SAT-SURFING in Vietnam

After the successful workshop carried out in Thailand at the AIT (see previous post), the tutoring activities continued on 24 and 25 November in the framework of the PROGENY project, introducing SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER tools also in Vietnam. A second seminar, hosted at the Hanoi University of Technology (HUT), has been organized thanks to the cooperation between the ISMB and Prof. Nguyen Thi Hoang Lan, Dr. Ngo Hong Son and other hard working people of HUT. The two day seminar has been managed by two members of the NavSAS Group (Fabrizio Dominici e Davide Margaria) and it included a presentation of background, features, and potential applications of these educational tools. Attending such a workshop, the students of HUT had the opportunity to face real measurements on GNSS signals, understanding the most important receiver performance parameters through extended practical exercises and open question sessions.


In spite of the short time allocated to the workshop, it has been a successful initiative, achieving all its initial objectives. In fact, the students had the opportunity to see and to try on their desks all the potentialities of both SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER, stimulating their interest on GNSS technologies. Very positive feedbacks have been obtained from the students, who would like to spend more time using these tools. In addition, some interesting suggestions and ideas for future developments have been collected.

We hope that SAT-SURF and SAT-SURFER could be a first step in the “ocean” of GNSS signals for many other students in the World!

PROGENY Pilot Project in Thailand

On November 21-22, Fabrizio Dominici and Davide Margaria presented the SAT-SURF & SAT-SURFER solution at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) of Bangkok. The two days workshop was carried out under the Progeny project (funded by the European GNSS Supervisory Authorithy) and organized by ISMB and AIT with the support of Prof. Nitin K. Tripathi and Prof. Kiyoshi Honda. The seminar has been attended by 45 students from AIT.

DAY 1: The day started with an introduction of the NavSAS Group research activities. In particular it has been showed the background for the SAT-SURF & SURFER realization, providing also an overview of the NAVKIT. Moreover in the morning the presentation included details about architecture, functionalities and application fields for both the hardware and software platforms (SAT-SURF & SAT-SURFER). The morning session has been concluded with the setup and configuration of the demonstration platform with a quick view of the main features previously described. In the afternoon it has been faced the first data collections and the solution of some exercises provided with SAT-SURFER.

DAY 2: The exercise session has been concluded in the second day proposing additional exercises and providing the solutions. The students have been also assisted for the setup and configuration of the educational platform on their PC. The seminar ended with a fill out of the tutorial evaluation questionnaires and an open question session for deepening on SAT-SURF & SAT- SURFER.

We hope that the positive feedbacks and the useful suggestions received by the students can feed the discussion on this blog and help to learn how to practically SURF with GNSS!!!

PNT challanges and Opportunities Symposium @ Stanford University

Fabio Dovis has been invited to attend a workshop at the Stanford University, PNT challanges and Opportunities Symposium, organized by the Stanford Center for Position, Navigation and Time. The workshop attendance is limited to 150 people and the symposium gathers high level speakers both involved in the GPS system development and in the GPS market.

It's being an awesome chance to get pieces of information on GPS future from the US standpoint, and an opportunity for good networking.

N-GENE presentation @ the Asilomar conference

Today, dr. Fabio Dovis of the NavSAS group presented at the IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers 2008 a paper on the novel algorithms implemented in the N-GENE fully software receiver.

The paper is entitled Efficient Signal Acquisition for a Real Time GPS/Galileo Software receiver and is co-authored by Maurizio Fantino, Marco Pini and Fabio Dovis.

It describes some architectural choices for acquisiton, in order match the real time constraints, keeping the performance level high, and for the tracking in order to make it robust to lock loss at low C/N0.l

The presentation was hosted in a special session, where also other papers reated to GNSS signal processing have been presented by University of New South Wales, Stanford University and University of Westminster.

Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer Suite brought to life!

