ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9083
Open Date: 20/10/2017
Closing Date: 01/12/2017 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 17.197.09
Prog. Ref.: General Studies
Budget Ref.: E/0600-00 – General Studies
Special Prov.: BE+DK+FR+DE+IT+NL+ES+SE+CH+GB+IE+AT+NO+FI+PT+GR+LU+CZ+RO+PL+EE+HU+CA+SI
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Ground Segment / Ground Station / RF equipment / Transmitter and Receiver assemblies, Frequency converters, …
Techology Domains: Others
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Tech, Eng. & Quality
Department: System, Software & Technology Department
Division: Future Prep. & Strategic Studies Off.
Contract Officer: Seynaeve, Christophe Rene R.
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 20/10/2017
Update Reason: Tender issue

Critical transport operations such as landing or port docking among others require safety concepts. For example in the case of aviation, Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) provide Safety of Life (SoL) services to pilots using SBAS enabled Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is an SBAS that provides SoL service to Europe.Traditionally the SBAS concept has been built around providing specific safety performances tailored to particular transport operations. The system provides a safety of life service meeting requirements appropriate for each operation: integrity risk (IR), alarm limit (AL) and time to alarm (TTA). The IR can be defined as the probability of providing a positioning signal that is out of tolerance (the AL) without warning the user in a given period of time (TTA). The user GNSS receiver uses data transmitted by the SBAS satellite to improve the accuracy of their position and also compute a bound of the error of said position called protection level (PL). In other words, the protection level provides the user with a limit of the position error to be compared with the maximum tolerable error for that operation, i.e. the alarm limit. If the PL is smaller than the AL, the operation is safe.For the maritime case however ESA missions (namely EGNOS) and the ESA MARitime Safety of Life Working Group (MARSOL) have identified that is extremely difficult to consolidate a set of fixed requirements tailored to specific operations. In the case of harbour operations vessels cannot rely on an guaranteed approach path free of obstacles and traffic as is the case for aviation approach procedures (landing). The maritime case indeed requires a radically new approach.The objective of the activity is to evaluate the feasibility of using adaptive AL by creating a centralised port monitoring and processing of all the vessels in the port waters, instead of using a fixed AL. By collecting the respective positions, headings, velocity and PLs of the vessels in the port it could be possible to deriveAL specific to each vessel in a particular instant. Doing this process in a continuous way and at a rate to be analysed within the study will provide an adaptive safety of life service for maritime that neither requires a priori knowledge of the operation AL nor aguaranteed approach path free of obstacles and traffic.Moreover, the port monitoring and processing that provides the adaptive safety of life service could benefit from a route exchange concept. When the centralised port monitoring and processing establishes that two vessels are on a collision course, new routes could be elaborated to solve the predicted conflict. In turn, these centralisedresolution advisories could further improve and serve as an input to the adaptive AL computation.It is expected that the feasibility of the concepts and techniques studied in these activities will pave the way for future ESA missions evolution targeting maritime SoL services. In particular, the role of EGNOS and Galileo and in general GNSS for maritime critical transport operations will beclarified. Once feasibility is proven, an objective of this activity is to provide a way forward as a roadmap that includes a new setof mission requirements for future European Satellite Navigation and Communications. These new concepts will require not only a change in the approach in relation to navigation operations but also a need for two way communication.

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