Indra, the leading IT multinational in Spain and one of the largest in Europe, is heading the industrial group in charge of studying the feasibility and definition of the current EGNOS satellite navigation system towards a future Multiconstellation Regional System (MRS) for the European Space Agency (ESA). This system will offer a superior range of services to a greater number of users. The project budget is ¬1.5 million and the execution period is 18 months.
The team is composed of Astrium-EADS (Germany), Deimos Engenharia (Portugal), INECO (Spain), Novatel (Canada) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain), in addition to Indra.
The EGNOS system currently provides air, sea and land information, using the North American GPS system. The objective of the study is to analyze how it should evolve so that it can take advantage of the greater number of satellites and constellations that will be in place in a few years' time, which will offer a greater volume and quality of information.
The industrial team will define the system requirements, technical specifications, design of the necessary navigation algorithms, both for the system and the end user application, features verification simulations and system architecture.
This aim is to analyze the possibility evolving the current EGNOS system, turning it into a multiconstellation system, capable of improving regionally, within the European zone, the features offered on an individual basis by the different satellite systems separately. It will combine the signals of the future constellations of the American GPS, the Russian Glonass, the Chinese Compass/Beidou and the European Galileo systems to offer more advanced services to a greater number of users in critical, high-performance or commercial application areas.
The system headed by Indra considers a scenario for 2015-2020 in which the new system could, for example, offer services to toll companies to charge users without them having to stop and for only the kilometres travelled, or to construction companies, to develop civil engineering projects which require a high degree of accuracy in their calculations, reaching a centesimal level, among other applications.
Likewise, the information could be disseminated through new communication channels, in addition to the satellite, such as via radio, SMS, WIDI or Wmax.
Once the study has been completed, the team will develop a preliminary prototype prior to its possible industrial development, based on a simulator of the various system components. Specifically, the prototype will reproduce the signals emitted by the different constellations, the evaluation process of the differential corrections and the quality of service that a user would see in various locations of the coverage area. This simulator will make it possible to analyze the system performance and robustness.
This contract recognizes Indra's work in the development of the ground segment of the EGNOS system and of the future Galileo system. It also enables the company to be involved from the earliest phase in an international project which will determine the future scenario of navigation and positioning systems, on which a large number of solutions will be based.
Indra is the leading Information Technology multinational in Spain and one of the largest in Europe and Latin America. It is the second European company in terms of market capitalization in its sector and one of the three Spanish companies investing most in R&D. In 2007, its sales reached €2.167 billion, of which one third came from the international market. It has over 24,000 professionals and clients in more than 90 countries.