Education on GNSS topics is sometimes difficult and often lacks of practical experience. In order to train students and professionals to face real issues and manage satellite navigation data, the NavSAS group developed Sat-Surf and Sat-Surfer: the Training Board & the Software Suite for GNSS Training!
This solution includes hardware and software facilities as well as practical exercises. It is dedicated to the GNSS students but it can be also useful for all the professionals in the field of navigation.

For a complete GNSS training the theory is provided by the NAVKIT distance learning tool, and the practical skills are trained by means of the Sat-Surf & Sat-Surfer suite. The Sat-Surf is a compact, lightweight and versatile device able to accommodate different GPS receiver. It can embed different kinds of GPS receivers, such as: the new uBlox5 Galileo Ready, the uBlox – Antaris4, the Falcom JP13 LP based on SiRF Star III technology and the Falcom JP15 based on SiRF Star II. In the next months the platform will be adapted to accommodate also other chipsets.

Sat-Surf includes communication capabilities using a GSM/GPRS quad-band unit that enables the development of innovative A-GPS strategies as well as the study of DGPS techniques.

The Sat-Surfer software thanks to its flexibility allows the interface to the Sat-Surf and includes the possibility of data collection and storage.Hardware and software are complemented by a set of proposed exercises, included in the package, that ranges from a simple level of usage, to an advanced for development of original navigation algorithms for data processing.

More information are available on the official web site: http://www.navsas.ismb.it/sat-surf or contacting us at: sat-surfer@ismb.it

IRGAL Workshop

Today in Torino a major event is concluding the activities of the IRGAL project. The IRGAL project has been co-funded by the European Union, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Piedmont Region within the DOCUP 2000-2006 Mis. 3.4 programme and aimed at increasing the competitive edge of the Piedmont ICT district in the crucial areas of Time and Receivers that can be regarded as the core of satellite navigation. Specifically, research was focused on the areas of atomic clocks, optical links for time transfer, GNSS SW receiver and HW RF components with the objective of developing innovative technologies and finalizing them up to pre-competitive prototypes.

In the demo session the software receiver developed by the NavSAS group is presented, working in real time on the L1 band.

160 attendees made the workshop very successfull, demonstrating the capability of the sinergies between research and industry in the Turin area on the GNSS topics.

ION GNSS conference closed

The ION GNSS conference finished today, and as every year it has been an amazing experience of scientific growth, discussion and networking with the best people in the world dealing with Satellite Navigation.

The NavSAS team had the chance to present 8 papers (eventually all the alternates became oral presentations):

• Signal Compression for an Efficient and Simplified GNSS Signal Parallel Acquisition: M. Nicola, A. Nordio, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; M. Fantino, M. Pini, P. Mulassano, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy
• Reduced Complexity Circuits for Serial Code Phase Search Acquisition: G. Girau, L. Lo Presti, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; M. Fantino, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy
• User Terminal/Local Element System for Network Based Positioning using RTK/EGNOS in Urban Environment: G. Marucco, C. Porporato, M. De Agostino, A.M. Manzino, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; F. Dominici, A. Defina, K. Charqane, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy
• Cooperative LBS for Secure Transport System: A. Tomatis, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; G. Pau, University of California, Los Angeles; P. Mulassano, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy; F. Dovis, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• An Interference Impact Assessment Model for GNSS Signals: B. Motella, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy; S. Savasta, F. Dovis, D. Margaria, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• The IRGAL Project: Innovation and Research on Galileo in Piedmont: M. Pini, M. Fantino, P. Mulassano, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy; L. Lo Presti, Politechico di Torino, Italy; L. Bragagnini, Consorzio Torino Time, Italy
• Differential Data/Pilot Joint Acquisition Strategies for Indoor Galileo E1 Signal: T.H. Ta, L. Lo Presti, F. Dovis, D. Margaria, R. Lesca, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• GNSS Signal Analysis and Monitoring Tools Developed within the SWAN Project: E. Falletti, B. Motella, Istituto Superiore Mario Boella, Italy; D. Margaria, CNIT-Politecnico di Torino, Italy; L. Giugno, Wiser, Italy; M. Luise, CNIT-Universita degli Studi di Pisa, Italy; R. Marracci, Intecs, Italy; F. Longo, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

and another paper was presented by our colleagues of the geomatics department of Politecnico

• The New L2C GPS Code: Signal and Positioning Quality Analysis: M. De Agostino, M. Piras, C. Porporato, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Next year the conference will be again in Savannah, and we will be ready to the funny experience of getting the boat to reach the convention center on the other side of the river facing the city !

