Symposium Summary

Abstract

Nowadays, very many people around the world benefit from, or even rely upon, space-based positioning and navigation systems for operating safely on the land, at sea, or in the air. Currently these systems are the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and/or the Russian GLONASS, both of military origin. In a few years time, many new features will be offered by Europe’s civilian — and commercially driven — Galileo system. With 27 satellites orbiting the Earth at heights of more than three Earth radii, and carrying atomic clocks of the highest precision, this new system will operate at radio frequencies near 1.2 and 1.6 GHz. Purpose-built sensitive radio receivers with sophisticated software should be able to provide a large number of novel services. There is a well-defined rationale for Galileo, one aspect of which may be seen as a technological challenge by Europe to the US domination of the satellite navigation field.