ESA Open Invitation to Tender AO9810
Open Date: 28/03/2019
Closing Date: 27/05/2019 13:00:00

Status: ISSUED
Reference Nr.: 19.154.04
Prog. Ref.: NAVISP Element 1
Budget Ref.: E/0365-10 – NAVISP Element 1
Special Prov.: BE+DK+DE+FR+CH+GB+AT+NL+NO+FI+CZ+RO
Tender Type: C
Price Range: 200-500 KEURO
Products: Satellites & Probes / Other
Techology Domains: RF Systems, Payloads and Technologies / Radio Navigation Systems/Subsystems / Navigation System Tools
Establishment: ESTEC
Directorate: Directorate of Navigation
Department: Strategy and Programme Department
Division: NAVISP Programme Office
Contract Officer: Papaioannou, Maria
Industrial Policy Measure: N/A – Not apply
Last Update Date: 28/03/2019
Update Reason: Tender issue

Until recently, RTK and PPP technology was reserved for users who could spend tens of thousands of dollars on a GNSS receiver, a subscription to a service provider and a mobile data plan from a carrier. This represents a problem for mass market users since the price of the end-to-end service doesn´t make the solution appealing to automotive and UAV markets tens of thousands of dollars can be as costly as a new vehicle, for instance. A potential way forward could consist in a concept that leverages on the latest breakthroughs in GNSS technology and future terrestrial wireless networks to broadcast in real-time multi-GNSS augmentation services at a low cost. The NTRIP protocol, which is the existing approach for data dissemination adopted in the GNSS community, has limited scalability and thus, poses some limitations to the mass market applications. Under this scenario, terrestrial broadcast via cellular signals could fit the operational concept much better because it would allow the service provider to transfer data based on a Send-to-All-like dissemination. The idea is to allocate a portion of the wireless network resources to host specific content, enabling a MNOto send a single GNSS data stream to all mobile users in a particular area rather than having to send an individual stream to each user. The potential opportunity for GNSS community is huge but because the concept is fairly new, there is no implementation of such a terrestrial broadcast service, pilot or commercial. This gap could be covered through this activity by developing the first testbed capable to provide multi-GNSS assistance information by making use of cellular signals in 4G networks.