Galileo - Good News - Bad news

Bad News - Galileo (the joint EU satellite navigation system to compete with the US GPS system) is €400 MN over budget
Good News - The European Commission chips in €200 MN. UK, Germany, Italy and France, each take up an extra 16.9% share.

Good News - South Korea signed up on September 9 at a EU-South Korea summit.

Bad News - After the EU rejected Chinese participation (military and security - US pressure) they have registered with the International Telecommunication Union to use frequencies close to Galileo's. China wants in badly especially to launch Galileo satellites on its Long March boosters and to learn how to build its own space-based positioning, navigation, and timing system. The Chinese also wish to manufacture commercial Galileo receivers for a potentially lucrative market.

Good News - China's regional Beidou system, while suited for guiding long-range missiles, lacks the multi-faceted aspects, both military and commercial, of GPS, GLONASS, and, eventually, Galileo.

Bad News - China has on the drawing boards, Compass, a broader global satnav system.

Very Bad News - Galileo's second test satellite Giove-B will not launch this year on schedule, early 2007 (?) is pencilled in after problems during final testing in Italy.

Very Good News - The Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) will conclude a preliminary agreement with the industrial consortium by October, with a final contract in 2007. The European Commission expects the industrial consortium to pay 2/3 rds of deployment costs.

Gossip - Thales Group sold off Thales Navigation to US investors no leading EU company has direct capability in the consumer GNSS field. The thought had been that as Galileo approaches market reality, the established Magellan and Ashtech brands would provide a good platform on which to launch Galileo-capable GPS receivers, providing an optimal avenue for bringing Galileo capability into play in established GPS markets.The global satellite navigation market is expected to reach US $30 billion by the time the Galileo system becomes operational in 2008.

However ...

Ottawa based SiGe Semiconductor Inc. has launched Galileo-ready receiver for mass market consumer electronics the SE4120, which will enable the integration of high-accuracy navigation services into portable devices including laptop computers, PDAs, media players, cell phones, and cameras.

The software-based receiver architecture (both GPS and Galileo ready) ensures that changes to the standards can be supported with simple software upgrades, also minimising board area, power consumption, and cost – benefits ideal for high-volume portable consumer electronics.

The SE4120L is a highly integrated receiver with built-in support for software-defined satellite signal processing for both GPS and Galileo. The software architecture greatly reduces the load on host processors compared with conventional software approaches, and reduces cost and power consumption compared with dedicated hardware.

The receiver also includes a linear AGC and a multi-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) with low digital IF. The device sampling is software configurable and includes support for low bandwidth serialized multi-bit I/Q output. A PLL synthesizer and image reject mixer further reduce external component count to simplify integration. The IF filters are programmable in software to support GPS and Galileo simultaneously or GPS operation alone.

The SE4120L is supplied in a 4 x 4 x 0.9 mm QFN RoHS-compliant MSL1 package. The receiver is sampling now, with mass production scheduled for Q1 2007. The device is priced below US $3 in 100k unit quantities.



SiGe Semiconductor, Inc. and Swedish, Nordnav Technologies AB have just announced they have collaborated on a GPS/Galileo receiver for consumer electronic products that ..."provides the highest level of GPS performance today, along with a simple software upgrade to Galileo when the Galileo system becomes operational." It will be demonstrated at the ION conference this week in Fort Worth, Texas.

Nordnav have just released an ultra sensitive GPS receiver for indoor use, tracking signals to 170dBm or ten times weaker than any other receiver. "Indoor positioning is the next frontier in satellite navigation and is critical to improve the performance of portable navigators in mobile phones and PDAs.” they say.