Having the knowledge of a devices location is becoming more and more necessary in today’s high tech world. Devices from smartphones, routers to parking meters are being made location aware. This opens up a whole world of use cases such as proof of location when a device is when it malfunctions, navigation, to marketing based on location. This increased reliance on location has resulted in the need to have assistance data along with a variety of different location technologies to enable a device to provide a consistent and reliable location experience. The objective of European Location as A Service Targeting International Commerce (ELAASTIC) is to provide a service which delivers a consistent and high accuracy positioning solution.
ELAASTIC was developed to be an EU-based, worldwide location solution for Location Based Services (LBS) and Machine to Machine (M2M) applications. To accomplish enhanced performance, the ELAASTIC project combined mature assisted-GNSS and Wi-Fi based location techniques together with new features based on GALILEO signal specific features. These features are delivered from EU based servers via two interfaces supporting different industry protocols. Clients will have the choice between using a SUPL 2.0 interface or an HTTP interface based off or RRLP/LPP specs. The LaaS server is hosted in TELESPAZIO France premises in Toulouse, with the assistance data being provided by Rx Networks’ servers in Canada.
LBS and M2M clients and applications will use the following assistance data in order to determine more precisely and more rapidly their location.
1. Coarse position (determined from Wi-Fi and/or cell tower information),
2. Real time assistance data: it is the real time data broadcasted by the satellites, there are several types of assistance data: ephemeris, almanac, on-board clock correction, etc. ELAASTIC supports GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou.
3. Predicted assistance data: this is Extended Ephemeris and is delivered via a seed. A seed is a block of data used by a client to created Extended Ephemeris for up to 14 days. Extended Ephemeris can be used when real time assistance data is not available. For the Teseo III chipset the seed is transported to the GNSS chipset in the user terminal where it will be used by the chipset to create the ephemeris. There is also a library available to create the ephemeris at the OS level.
4. Differential corrections via EGNOS and Galileo Open Service Authentication (demonstrator)
5. ELAASTIC also provides specific algorithms for the GNSS chipset (Teseo III) that use GALILEO signal specific features (e.g. CBOC) in order to get a better accuracy on location and better sensitivity, e.g. a C/N0 of 11 dBHz on tracking. These specific algorithms also include multi-path processing (5 to 10 points) and integrity (based on comparison of position computed from each GNSS constellation).
6. The LaaS server is also connected to an EGNOS receiver (NOVATEL propack6 receiver) in order to provide differential corrections, either for GPS or for GALILEO (for GPS , differential corrections are also obtained from the EGNOS signals acquired by the Novatel receiver). The GPS corrections are applicable over Europe, while the GALILEO corrections are available 100 km around the location of the Novatel receiver in Toulouse.
With the conclusion of this project there is now a LaaS server available for customer development and testing. This server is ready to be switched to a production feed and SLA when a commercial engagement is undertaken. All these services have been fully integrated with the ST-M Teseo III platform and 3 clients are available for customers to use as a baseline for their integrations. For devices using a different hardware configuration there are two ELAASTIC LBS Client integration options:
1. ELAASTIC LBS client HTTPS – Available for Android and windows
2. ELAASTIC LBS Client - SUPL – Available for Android.
3. ELAASTIC M2M platform for car applications.
The completed end to solution developed in this project has a few key benefits for Europeans.
1. ELAASTIC Enables a smartphone, tablet, PC, M2M platform or other devices to have easy access to a European based worldwide LaaS service involving major European companies and worldwide actors in the LBS field.
2. The service is delivered from a European base, by a European company, Telespazio, thus ensuring European independence at GNSS support infrastructure level.
3. Provides the community of the GNSS chipsets providers, with a set of APIs allowing them to take advantage of Galileo signal distinguishing features based.
4. Provides the community of the E-GNSS applications developers with free access to ELAASTIC services for the timeframe of this Horizon 2020 Galileo 2014 call, therefore amplifying the use of Galileo Early Services. This window of service has been extended until the end of 2016.
5. Promote the results of the ELAASTIC at standardization bodies, to ensure that the norms and standards support the use of Galileo signal distinguishing features
