Satelles announced in October 2021 that the company had been awarded a contract by the European Commission (EC) to participate in a demonstration and evaluation of alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies. A recent Inside GNSS story entitled “Brussels View: Europe’s Sharp Eye on Positioning, Navigation and Timing” provides an update on this important European initiative.
The article states that “the testing campaign at Ispra revealed perfectly impressive performance by the Satelles system in indoor and outdoor timing and positioning trials” and goes on to quote Satelles CEO, Mike O’Connor, from his remarks at a demonstration event held on May 18: “LEO satellites are 25 times closer to the Earth than your typical medium Earth orbit [MEO], GNSS satellites, and they deliver a signal that is 1,000 times stronger. This high signal power allows us to penetrate deep indoors where GNSS doesn’t reach.”
A full report on the results of the study is expected to be published by the European Commission by the end of 2022.
NOTE: In addition to being posted online, the story also appears in the July/August digital issue of Inside GNSS.
UPDATE (December 2022): The EC created a web page that explains their alternative PNT testing and recaps the Demo Day held in May 2022. With STL being included in the EC’s study, Satelles was a participant at the Demo Day event. Additionally, the EC’s new target publication date for their final report is Q1 2023.
