U.S., EU agree on GPS/Galileo joint design

By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- Electronic News, 7/30/2007

Bringing to an end months of talks, the United States and the European Union have announced their agreement to jointly adopt and provide an improved design for their respective global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals.

These signals will be implemented on the Galileo Open Service and the GPS IIIA new civil signal. The agreement announced on July 26 is aimed at ensuring that GPS and Galileo are compatible and interoperable at the user level.

Building on the cooperative agreement on GPS and Galileo signed between the two parties in June 2004, a joint compatibility and interoperability working group overcame technical challenges to design interoperable optimized civil signals that will also protect common security interests, according to a joint statement issued last week by the European Commission (EC) and the U.S. State Department.

The resulting GPS L1C signal and Galileo L1F signal have been optimized to use a multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) waveform. Future receivers using the MBOC signal should be able to track the GPS and/or Galileo signals with higher accuracy in challenging environments that include multipath, noise, and interference.

The EC and the State Department said that incorporating MBOC into both GPS and Galileo will enhance commercial opportunities for the development of new GNSS products and services by providing manufacturers and product designers will adequate lead time to ensure products developed will meet the needs of users around the world.

"The international GNSS community, including the U.S., will have full and transparent access to information on how to access Galileo and GPS services," EC Director General Matthias Ruete said in the statement. "This should facilitate the rapid acceptance of Galileo in global markets side by side with GPS."

"The U.S.-EU collaboration that produced this innovation and led to its joint adoption reflects the strong working relationships that we have developed on GPS and Galileo," U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Reno Harnish added in the statement. "This technical milestone represents the next step in our ongoing commitment to open standards and market-driven innovation that will benefit all users worldwide."