ESA – Green Light for the Polish Navigation Projects
We are getting closer to implementation of the Polish test environments at the ESA laboratory. It was in late March, when the ESA representatives issued an approval concerning the important stages of the FLIGhT and TEcHNO projects pursued by Astri Polska. The former one is planned to be handed off until the end of this year.
European Navigation Laboratory (ENL) is a part of the ESA’s ESTEC research and development facility. The lab is the largest facility of its kind in Europe. Soon, hybrid navigation and GNSS receivers, with the latter components being designed for space applications, would be tested with the use of test environments designed by the Polish engineers. Following the design stages evaluation, ESA’s technical representatives expressed their positive assessment for both systems, which made it possible for both projects to enter the implementation phase.
The fact that ESA makes use of solutions delivered by the Polish companies more and more often shall be undoubtedly interpreted as a success achieved by the domestic entities. GNSS is an important area of the activities we’re undertaking. We are happy with the fact that our solutions in this field will be utilized by ESA.
Integration of Test Environments at the ESTEC Research Centre
FLIGhT (Flexible environment for GNSS Testing) project’s objective is to create adaptive and flexible test environment that would allow for integration of infrastructure at the ESA’s ENL. Secondly, the test environment would constitute a good platform for carrying out testing pertaining to the GNSS receivers.
FLIGhT system will be used by ESA to test the GNSS receivers designed for space applications. It is expected that this test environment would be handed off to ESA during the last quarter of this year. This is important, as our test platform would be used by ESA to carry out their tasks on a daily basis.
Test Environment and Algorithms for Hybrid Navigation
TEcHNO (Test Environment for Hybrid NavigatiOn) is a major project in the domain of hybrid navigation, in case of which the goal is to make use of the benefits provided by fusion of GNSS and LTE technologies. Similarly as in case of the FLIGhT project, the initiative is to result in development of software that would make it possible to generate test scenarios and integrate the devices that simulate the navigation signals. The system is going to be tested and integrated at the ESTEC research centre too. The project is scheduled to be finalized in June 2019.
TEcHNO initiative will make it possible to assess how effective it is going to be to fuse the standard GNSS positioning methods with a technology the primary use of which is to transfer data – LTE. It turns out that use of frequencies usual for telecommunication in the navigation domain makes it possible to position the given object in space with a greater degree of accuracy and temporal continuity. This may create new possibilities in this area, considering the emergence of the 5G technology.