“Augmentation system” is claimed to be only three per cent of the cost of replicating Galileo as an independent UK facility
Despite being involved since its inception the UK pulled out of the European Union’s Galileo satellite navigation project in November 2018 over concerns that it would not be able to access secure aspects of the system following departure from the EU.
Prime minister Theresa May promised that it would develop its own alternative, but with the original project costing over £9bn, there have been persistent concerns over the cost of such project. Sussex University’s Prof Chris Chatwin and Dr Lasisi Lawal Salami, from Nigeria’s Obasanjo Space Center, have now proposed an alternative which they claim would cost around £300m yet would still meet the UK’s navigational needs in defence, aviation, maritime and location-based services for emergencies and crisis management. Moreover, they add, it would be five times more accurate than Galileo, with a resolution of 5cm.
In a paper in the Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Chatwin and Lasisi suggest a Satellite-based Augmentation System (SBAS) as a Navigational Overlay Service (NOS) on a hosted national satellite. This would take advantage of the UK’s continuing access to Galileo’s basic signal after Brexit, as Galileo is designed to be open-source; this signal is less accurate than the secure military signal from which it would be excluded.
“Our system can use the GPS or Galileo free signal or both and augments it to give it a more accurate signal that is comparable to the encrypted military signal,” explained Chatwin “The augmentation system has extremely accurate clocks so it provides an additional signal to the GPS signal and reduces the ambiguity of the location determination.”
The Sussex plan would see the UK launching three geosynchronous satellites to provide global coverage for the augmentation system in all regions apart from the extreme poles. It will also require an on-board augmentation system as a hoisted payload on a national satellite and commentary ground infrastructure in the UK.
“If we use augmentation we can greatly reduce costs from £7bn to £300m, but we still depend on the US or the EU for their free signal. In the end this is a decision about sovereignty. If we still believe that we are an independent military power, then we’d have to find considerable resources to build our own GNSS system. We could call it Newton,” Chatwin said.
The total price of this project would be only about three times the amount the UK has already set aside for feasibility study into developing its own independent satellite navigation system to replicate Galileo. Chatwin and Lasisi also believe that in collaborating with a spacefaring nation such as Nigeria, the UK would signal that is committed to opening up new research and industrial relationships beyond the EU; it could enter into a cooperative agreement to provide access to the NOS with a specific service coverage area, they suggest.
Dr Lasisi, Vice Convenor of the UN’s International Telecommunication Union and a former PhD student at Sussex University, said: “A partnership with Nigeria would have the additional benefit of signalling to the rest of the world that the UK has become a more outward looking economy after Brexit and opens up the opportunity for further scientific collaboration with the rest of the world beyond the EU.”
5cm resolution would take GPS to another level. It could tell you if you were in the wrong lane.
When there is fog at an airport and they cancel 80% of the flights, it isn’t landing and take off that is the problem. Aircraft can land and take off blind. The problem is taxiing. The aircraft on the ground can’t see each other, so they have to be much further apart, especially where taxiways cross.
If 5cm GPS is available, they just need to make sure every vehicle airside has GPS and a sender that tells the control tower where they are. They would also need one extra person for ground traffic control. Then it would operate like clockwork, even with zero visibility.
A partnership with Nigeria would be a grave mistake. When it comes to the defence of this country maybe we would be better off spending part of the 39million on defence instead of paying of the EU for what?. A better deal all around.
Bravo! Well done!
More scraping the bottom of the Brexit Bargain Bin.
Stay in, get the REAL thing
Yup – will cost us 10 x as much and if the whole sorry mess has taught us one thing – Europe is not an ally. If a proper war kicked off – someone would detonate a nuke in space and the whole GPS system would be dead anyway. So this looks a better bet
“someone would detonate a nuke in space”? I think we might have a lot more to worry about than GPS if that happened…
Yes, stay in, use the lower resolution data from Galileo, but build our own high -res system as well using the unemployed car workers- of which there will be many more.
The problem will then be that we will have to develop a Red Dwarf-style orbiting scrap collector, before we have a Sandra Bullock moment.
Clive speaks sense!
good idea, why not also utilise public signals from the Russian and Chinese systems too?
I suppose it will be OK for the navy on the open seas & air force up in the sky but will it work for the army operating in wooded or hilly areas where they may well be out of line of sight of satelites in a synchronous orbit?
This already exists as EGNOS, or European Global Navigation Overlay System.
But ultimately, accuracy is not as important as integrity and availability. Both of these can be compromised on the civilian versions, through jamming or spoofing.
Of course, if we want the ultimate integrity and availability, then how about a Loran C system? Tried and tested, cheap, but only accurate to about 200m.
“Engineers do for 10 pence, what any fool can do for £1.00”
Nevil Shute Norway, Engineer (actually mathematician) turned author used to arr this quotation to the start of all his books. Each have the theme of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, the mundane made magnificent.
Surely Japan, Canada, Australia and maybe India & Brazil would be better partners for such a Satellite positioning system to get a dozen augmented satellites up above the planet.
Why is a partnership with Nigeria such a bad idea? It’s the biggest democracy in Africa and has so many ties with the UK it is unlikely we would ‘fall out’ with the country — if only we can get over our colonial history and move into the 21st century world.
Brexit has really made people lose their minds.
Hang working with some of the world’s leading nations who happen to be our next door neighbours and lets start working with Nigeria on defense!?