ION GNSS conference started

Today the ION GNSS conference started in Savannah, GA. more than 1000 attendees are expected, and 6 people of the NavSAS group are there to give presentations, discuss cooperations, and collect pieces of information on the latest developments in the Satellite Navigation fields.
Again, an outstanding experience for all the researchers of Politecnico and ISMB.

NavSAS at the GNSS Summer School

Here is the report of the first day at the Second International Summer School on Global Satellite Navigation Systems by Gianluca Falco, a NavSAS Ph.D.

After a long trip, finally I reached Berchtsgaden, a quite small village close to the Bavarian Alps that is the established site for the GNSS summer school. Few minutes after my arrival, I had the chance to meet some participants to this school. They come from a lot of countries spread all over the world: Germany (of course), Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Romania, Russia, also outside Europe such as Brazil, Australia, USA, and even from Rwanda! I spoke with lots of them: four of them work for Septentrio company in Belgium, other guys work for DLR (German Aerospace Agency) testing GNSS system. Then I talked with Russian guys that work for the Russian Space Agency in Moscow (of course the navigation system they use is GLONASS).

At 6 PM professor Guenther Hein started the opening ceremony.
He provided us an overview of what we'll do in the next ten days of the school, speaking about the content of the lectures we'll follow. A very interesting topic of his speech is that we'll have the chance to receive and test a real Galileo signal computing the user's position thanks to three pseudo-like satellites set up on the top of the mountains nearby Berchtsgaden.

Then he introduced three other famous professors: Prof. Per Enge of Standford University, Prof. Michel Bousquet of ISAE (French Aerospace Engineering Institute) and Prof. R. Grohe of the Technical University in Aachen.

Then we moved to the Congress Hall to follow a lecture given by Thomas Reiter, a former astronaut for ESA who experienced twice how life in space is. In fact he was on board engineer for the Euromir mission in March 1995 when he spent 179 days on board of the space station. Then a couple of years ago he took part to the Astrolab mission, the first European long-term mission on board the international space station. During this lecture he showed us some videos about life on board a space station and what are the tasks that each astronauts has to fulfill every day to maintain a right working of the space station. Then he explained us that a lot of experiment were made inside the space station: biologic ones (about the study of the growth of some vegetables and to make them more robust against disease), tests about plasma particles (used for example to manufacture more advanced semiconductors) and, last but not least, lot of tests on human beings focused, in particular, on heart check up.

NavSAS Mid Term meeting.

Yesterday the NavSAS group had the Mid Term plenary meeting. It has been a chance to verify the personal and team objectives foreseen for the 2008.

The meeting aimed also at sharing among people of the NavSAS who work on different sub-topics the milestone achieved by everyone, sharing some of the good results, and also the weaknesses still to be improved.
Any weakness is in fact also an opportunity.

There are still 6 months for everyone to achieve the year's objectives. Now back to work !!!!

NavSAS at the International Training Course in India

Prof. Letizia Lo Presti and dr. Beatrice Motella are currently in Ahmedabad India teaching some lesson at the International Training Course on satellite navigation and location based services.

The course is held at the United Nations- affiliated Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP), in Ahmedabad, India.


This Training Course is co-sponsored by the Government of the United States of America through the ICG and organized by the UN-affiliated Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP) and will make a major contribution to capacity building in the use of GNSS in various areas of applications.

The UN-OOSA states that this is the first activity in a series of training courses to be organized in the field of GNSS applications in UN-affiliated Regional Centres, and will start the development of a model education curriculum in GNSS supplementing the already existing four education curricula in space science and technology. This is also the first activity to pursue the prospective acting of Regional Centres of Excellence as ICG Information Centres.

