The Galileo Research and Development Project GIGA
The acronym GIGA stands for "Galileo Integrated Georeference Applications". A goal of the project is to recognize, investigate and make public application types of Galileo for the user community within the energy industry.
The Kick-Off-Meeting of the project took place on September 8th, 2005. The GIGA project will run for 18 months. The project team headed by ascos, the satellite positioning service of E.ON Ruhrgas AG, consists of ALLSAT, VCS AG from Bochum, BKG (Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy in Germany) in Frankfurt, HiTec Marketing from Austria and the British Telecom.
GNSS is often used already today in the public utility industry in order to measure, to plan, to document, to monitor and to maintain networks. By launching Galileo and in combination with GPS and GLONASS it is expected to achieve a significant better availability of satellite signals - particularly in urban areas. Thus, an optimization of the network operation needs to be further investigated.
The GIGA project is divided into 3 phases:
- In the first phase the market of the energy industry as well as the applications being in use are analyzed.
- In the second phase 3 feasibility studies are realized: The first study supervised by British Telecom addresses means for the improvement of communication availability in difficult environments and assesses whether mobile positioning can eventually serve as a backup in case of GNSS unavailability. The second feasibility study supervised by ALLSAT addresses possibilities within the DGNSS service centers and at receivers to enhance the quality of information on users' side and to improve the availability of position information. The third study supervised by the BKG focusses on different dissemination concepts providing GNSS data and additional information to the user. Additionally, a functional demonstrator is developed, primarily realized to demonstrate the advantages of additional Quality of Service information and the benefits of already available EGNOS signals. Correction models and other possible sources of positioning errors are monitored. Derivative, possible improvements in the positioning accuracies using Reverse GNSS are assessed. Furthermore, benefits of continuous data storage are demonstrated.
- In the third phase a business plan based on the project results achieved before is developed. Thereby, European standards and regulatory as well as technical and commercial/organizational recommendations are the basis for a successful business model of a Galileo Service Provider in the energy industry.
