Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TREASURE (Training REsearch and Applications network to Support the Ultimate Real time high accuracy EGNSS solution)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2019-01-01 do 2020-12-31
TREASURE focused on the emerging area of European GNSS (EGNSS). GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) include systems such as the established US Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS, as well as new systems like China’s Beidou and most importantly Europe’s Galileo. Galileo is what we call EGNSS, which reached fully operational capability in 2019, a joint initiative of the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Galileo provides data of unprecedented accuracy and a guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control.
GNSS have a multi-billion Euro world-wide industry – the EC predicted an annual global market for GNSS of €300bn by 2020. However, GPS has been the frontrunner of all these systems, dominating the market for more than two decades - Galileo aims to change this unbalance. The EU’s ambition for EGNSS is to strongly impact European industry and society by incentivizing the various application segments and creating jobs. It is a priority to develop this technology in Europe, and that is why the training of young scientists in this niche area is at the top of the European economic agenda.
Combining GNSS systems to operate together is known as multi-GNSS, which is key to provide instantaneous, high accuracy positioning anywhere in the world. Although GNSS is routinely used in smartphones and in-car navigation with an accuracy of a few meters, it can deliver centimetres in real time if advanced techniques are employed in a multi-GNSS approach. This was the focus of TREASURE, in a bid to boost the use of Galileo worldwide in support of a range of applications and to inspire new ones. The development of EGNSS and its integration with these other satellite systems is key for Europe’s competitiveness in this market, therefore the EU’s interest in funding projects like TREASURE.
An example of a remarkable market is the global Agri-Tech field. By 2025, the world’s population will reach 9 billion people, a surge in growth that presents a unique challenge – global food production must increase by 70% to feed the world. Precision agriculture relies on GNSS to address this challenge, giving farmers access to real-time precise data gathering and analysis, maximising production, reducing costs and minimising environmental impact. Precision agriculture needs instantaneous positioning accuracy of just a couple of centimetres. Another area of interest is high accuracy positioning for offshore operations, such as seabed exploration, tide and current estimation, and oil exploration/production, where demands are constantly growing.
TREASURE achieved the overall research objectives of developing, validating and implementing new models to advance the state of the art in real time high accuracy GNSS positioning. The focus was on two existing GNSS techniques known as PPP (Precise Point Positioning) and RTK (Real Time Kinematic), which potentially meet the real-time high accuracy positioning demands by integrating GPS, GLONASS and Galileo, and this is where TREASURE made a significant and timely contribution. The robust GNSS positioning service developed at the prototype level in TREASURE addresses a multi-frequency multi-constellation approach that contributes to achieving high accuracy exploiting PPP-RTK.
GNSS have a multi-billion Euro world-wide industry – the EC predicted an annual global market for GNSS of €300bn by 2020. However, GPS has been the frontrunner of all these systems, dominating the market for more than two decades - Galileo aims to change this unbalance. The EU’s ambition for EGNSS is to strongly impact European industry and society by incentivizing the various application segments and creating jobs. It is a priority to develop this technology in Europe, and that is why the training of young scientists in this niche area is at the top of the European economic agenda.
Combining GNSS systems to operate together is known as multi-GNSS, which is key to provide instantaneous, high accuracy positioning anywhere in the world. Although GNSS is routinely used in smartphones and in-car navigation with an accuracy of a few meters, it can deliver centimetres in real time if advanced techniques are employed in a multi-GNSS approach. This was the focus of TREASURE, in a bid to boost the use of Galileo worldwide in support of a range of applications and to inspire new ones. The development of EGNSS and its integration with these other satellite systems is key for Europe’s competitiveness in this market, therefore the EU’s interest in funding projects like TREASURE.