A Special Session on GNSS at IEEE CCNC

The Consumer Communications and Networking Conference is an annual event organized by the IEEE Communication Society in Las Vegas, in the same week of the Consumer Electronics Showcase.

http://www.ieee-ccnc.org/

As happened for the 2008 conference (held in January), I've been asked to organize a special session "Beyond GPS: Where Navigation Meets Consumer Communications" for the 2009 conference, addressing the sinergies between navigation/positioning and mass market terminals . This year the special session has been one of the most succesfull as a number of attendees, and I believe also for the quality of the papers presented.

Not to say that the conference is in Vegas, that it's always fun (at least for few days !).


Here is the pic of the people of the NavSAS group attending the 2008 IEEE CCNC, Fabrizio Dominici, Simone Savasta and myself together with prof. Dennis Akos of the University of Colorado @ Boulder, who was my co-session chair.

The call for papers of the special session can be found here.

Deadline for papers abstracts is June 29, looking forward to receiving a lot of submission !!

What are the European Technology Platforms (ETPs) and how Galileo can benefit from them?

European Commission launched the European Technology Platforms (http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/home_en.html) that have the main objective to provide a framework for stakeholders, led by industry, to define research and development priorities, timeframes and action plans on a number of strategically important issues where achieving Europe's future growth and competitiveness. ETPs have the potential to contribute significantly to the renewed Lisbon Strategy (see http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/index_en.htm ) and to the development of a European Research Areas of knowledge for growth including satellite navigation.

Among the other it has been in fact created an ETP called ESTP (European Space Technology Platform), see http://www.estp-space.eu/. It is managed by European Space Agency and it is declared that it aims to create a non-dependent technology portfolio facilitating European strategic independence for the access to and exploration in space, and to support the development of next-generation technologies best serving Europe’s ambitions in space-related sectors like Galileo and GMES.

Reading the available documents on the web site, it is not clear which benefits the ESTP generated on Galileo. Among the list of stakeholders, is there someone having an experience of cooperation in this ETP?

Expanding the Navigation Lab

Today we started moving some of the NavSAS people to a new room that has been added to the Navigation Lab.
Finally we will have a less crowded environment for working and a better organization of all the test equipment, that in the last months grew a lot.
The old room of the lab will be hopefully less messy of cables, connectors, boards and receivers, at least for some weeks !

The new room is very nice and it is painted with the NavSAS colours. However, once all the people who are now hosted in other labs will have moved there, it will be fully occupied already... We need start working for finding a third room in the next months...... :-)

GIOVE-B succesfully launched

Giove-B launch was succesfull. The full report of the mission can be found on the ESA website.

The GIOVE-B satellite was lofted into a medium altitude orbit around the earth by a Soyuz/Fregat rocket departing from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan by launch operator Starsem. Lift-off occurred at 04:16 local time on 27 April (00:16 Central European Summer Time). The Fregat upper stage performed a series of manoeuvres to reach a circular orbit at an altitude of about 23 200 km, inclined at 56 degrees to the Equator, before safely delivering the satellite into orbit some 3 hours and 45 minutes later. The two solar panels that generate electricity to power the spacecraft deployed correctly and were fully operational by 05:28 CEST.

We look forward now to the switch on of the payload, when finally we will have available a signal-in-space very close to the final Galileo signal to test.

GIOVE-B launch: another step for Galileo

Today we will have evidence that the Galileo programme is actually progressing. After stops, delays, doubts and concerns the day for the 2nd Galileo Satellite has come: GIOVE-B will be launched tonight.


Beginning at 23:35 CEST on Saturday night, ESA will be providing live video coverage of the final preparations, lift off and climb out of the Soyuz launcher from Baikonur via the GIOVE-B website.

The second test satellite hosts a new on-board clock and provide a signal matching the Galileo signal speciications; I am sure this will create many opportunities for research and new results, hopefully boosting again the interest towards Galileo.

Toulouse Space Show - day 4 -NavSAS leaves a sign

The ENC conference is finished, and we are back home after a busy week.

