GAMMA - Assisted GALILEO/GPS/EGNOS Mass Market Receiver

A combined GALILEO/GPS/EGNOS user receiver represents a key technology for the upcoming European satellite navigation system GALILEO. The receiver is the main physical interface between the system and the user. It transforms the GALILEO signal-in-space into services for the citizens. Within the project GAMMA a consortium of nine industrial and research partners, lead by Fraunhofer IIS, located in Nuremberg, Germany, develop an assisted GALILEO/GPS/EGNOS receiver prototype and perform research on the development of a Multichannel GALILEO/GPS/EGNOS Signal Generator for the design and evaluation of the receiver. For the assistance data link an UMTS communications link will be emulated. The GNSS Signal Generator will be responsible for GPS/GALILEO signal generation and the correction and acquisition aiding data provision. Further work encompasses studies of indoor navigation capabilities, reconfigurable and hence reusable digital hardware components, assisted acquisition concepts and finally low cost optimizations. The GAMMA receiver will fulfill both main requirements of the second call of GALILEO JOINT UNDERTAKING to elaborate core technologies and to implement a low cost/low power receiver solution for mass market applications. Low cost and a high degree of integration is mainly dependent on the design of the RF-front-end. The project was started in Nov. 2005 and will run for 2 years until Oct. 2007. The initial work was focused on application scenarios, specification and system design. Now the receiver front-end and baseband solutions will be developed, complemented by the research on the development of a GNSS Signal Generator and an emulated assistance data link for a complete end-to-end demonstration. The project is funded under a contract of the GALILEO JOINT UNDERTAKING. The paper presents the main system and receiver specifications, the selected architecture concept and first simulation results of the envisaged component developments of the low cost GALILEO/GPS/EGNOS receiver.