jdc
Well-Known Member
Most 'GPS' sets can also use the European system called Galileo which is fully up and running; indeed many airports in Europe rely on it for I/NAV.
It uses the same carrier frequency as GPS and will just work on most 'GPS' - actually GNSS sets - without hardware changes.
It's a bit more accurate than GPS, and, you may not appreciate this, all the existing satellites were built in the UK1 and the clever protocol and signal processing were designed at Logica in London/Reading and Qinetic in Malvern (fka RSRE). Why waste time on the much less accurate Russian Glonass system which, apart from anything else, uses different frequencies for each satellite, unlike GPS and Galileo, so suffers from inaccuracy due to the RF filters at the input, which have therefore to be wider bandwidth than for GPS or Galileo. This means that Glonass is easier blocked by Radar and isn't used so much in mobile phones. And mobile phones count since the overwhelming effort by chip designers is chasing the phone market. Piss poor negotiation during the event which can't be named have reduced the UK's ability to continue to enhance it, but the Open Service, which is the equivalent of GPS C/A codes, is still available to all.
1. the official Airbus site says "All currently operational Galileo first-generation satellite navigation payloads were built by Airbus Defence and Space’s subsidiary Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL)."
It uses the same carrier frequency as GPS and will just work on most 'GPS' - actually GNSS sets - without hardware changes.
It's a bit more accurate than GPS, and, you may not appreciate this, all the existing satellites were built in the UK1 and the clever protocol and signal processing were designed at Logica in London/Reading and Qinetic in Malvern (fka RSRE). Why waste time on the much less accurate Russian Glonass system which, apart from anything else, uses different frequencies for each satellite, unlike GPS and Galileo, so suffers from inaccuracy due to the RF filters at the input, which have therefore to be wider bandwidth than for GPS or Galileo. This means that Glonass is easier blocked by Radar and isn't used so much in mobile phones. And mobile phones count since the overwhelming effort by chip designers is chasing the phone market. Piss poor negotiation during the event which can't be named have reduced the UK's ability to continue to enhance it, but the Open Service, which is the equivalent of GPS C/A codes, is still available to all.
1. the official Airbus site says "All currently operational Galileo first-generation satellite navigation payloads were built by Airbus Defence and Space’s subsidiary Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL)."
