Satelles is one of six companies — and the only U.S.-based firm — awarded contracts by the European Commission (EC) for a demonstration and evaluation of alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) technologies.
Earlier this year, Satelles responded to a call for tenders from the EC which aimed to “analyse the technologies, which could deliver positioning, and/or timing information, independently from GNSS, to be effective backup in the event of GNSS disruption, and if possible to be able to provide PNT in the environments where GNSS cannot be delivered.” The EC’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS) announced the award on 11-Oct-2021.
The evaluation will last for several months and culminate with a public event in Italy in either April or May 2022, with STL from Satelles being one of the technologies to be demonstrated. A report detailing the EU’s conclusions from the demonstration is expected to be published about one month after the public event.
We are pleased to see that the EC has taken the same kind of a broad approach as the U.S. Department of Transportation did in their own technology demonstration by evaluating multiple forms of technology for GNSS backup, including LEO satellite-based, terrestrial transmitters, and network-based technologies.
UPDATE: Additional details are included in stories published by GPS World and Inside GNSS.
