European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europes gateway to space. ESA is an intergovernmental organization with 22 Member States.

ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, Holland

Method and system for real time navigation using satellite transmitted three-carrier radio signals and ionospheric corrections

managed by European Space Agency

TECHNOLOGY DESCRIPTION

The invention concerns a real-time navigation method for locating a rover using three-carrier radio signals of three different frequencies to determine the position of a user, transmitted by satellites. The method comprises a first step for determining
"extra-wide lane" carrier phase ambiguity, a second step for estimating "wide-lane" phase ambiguity, and a third step for resolving the phase ambiguity of one of the frequencies. An additional step consists in the application of real-time ionospheric
corrections during the third step, these ionospheric corrections being based on a continuously updated ionospheric model of said ionospheric layer calculated by a fixed ground reference station combined with geodetic data calculated by a so-called master fixed ground reference station. The invention also concerns a system for implementing the method.

BENEFITS

Thanks to the use of the three-carrier system and the ionospheric estimation, this technology provides a precise navigation service (only a few centimeters of error). Also it requires less ground stations, since they can be separated hundreds of kilometers instead of tens of kilometers. The reduced amount of ground stations required also implies a lowering of the costs . Instead, more ground stations can be placed to cover the same area at the same cost as previous systems, but in this case there is an important increase of the accuracy of the system.

LIMITATIONS

An ad-hoc assessment for each specific application can qualify the limitations.

APPLICATIONS

Air, sea and ground transport and people location for both position control and guidance services. It can also be used as a tool for making ground measures subsequently used for geographical or construction studies. It may also be used in meteorology and ionospheric sounding (thanks to the ionosphere estimation). Thanks to the precision, it may also be used in road applications such as lane keeping, automatic parking fee collection by location and automatic guidance of vehicles among others, but these road applications need further development of this invention and of the cartography (road maps actualization and improvement in precision).

MATERIALS

Readiness Level (TRL)

5
technology validated in relevant environment(The pie chart refers to the entire portfolio contained in the database of the helpdesk)

Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) are a method of estimating technology maturity of Critical Technology Elements (CTE) of a program during the acquisition process. The use of TRLs enables consistent, uniform, discussions of technical maturity across different types of technology.

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STATUS

Current status

Granted in France, India, Japan, Russia and USA. Published in Australia and Brazil

AVAILABILITY

Available for

Licensing

INVENTOR / TEAM

Alberto Garcia, Jose Manuel Hernandez-Pajares, Jose Miguel Juan Zornoza, Jaume Sanz Subriana

GENERAL ENQUIRIES
LICENSING REQUEST

Case manager: Veronica La Regina

EU-Japan Centre
European CommissionMeti