ESA awards contract for the development of Galileo User Receivers to consortium led by Septentrio

ESA has awarded a contract for the C0 phase of the GALILEO Test User Segment to a consortium led by Septentrio, a leading European designer and manufacturer of satellite navigation receivers. Under this contract which is worth almost 3 million EURO, the consortium, which is composed of Septentrio, Rockwell Collins France, QinetiQ, Delft University of Technology, Ursa Minor, OMP, Deimos, SkySoft, Sagem and FDC, will start the work on the development of the first Galileo User Receivers.

Galileo is Europe’s global navigation satellite system, expected to be interoperable with GPS and GLONASS, which will provide a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control. Galileo is expected to be fully operational by 2008 with a constellation of 30 satellites. The Test User Receivers will be the very first Galileo receivers, which play a crucial role in the development and performance validation of the Galileo system.

Because of the different services provided with the Galileo system, the large number of applications to support and the need for compatibility with existing GNSS services such as GPS and EGNOS, these very advanced receivers will need to support a wide variety of different configurations. At the same time, they will form the basis for early availability of the different types of receivers that will ultimately launch the market for Galileo services.

This contract is a very important recognition of the technical competence of the consortium organized by Septentrio, says Peter Grognard, Managing Director of Septentrio.

As a European GNSS receiver company, Septentrio has always actively supported European activities in the area of satellite navigation. We are thrilled by the opportunity to lead such a strong team to contribute to the next phase of satellite navigation development in Europe. For more information, on the latest GPS News see hand held gps.

Author Notes:

Allan Orchard contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com.  A wealth of information about Global Positioning Systems for commercial or personal use.