However this last day has been outstanding for the NavSAS group.

In fact, Riccardo Lesca won the best presentation award for his paper.

The technical committee gave 3 awards (1 per day) and Riccardo's presentation was on Wednesday, the most crowded day, with many sessions running in parallel both during the morning and the afternoon. Congratulations Riccardo !

Here is the video of the award ceremony

This success of Riccardo must be counted also as a success of the specializing Master on Navigation and Related Applications taken by Riccardo during the first edition.
Six former students of the Master were attending the ENC conference: Tung Hai Ta, currently getting a Ph.D with the NavSAS at Politecnico, Giovanni Vecchione, working for GMV, Andrea Samperi working for Sofiter as a consultant for Thales Alenia Space, Federico Giuntini, working for the VEGA group on the Giove-B system segment, and Soumaya Zariri, currently gettting a Ph.D from Montbeliard University. We can only be happy that our students are fully exploiting the knowledge acquired dring the Master for contributing to the development of GNSS !

Next year the ENC conference will be hosted in Naples, at the Parthenope University. Let's keep our finger crossed that Italy can offer a high quality conference as the one we attended this year.

Toulouse Space Show - day 3

Another day at the ENC conference is gone. This morning Massimiliano Spelat and Filippo Margary presented the GAL-PMI project, and in the afternoon it has been also the time for the poster session including the work of Andrea Tomatis, Paolo Mulassano and Diego Orgiazzi.

Finally in the late afternoon we had some spare time that we spend visting a bit of downtown Tolouse. We had dinner in the Capitol square and eventually after 3 day sMassimiliano (who is very picky about the food) ate something: the Tolouisene cassoulet, a complex casserole of white beans, lamb, pork, sausage, and poultry.

Toulouse Space Show - day 2

Today, it has been a long and hard day. The technical sessions started, and we had the chance to attend to several interesting presentations.

On the side of this, we had many chances to talk to friends and people and for sure several things will happen for the NavSAS in the future. It has been for sure a fruitful day.

But it was also the day of the NavSAS oral presentations. Riccardo had to face a so committed chairman that has been able to fit in the regular scheduling of the session also the alternate paper, still finishing earlier than expected. In order to do this he stopped all the presenters in a sharp way 5 minutes in advance with no warnings. So who wants to know how Riccardo presentation is going to end, will have to attend the PLANS conference in May... The presentation by Riccardo was fine even if "ended" at slide 15 out of 20.

Tung did an awesome presentation, impressing all the audience. Relaxed, precise, professional, ready to answer the questions. Great job, fully compliant with the NavSAS high standards !

Then we attended the Gala dinner at the Space City, a park hosting a full model of the Ariane launcher, of the MIR station, and several multimedia amusement for the vistors.


Let say that the "dinner" left us still hungry..... for more science tomorrow . There is for sure still some SPACE !!

Blogging from Toulouse Space Show

Today we want to start using this site as an actual Blog, posting our feelings, comments and news from the ENC-GNSS conference and the Toulouse Space Show.

The NavSas team attending the conference is kind of relevant: Letizia Lo Presti, Riccardo Lesca, Davide Margaria, Ta Tung and myself from Politecnico, Massimiliano Spelat from TorinoWireless, and Luigi Bragagnini from the Consortium Torino Time. There are also several NavSAS friends as Gianluca Boiero from Telecom Italia, Francesco Longo from ASI, Marracci from Intecs and others.

Today some of us attended the GNSS Signal Workshop, where several interesting presentations suggested several ideas for future research works.

Tung attended a couple of interesting tutorials.

Then all together we attended the opening session, with a nice speech from Vidal Ashkenazy, brilliant, funny and smart as usual.

The official opening included several welcome speeches by local politicians and by the ministry of research and higher education. The presence of press and TV has been really impressive due to the importance given to the event; France is really determined to maintain a prominent role in Space development, and keeps investing in its outstanding Toulouse space district.

The funny part of the opening has been the breaks between the speeches, thanks to 2 singers, performing songs on space subjects (watch the video).

