GISCafe Industry Predictions for 2024 – Eos Positioning Systems

By Jean-Yves Lauture, CTO, Eos Positioning Systems

Jean-Yves Lauture

The upcoming year holds great promise for GIS users who leverage global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) technology. In 2023, many of us closely followed the announcement by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) that their brand-new Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS) had entered its first testing phase. This development made 10-20 centimeter-level positioning accuracy available worldwide — as a completely free service. Eos Positioning Systems’s latest GNSS receiver, the Arrow Gold+™, immediately capitalized on this new corrections source, which is broadcast directly from the Galileo constellation GNSS satellites. Now, in 2024, we predict that Galileo HAS will be the most significant game-changer for mobile GIS users globally. This is attributed to two key factors: Firstly, EUSPA has planned operational improvements and enhancements that will drastically boost the performance of Galileo HAS. Secondly, increased availability of Galileo HAS will allow various industries to explore even more use cases that Galileo HAS can uniquely address, surpassing our previous expectations.

Let’s explore the improvements EUSPA plans in the next phase of Galileo HAS. Currently, Galileo HAS is in Phase 1, termed “Initial Service.” With a lot of deployment work happening in 2024 towards Phase 2, we can anticipate a range of performance improvements in preparation for the “Full Service” (date unknown). One of the most exciting enhancements will undoubtedly be the improved convergence time. In the current initial service phase, convergence outside of Europe takes about 30 minutes to achieve approximately 20-centimeter accuracy globally, based on our initial tests. Within the European Union, convergence time is already much shorter than this, down to about 5 minutes. In Phase 2 of Galileo HAS, EUSPA has stated that convergence time will drop to an impressive 5 minutes worldwide, and under 2 minutes within the European Union! This improvement could come relatively soon, and we eagerly await to see if it will happen (or part of it) during 2024. For more details on what to expect in Phase 2, refer to the EUSPA website for Galileo HAS here: https://www.euspa.europa.eu/european-space/galileo/services/galileo-high-accuracy-service-has.

Another exciting expectation we have for Galileo HAS is the proliferation of its use worldwide. Once it is more widely adopted, we anticipate that various industry professionals will discover additional use cases where Galileo HAS can fill a crucial gap left by SBAS and RTK . For instance, imagine georeferencing drone imagery on a remote island in the Galápagos Archipelago, which lacks an RTK network, internet, and SBAS. Galileo HAS’s decimeter-level accuracy can prove invaluable here — as demonstrated by one of our customers who has already piloted this workflow on Santa Fe Island. Now, envision the need to map a newly installed water distribution system in a remote African village, also without RTK, internet, and SBAS. Once again, Galileo HAS could provide essential GNSS corrections in such an environment. We can imagine infinite use cases where free, decimeter-level accuracy could prove truly impactful.

Recently introduced to Santa Fe Island in the Galápagos, an Española Island tortoise makes a cameo while ecologist Charles Lehnen and field assistant Mary Cate Hyde capture data. Lehnen is leading a research team that will use, among other technologies, Galileo HAS and an Arrow Gold+ GNSS receiver for location accuracy. (Photo credit: Simon Rouot)

Of course, utilizing Galileo HAS will necessitate the use of a compatible GNSS receiver. When Galileo HAS entered its initial service phase, the Arrow Gold+ was the only receiver on the GIS market designed to support its use. This is because Eos Positioning Systems had designed the Arrow Gold+ with Galileo HAS in mind, way before it entered Phase 1.

Those interested in learning more about how Galileo HAS is performing worldwide can read our recent article tracking early observations from our global tests of Galileo HAS and the Arrow Gold+ receiver here: https://eos-gnss.com/knowledge-base/galileo-high-accuracy-service-early-observations.

Those interested in learning more about the Arrow Gold+ can view product information here: https://eos-gnss.com/products/hardware/arrow-gold.

 About Author:

Jean-Yves Lauture is the Chief Technical Officer and Founder at Eos Positioning Systems, Inc. He is a former Technical Representative – GNSS Receiver/Product Engineer at Geneq Inc. Mr. Lauture graduated from Stony Brook University with a bachelor of science in Electrical Engineering.

Category: GIS Industry Predictios

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2024 at 3:27 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.