MMEGG

Starting point / motivation

Almost everybody uses the guidance of navigation systems in the daily life, provided by their smartphone or by their in-car navigation system. Those mass-market navigation systems rely on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).

Due to the low cost of the GNSS receivers, they are widespread and can be found in many electronic consumer products. Typical accuracies of the GNSS positioning for mass-market applications are about several meters, depending strongly on the operating conditions. This allows finding the next café, navigating on the road-level or guiding an amateur drone to take a picture with a breath-taking view.

Contents and goals

Improving the performance of the mass-market positioning however would enable many more applications.

• Lane-level navigation for example, requiring decimetre-accuracy, would render the traffic less stressful and safer.
• The desirable advancements in mass market positioning can be made in the hardware and in the positioning software.

The MEGG (Exploring GOOSE platform for Galileo Mass-Market Carrier Phase Positioning) project will investigate both of these aspects to provide a thorough proof of concept for precise mass-market positioning.

Besides software defined radio receiver technology, and deploying positioning software to embedded devices, carrier phase-based algorithms will be evaluated.

Methods

The study will be based on a GNSS receiver hardware platform with open interfaces, the GOOSE platform, provided by Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits. It is capable of providing multi-frequency GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo pseudorange and phase measurements.

GOOSE provides the possibility to develop GNSS algorithms on the target platform by providing access to all relevant data and interfaces in a white-box approach. SDR technology (Software Defined Radio) gives all the flexibility needed for examining the signal tracking. The embedded computing capabilities allow to deploy and further develop existing software components and test them in a real-time environment.

The value of approaching the carrier-phase positioning mass market using the GOOSE platform is twofold: 

• First, the flexibility allows acquiring multi-frequency multi-system measurements today with techniques that are similar to those that can be expected from mass-market receivers in the future.
• Second, the feasibility of the positioning can directly be demonstrated on an embedded device. In this way, the simulation on a personal computer can be avoided, leading to a direct proof of concept without arbitrary assumptions. 

Thus, the GOOSE platform is the ideal device for small companies - like TeleConsult Austria and inPosition – to develop sophisticated GNSS algorithms and further bring their expertise to the mass-market.

This is strongly connected to another goal of the project: Based on the proof-of-concept TeleConsult Austria and the Swiss company inPosition will decide on a further strategy towards a commercialization of the developments.

Expected results

The long-term objective is to develop a mass-market ready multi-frequency multi-GNSS receiver including sophisticated phase-based positioning algorithms. The MMEGG project will be an important basis of decision-making and for developing R&D&I projects.

Coordinator

OHB Digital Solutions GmbH Unternehmenspartner

Project partner

inPosition gmbh

OHB Digital Solutions GmbH Unternehmenspartner
Dipl.-Ing. Dr.te Philipp Berglez
Rettenbacher Straße 22
A-8044 Graz