Reference Measurement Platforms for Localisation in Ground Transportation

Abstract

Although the importance of satellite based localisation has been rising in the last years to a significant level in safety related applications like transportation systems, it seems obvious that saturation of sales volume for those systems has not been reached yet. Due to the development and set up of the European satellite based localisation system GALILEO, new services and accuracy in localization open new market sectors. GALILEO will provide five different services with different performances and characteristics that will be suitable for different ranges of applications. These services will be: Open Services, Safety of Life Services, Commercial Services, Public Regulated Service and Rescue Service. The Safety of Life Service is the key service for most safety-related applications due to its guaranteed characteristics integrity, availability and accuracy. A new important aspect for the usage of these services is their formal approval by a safety authority. Regarding this approval some intensive analysis has to be undertaken regarded from the angle of safety and reliability. Considering this analysis, following leading points are of eminent importance possibilities for the (practical) analysis of the reliability and availability of the localisation information provided by a receiver set up of a regulatory framework in combination with specific procedures for the evaluation according to the requirements of the safety authorities. For the field of transportation it is important to know, that there exist multiple safety authorities: (nearly) each mode of transportation (road, rail, water, air) has at least one of them. In the past it was not necessary to set up a domain spanning approval for components because it was not of economic interest. In the future this interest will emerge from new technological possibilities. According to this, the present situation may change with the upcoming GALILEO system because of its new functionalities and accuracy: at least the key component of all applications will have to be used in all modes of transportation – this will be a receiver for the satellite signals. The two aspects mentioned above will be discussed. In the section “Reference Localization Platforms”, the systems for the analysis for the availability and accuracy of the satellite signals by means of a special reference localization platform will be discussed. Figure 1 shows the generally concept. The first results on the topic of the fusion/structural comparison of regulatory frameworks will be subject of the second section “Regulatory Frameworks”.