Pushing Standardisation of GNSS-based Location Systems to Support Terrestrial Applications Development.

J. Giraud, M-L. Mathieu, J.P. Boyero Garrido, I. Fernandez Hernandez

Abstract:	The expansion of terrestrial applications including location-based services and transport applications has fostered the design of complex location systems to comply with the needs that have arisen. In the frame of the service provision ensured by the application towards a user or an external entity, these location systems are in charge of providing a consolidated information based on the position of one or more mobile platforms. The complexity of the information reported depends on the type of service targeted. It can range from a simple position reporting in the case of a low end asset management, to the provision of a reliable information (e.g. authenticated and with a mastered trust level) on the mobile’s trajectory for liability critical services such as road charging or Intelligent Transport System (ITS). This wide spectrum of required technical features calls for a new and broader concept at location system level, taking into account hybrid solutions in which the use of GNSS technologies is complemented with other technology sensors to improve the robustness and the performance of the solution. Several standards have been generated by different dedicated bodies, in order to support the GNSS market development across the various application domains mentionned above. For instance, 3GPP Location Services (LCS) standards provide minimum performance requirements mainly for Assisted-GNSS in the frame of terrestrial telecommunications and OMA-LOC LPPe (LTE Positioning Protocol Extensions) defines a communication protocol supporting hybridised positioning. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of performance specification for a large number of terrestrial applications (e.g. electronic fee collection, fleet management, container tracking, …), in particular for multi-modal applications (i.e. those involving various means of transport), leading to the development and use of sub-optimal GNSS-based systems and solutions. The need to unify the different initiatives by concentrating the positioning-related standardisation effort for terrestrial applications within a single dedicated entity was identified some time ago. Accordingly, an initiative triggered by a number of industrial and institutional stakeholders materialized in the frame of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).This initiative is led by the group Satellite Communication and Navigation (SCN) of the Technical Committee Satellite Earth Stations and Systems (TC-SES), the main objective being to elaborate a firm and common standard for GNSS-based location systems. Up to now, the TC-SES has already approved end of 2012 two Technical Reports related to architectures and application inventory which paved the way for the technical specifications to be developed. The present paper provides an overview of this on-going standardisation work, its objectives and the added-value it will bring. In addition, the already approved Technical Specifications will also be presented. Thus, the structure of the targeted standard encompasses the four following specifications: - The location system minimum performance requirements, which can be considered as the core of the specification work. These requirements are determined function of the type of location systems (i.e. association of technical enablers), the applicable environmental conditions (depending on the type of application), and finally the type of features needed (e.g. accuracy, authentication, anti-spoofing, robustness to interference). - The GNSS-based location system reference architecture including the interface definition, which is expected to capture a generic and modular definition of location systems, thus adaptable to all targeted applications. - The data exchange protocol at location system level (covering in particular the handling of the requests from an external application provider and the protocol to ensure proper information delivery). - The test specification (including procedure, scenario and data), enabling location system validation versus the previous requirements (protocol and performance). The methodology used to define the perimeter of the above specifications looks for: - The definition of terrestrial application classes to be covered by the standard, including the identification of the key requirements (functional and performance) applicable for each application. - The inventory of the technological enablers taken on-board in the standard. These enablers are understood as much as sensor technologies (GNSS receivers, Network sensors, inertial sensors, hybridization layer), as system layer features allowing Quality of Service (QoS) improvements (A-GNSS, D-GNSS, RTK, integrity functions, authentication functions). - The definition of reference environments, derived from the applications’ typical use cases, and which provide the necessary conditions to determine the minimum performance requirements. With the ambition to satisfy a wide range of terrestrial applications, the standard under preparation, once approved, will surely benefit to other standardization groups. Indeed, care is being taken to harmonize the work done under TC-SES SCN, with standardisation groups in other domains. Furthermore, it will also be valuable to actors from markets whose specificities do not justify the existence of a dedicated standard. All these stakeholders will thus benefit from a more important variety of solutions, components and functions available, all of them simultaneously compatible to the standard.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 26th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2013) September 16 - 20, 2013 Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, TN
Pages:	677 - 688
Cite this article:	Giraud, J., Mathieu, M-L., Garrido, J.P. Boyero, Hernandez, I. Fernandez, "Pushing Standardisation of GNSS-based Location Systems to Support Terrestrial Applications Development.," Proceedings of the 26th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2013), Nashville, TN, September 2013, pp. 677-688.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In