An example of a remarkable market is the global Agri-Tech field. By 2025, the world’s population will reach 9 billion people, a surge in growth that presents a unique challenge – global food production must increase by 70% to feed the world. Precision agriculture relies on GNSS to address this challenge, giving farmers access to real-time precise data gathering and analysis, maximising production, reducing costs and minimising environmental impact. Precision agriculture needs instantaneous positioning accuracy of just a couple of centimetres. Another area of interest is high accuracy positioning for offshore operations, such as seabed exploration, tide and current estimation, and oil exploration/production, where demands are constantly growing.
TREASURE achieved the overall research objectives of developing, validating and implementing new models to advance the state of the art in real time high accuracy GNSS positioning. The focus was on two existing GNSS techniques known as PPP (Precise Point Positioning) and RTK (Real Time Kinematic), which potentially meet the real-time high accuracy positioning demands by integrating GPS, GLONASS and Galileo, and this is where TREASURE made a significant and timely contribution. The robust GNSS positioning service developed at the prototype level in TREASURE addresses a multi-frequency multi-constellation approach that contributes to achieving high accuracy exploiting PPP-RTK.
TREASURE involved 13 research fellows, each in charge of an individual sub-project, coordinated through dedicated work packages. In TREASURE we studied and modelled all the errors that degrade GNSS positioning accuracy and incorporated these models into high accuracy positioning techniques such as PPP and RTK. Significant progress was obtained in all fronts of the research through the 13 coordinated projects, carried out at PhD level by the fellows. Just to mention one example, a key aspect of the research was to mitigate the effects of the atmosphere, in particular related to space weather, which can often create impairing conditions in the atmosphere’s upper, ionised layer, the ionosphere. These effects disturb satellite signal propagation, vastly reducing satellite communication and positioning accuracy. Progress in this area was achieved in TREASURE by improving existing forecasting algorithms and by suitably tweaking the use of a specialised tomographic software. Concurrently, regarding the lower, neutral layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere, a new approach to use external tropospheric corrections based on interpolation and improved stochastic modelling was implemented to counter the effect of severe terrestrial weather that can also pose a major threat to high accuracy GNSS positioning. Achievements in the other inter-related research areas were also significant, including the detection of multipath and scintillation effects by means of machine learning algorithms exploiting a software defined radio receiver architecture and development of novel positioning algorithms taking advantage of the new modelling cited above. Also, to demonstrate the TREASURE vision and its market prospects, fellows developed a suitable and interoperable Information Communication Technology (ICT) architecture, realised a web portal (http://treasuredemo.rm.ingv.it) to display the TREASURE’s innovative tools and proposed a marketing strategy for the TREASURE conceptual prototype in the three selected segments of interest i.e. agriculture, aviation and maritime. Results have been disseminated in peer reviewed journal papers, as well as in conferences. The project successfully organised three seasonal schools, three workshops and a final conference open to the community.
The impact of the action was very positive, with comprehensive networking and transfer of knowledge. TREASURE’s cohort based training was a highlight of the project, which enhanced the research and innovation related skills of the fellows to realise their potential and to provide new career perspectives. Through their constant interaction and joint participation in the project workshops and summer schools the TREASURE fellows were able to design and develop their research from a much wider, multidisciplinary and integrated perspective. This was supported by the strong academic and industrial nature of the TREASURE network, including beneficiaries and associate partners contributing with secondments and enthusiastic co-supervision. Progress beyond the state of the art can be measured by novel approaches that were achieved in atmospheric forecasting and modelling, satellite orbit prediction, signal tracking, interference mitigation and their integration into real-time high accuracy positioning algorithms. This was a major achievement, which resulted from the coordinated work among the fellows. Our project directly exploited the capabilities of EGNSS to tackle well-known challenges in order to make it accessible and resilient anywhere in the world. Last but not least, the majority of fellows still continue working in the field of research, helping the project to fulfil its commitment to the EC by creating the high calibre critical mass necessary to support the EGNSS programme and promoting the research and industrial cooperation that is needed to support applications demanding high accuracy positioning and navigation. The project fulfilled all expected impacts, with regards to both its research and market outcomes, but more importantly in what concerns the career development of the fellows.