Evaluation of Error Sources For Galileo Test Bed Satellites through Measurement Campaign

GALILEO is an initiative of the European Union, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and European industries, to launch a European financed Global Navigation Satellite System under civilian control.

Such a project is named after the famous Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. GALILEO is the second step of Europe to develop its own GNSS capability after the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS, operational from 2004), the Europe’s first foray into satellite navigation.

In detail, in the European Commission policy paper, leading to GALILEO Resolution at the Transport council it was stated [4]: GALILEO must be an open, global system fully compatible with GPS, but independent from it.

While providing autonomous navigation and positioning services, GALILEO will, at the same time, be interoperable with American GPS and also with Russian GLONASS. An user will be able to take its position with the same receiver from any of the satellites in any combination.

By offering dual frequencies as standard, however, GALILEO will deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to the meter range, which is unprecedented for a publicly available system. It will guarantee availability of the service under the most extreme circumstances and will inform users within seconds of a failure of any satellite (integrity).

This will make it suitable for applications where safety is crucial, such as running trains, guiding cars and landing aircraft. The GALILEO system architecture, similarly to other GNSS, will be composed by three segments:
• The space segment, corresponding to in-orbit satellites;
• The ground segment, composed by the control centers and uplink stations to control the space segment;
• The user segment, consisting of all users of the GALILEO system.