EGNOS will allow European businesses, service providers and users to capitalise much more extensively and much more rapidly on existing navigational signals from GPS and GLONASS satellites, especially for safety critical applications.
EGNOS is a key stepping stone, allowing more global users, and Europeans in particular, to become part of today's rapidly expanding satellite radionavigation market. That market already includes augmented GPS services such as the US WAAS services and similar services in Japan and Canada.
EGNOS offers improved performance
EGNOS, with its geostationary satellites and complex network of ground stations, will deliver more accurate positioning to greater Europe than is possible with GPS or GLONASS alone, as well as an accurate estimate of errors, and warning of disruption to a satellite signal within six seconds.
Unlike GPS, EGNOS will offer integrity of signal, increased accuracy, coverage and a service level agreement (e.g. alert within specified time). This makes it suitable to provide a number of navigation services. For the most common applications, EGNOS gives a positioning accuracy of one to three metres, compared to the less accurate 10 to 15 m provided by GPS alone.
EGNOS already delivering public and private benefits
Thanks to its increased reliability, EGNOS makes possible a number of efficiency gains and cost-savings across the industries where it is used:
Aviation -
More landings under severe atmospheric conditions and at less well-equipped airports means increased capacity, benefiting both airport and airline operators. Curved approaches and more efficient routes will save fuel and decrease noise to populated areas near airfields. Over time, it will also become possible to phase-out some expensive ground based navaids infrastructure and to free valuable radio spectrum that can be exploited for new/other services.
EGNOS will help increase capacity at airports © Peter Gutierrez
Road -
Some countries have already implemented kilometre-based charging systems relying on GNSS, specifically for heavy goods vehicles on inter-urban motorways. Urban congestion charging schemes are already in use. Directive 2004/52 requires all new EFC systems to use one or more of the following technologies: satellite navigation, cellular network telephony, dedicated short-range communication or a combination of these. Satellite navigation is recommended for its flexibility and its best fit with European charging policy, being infrastructure-free and easily expandable by nature. It allows varying pricing schemes, interoperability and intelligent transport system services.
Rail transport -
Preliminary studies show land-based signalling equipment expenditure, as well as associated maintenance costs, can be reduced. For example, 50% of trackside equipment could be eliminated, generating a savings of €72.5 million from 2002 onwards.
Commercial Service -
EGNOS provides a terrestrial commercial data service called the EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS). EDAS disseminates EGNOS data in real time and is the single point of access for the data collected and generated by the EGNOS infrastructure.
Agriculture (I) -
Under Europe's Common Agriculture Policy, GPS is routinely used to verify farmers' declarations of land parcel size. Sampling surveys carried out across the EU 27 are typically dogged by unreliability problems, necessitating repeat surveys, and accuracy problems, especially for commonly found small field sizes. In recent surveys, an EGNOS receiver was used and a three-to-fourfold improvement was seen in field area determination. In addition, the high signal reliability reduces the risk of having to revisit the site or repeat the survey with its associated costs.
Agriculture (II) -
Precision farming guided by the EGNOS signal is possible across Europe. This promises significant productivity increases, e.g. seed and fertiliser optimisation.
