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QZSS

Application Status in Japan of the QZSS Originated Technologies
Dr. Izumi Mikami, Japan Space Systems, Mr. Hisao Sone, Japan Space Systems, Mr. Masayuki Saito, Japan Space Systems

About three years have passed since the QZSS four satellites released its open service. This service includes several augmentation signal broadcasting from QZS, among which SLAS for sub-meter accuracy and CLAs for centimeter accuracy are QZSS originated sat.-based open augmentation services. These are strictly for Japan limited services. One of the purpose of these services is to create looking-ahead new businesses in Japan utilizing high accuracy positioning data, free of charge, and check maturity of the businesses in Japanese market before expanding them to worldwide market. To develop and accelerate this process, there has been a big problem similar to chicken and egg relationship, that is how to lower the cost of receivers for such augmentation signals though the current market size is small. Two approaches ware made to resolve the situation. One is to activate the competition among manufactures of the augmentation-dedicated chips, modules and receivers, and the other is to find a way to enable existing low cost RTK receivers to function using the augmentation signals. Thanks to the successful approach from the both, prices of receiver related components have been lowered in these four years and therefore various new application businesses have been borne in areas of autonomous car, pleasure boat and auto-sounding boat, guidance of snowplow, wearable devices for health and golf, garbage truck trajectory monitor, etc. The application status in Japan has been monitored and measured by fixed-point observation using questionnaire survey or enquete to 310 members of QZSS Business Innovation Counsel (QBIC) for four years continuously. This paper introduces how the receivers cost has improved, what new businesses have occurred in Japanese market and the application status trend gained by the survey.

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