Now it’s time for the welcome cocktail , some dinner and then time to finalize the presentations for tomorrow when the technical sessions will start.

News and rumors from the ENC:

- we officially know now that the next year the ENC will be at the Pathenope University in Naples from the 3rd to the 6th of May 2009. Many people met at the conference and, I have to say, myself too have some concerns about the place (not a conference center) and dates (3rd May is a Sunday !) . We will see what is going to be presented during the last day, even if the presentation by the Italian Institute of Navigation is reported in the program as TBC.

NAV-COM convergence and customer needs

One day all our mobile phones and vehicles will be equipped with a GNSS receiver coupled with communication capabilities. Exploiting this convergence new Value-Added Services will be possible both in the field of entertainment (location-based contents, games, chats, geotagging and sharing,…) and in the field of “utility” (traffic info, tracking for personal safety, location-based charging,…). In the end, the mass market growth will be driven by those services that will be able to improve the way we experience the world around us supporting our day to day and social activities. What’s your “need”?

NAV-COM convergence pave the way for Galileo adoption

The convergence of positioning and communication capabilities seems to be a key element for the growth of Navigation services and will help bring Galileo into the market in later years.
The rising availability of connected portable navigation devices (PNDs like TomTom) and AGPS-enabled mobile phones (e.g. Nokia 6110, N95) is a fact of the market. Which will be the winner? Do you prefer using your mobile phone as a Navigator, or do you prefer to be connected when you are navigating with your PND?

Forecasting the evolutions

Today the GPS satellite SVN32 will be set to unhealty. There is a news on the web discussing the fact that such a decision could be related to the fact that the control segment of GPS could have issues in managing 32 satellites (since February 26, the SVN23 broadcasting PRN32 was set to healty).
I believe this is probably a matter of some trivial issues related to numbering and size of registers s and not certainly due to the capability of the US to manage 32 satellites. Nevertheless, it makes me wonder how difficult it is to design systems that are expected to last for several years, and how it must be done with a good forecasting not only of the market but also of the technology for the years to come...
And I also wonder if Galileo design is looking forward to the upgreadability of the signals and of the system in order to cope with the evolutions that would keep it at the leading edge.

Location-Based Gaming: is that a market for Galileo and GPS?

Since the decision to set up the Galileo Programme much attention has been dedicated to the evaluation of potential new markets for satellite navigation. Also the latest call for proposal issued by the GSA (Galileo Supervisory Authority) has been clearly focused on mass-market applications (the call closed on February the 29^th, 2008). Apart the well known applications like tracking&tracing, fleet management, road pricing and many other do you think the Location-Based Gaming can become a business opportunity?
A LBG (Location-Based Game) or LEG (Location-Enabled Game) is one in which the game evolves and progresses on the basis of player's location. Thus, location-based games almost always support some kind of positioning technology like GNSS (but not only).
Would you please help us in understanding the potential market? Can you contribute with some LBG examples (web sites) or ideas to be implemented?

Here is one famous LBG named Pac-Manhattan (see http://www.pacmanhattan.com)

Is the GSA (GNSS Supervisory Authority) a necessary body or European Parliament has to abolish it?

In January 2008 the European Parliament’s Industry Committee proposed actions amending the EC’s draft regulation for deployment and commercial operation of Galileo. Among these the Industry Committee is proposing to abolish GSA (former GJU – Galileo Joint Undertaking) that originally had the goal to implement the PPP (Private Public Partnership). GSA is now still needed considering that PPP did not succeed? ESA (European Space Agency) can set up and after operate the Galileo systems by its own without a direct control from EC?

The final vote on the future of GSA will take place on February 18^th, but in the meantime GSA is publishing several calls for proposals and call for tenders using the EC FP7 budget! GSA is then creating opportunities for researches and companies with the aim of pushing on Galileo technologies…

In synthesis, can EC finance Galileo without a direct control on it?

Now online!

The first Galileo blog is now online. A way to share opinions, comments, and visions...