at: sat-surfer@ismb.it

IRGAL Workshop

Today in Torino a major event is concluding the activities of the IRGAL project. The IRGAL project has been co-funded by the European Union, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Piedmont Region within the DOCUP 2000-2006 Mis. 3.4 programme and aimed at increasing the competitive edge of the Piedmont ICT district in the crucial areas of Time and Receivers that can be regarded as the core of satellite navigation. Specifically, research was focused on the areas of atomic clocks, optical links for time transfer, GNSS SW receiver and HW RF components with the objective of developing innovative technologies and finalizing them up to pre-competitive prototypes.

In the demo session the software receiver developed by the NavSAS group is presented, working in real time on the L1 band.

160 attendees made the workshop very successfull, demonstrating the capability of the sinergies between research and industry in the Turin area on the GNSS topics.

NGS CORS Network Map is growing

Inside GNSS reports an interesting news about the growth of the NOAA’s National Geodetic Survey (NGS) Network Map.

From the news: "The network helps ensure the consistency and accuracy of the nation’s spatial reference system. Each CORS site provides GNSS — GPS and GLONASS — carrier phase and code range measurements, recorded on a 30-second or shorter interval. Data are free and accessible via the Internet. NGS invites organizations and individuals to share data from their permanent GPS base stations by including these stations in the National CORS network, following a rigorous a set of criteria established by the agency. The NOAA CORS network now contains more than 1,200 sites spanning the United States, its territories, and several foreign countries. Surveyors, GIS users, and others can combine their own GPS data with GPS data from the CORS network to determine three-dimensional positional coordinates that approach a few centimeters in accuracy.
... According to NOAA officials, the addition of the new sites significantly improves both the geographic coverage of the CORS network as well as the accuracy with which CORS users can position things, including property boundaries, transportation arteries, buildings and other map-worthy objects. The expanded coverage will also benefit those organizations that apply CORS data to monitor “space weather,” including the distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere and the distribution of free electrons in the ionosphere."

As shown in the screenshot above, the best part of the reference stations are located in the USA and in its allied countries.

New GPS SPS Performance Standard

Finally, the U.S. Government published the new GPS SPS (Standard Positioning Service) performance standard. The new document is freely available on the PNT website. It introduces improvements to the previous version, publisehd in 2001. The most important changes are the better signal-in-space (SIS) range accuracy and the new definition for the GPS constellation with more than 24 satellites.

GAL-PMI project: the final workshop

Piedmont Region is extremely interested in satellite navigation technology. Thanks to a 6 million € regional funding scheme, the GAL-PMI project started to boost R&D, innovation and the technology transfer in the field of satellite navigation in Piedmont. The applications are focused both on the future Galileo system and on the existing systems such as GPS and EGNOS. On Wednesday, 1st October the GAL-PMI consortium presented its results in Turin.The project was high-demanding: 100,000 hours of research and experimentation, 3 patents, 3 technology transfer contracts, 25 companies involved (SMEs in particular), 5 experimentations in real scenarios.

The outputs of the project are preindustrial prototypes using the PNT (positioning, navigation and timing) data to provide their services. The main fields involved in the project are the road monitoring, the tourism, the emergencies management and the payment systems. All the projects are presented on the official GAL-PMI website.


At the final workshop, there were many important personalities from the industry, the university and the politics, including the Italian Ministry of Transportation Mr Altiero Matteoli.