Five new Fundamental Elements calls have been announced in the Galileo Exploitation Grant Plan for 2018, which has been released by the GSA.

Every year, the GSA publishes on its website a list of the Fundamental Elements calls for proposal planned for the year. The 2018 Grant Plan release follows the recent publication of several announcements of upcoming Fundamental Elements calls: for Advanced interference detection and mitigation techniques; a Commercial Service User terminal; and a call for the development of GNSS receiver technologies for premium and general mass markets. 

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During 2018, the GSA will continue to fund the development of E-GNSS receivers and associated technologies in the priority market segments of road (autonomous driving) and mass-market (leveraging I-NAV improvements and OS authentication). A rail project is also planned, with the objective of supporting E-GNSS enabled safety-of-life rail signalling applications. Additionally, an open call will offer the EU GNSS industry the possibility to get funds for further development to fill the gaps in E-GNSS receivers and associated technologies.

A brief look at the upcoming FE grants:

1.    Multi-frequency multipurpose antenna for Galileo

This call is intended to fund up to two projects with the following activities:

• Develop and test a common technology multi-frequency antenna for Galileo professional and mass-market users.
• The advanced antenna shall be multi frequency-capable antennas and adaptive in order to support professional/mass market and potentially governmental applications requiring high accuracy, high robustness and high reliability.
• The antenna shall be commercially ready with a competitive cost.

At a glance

2.    Safety of Life for localisation in train signalling

This call is intended to fund up to one project with the following activities:

• Development and qualification of a Safety of Life multi-constellation receiver for use in safety-critical railway signalling applications according to the user requirements and train positioning system architecture and according to the performance specification, based on previous related projects and initiatives;
• E-GNSS performance test in railway-specific environment and development of Minimum Operational Performance specification.

At a glance

3.    Filling the gaps in E-GNSS receivers and associated technologies

This call for proposals is intended to fund up to five projects with the following activities:

• Identify technology gaps and propose receivers and/or associated technologies to optimally leverage Galileo and EGNOS differentiators;
  Develop and test Galileo-enabled GNSS receivers and/or underlying technology for key user applications not covered by any other Fundamental Elements project;
  The receivers and/or associated technologies shall be aligned with the market trends for the specific user segments and target competitive prices;
  Include a business plan detailing on how the developed technologies will be brought into the market.

At a glance

4.    Enhanced RX for autonomous driving/navigation

The objectives of this call for proposals are to develop an innovative close-to-market GNSS-based On-board-Unit (OBU) suitable for fully automated driving and/or cooperative positioning, integrating a GNSS receiver and possibly additional sensors and communication modem to enable the target applications’ performance.

The call for proposals is intended to fund up to two projects with the following activities:

• Design, development, testing and demonstration of dual- or multi-frequency GNSS OBU for fully autonomous driving and/or cooperative positioning to be embedded on autonomous vehicles.
• Tight integration of the GNSS receiver with other sensors to reach the application needs.

At a glance

5.    Enhanced GNSS user terminal

The objectives of this call are to build close-to-market OS-NMA enabled receivers or terminals suitable for additional target application domains, such as logistics, consumer location-based services and/or specific maritime applications. The receivers and/or terminals shall be fully compliant with the updated ICD also receiving and processing I/NAV improvements data.

The call for proposals is intended to fund up to two projects with the following activities:

• Design, development, test and demonstration of a close-to-market enhanced GNSS user terminal suitable for one or more applications to be selected from a list (proposed by the GSA);
• GNSS user terminal maturity demonstrated in an operational environment;
• Execution of performance tests to assess the actual performance improvement reached by the user terminal;
• Implementation of the user terminal market uptake strategy in the selected applications’ segment.

At a glance

For more information on all of the calls included in the 2018 Galileo Grant Plan, click here.

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