The EGNOS Services Provision within the Single European Sky - The Start of the Safety-of-Life Service

F.J. de Blas, M.A. Sanchez

Abstract:	The European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP) was created in 2001 to operate the EGNOS system and provide Safety-of-Life Services for different user communities. The ESSP was initially formed as a European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) and was based in Brussels, Belgium. In the course of 2008, the status of the ESSP changed to give birth to a new company upon the French law, named ‘ESSP S.A.S.’ with its headquarter and operations unit located in Toulouse (France) and the service provision unit in Madrid (Spain). The EGNOS system was designed, developed and deployed under a European Space Agency (ESA) contract as part of the ESA ARTES-9 programme. The EGNOS system ESA milestones Operational Readiness Review (ORR), which concluded the EGNOS design and deployment activities led by ESA, was completed on June 16, 2005 and was followed by the start of the EGNOS Initial Operations Phase (IOP) on July 27, 2005. The EGNOS system property was transferred from ESA to the European Commission (EC) at the end of Initial Operation Phase, on the 1st of April 2009, ESA remaining the design agent in charge of evolutions of the system. Following a transition period of 6 months (EGNOS Signal Continuity Phase - ESCP), a final contract was signed on September 30th 2009, including the operation, maintenance and service provision of EGNOS (EGNOS Service Provision Phase - ESP). On the 1st of October 2009, the EGNOS Open Service (OS), targeting mass market applications, was declared. This paper will describe the terms and conditions of this first service declared as well as the improvements provided to the previous GPS only scenario. With the Open Service on air, the next objective of the ESSP is the delivery of the EGNOS Safety-of-Life (SoL) Service that will allow EGNOS to be used in aviation. Before becoming a reality, the ESSP must be certified as an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) according to the EC Single European Sky (SES) regulation (SES 2096/2005). Additionally, the ESSP must put in place the processes leading to the issue of the Declaration of Verification of the EGNOS system in order to meet the SES regulation interoperability requirements (SES 552). This paper introduces the EGNOS system status and architecture and describes the two main processes the ESSP conducted to achieve the EGNOS SoL entry into service: the ESSP certification as an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) and the EGNOS system Declaration of Verification (DoV), as the first application of EC SES regulation to a pan-European system/service provider. The complexity of this regulatory scenario and the different parties involved make of this experience an invaluable background for the future Galileo certification and implementation, as the paper will describe. Both processes are completed at the time the ION GNSS will take place so that this paper exposes the outcomes and lessons learnt from such challenging tasks to end describing the expected way forward for the Safety-of- Life Service Declaration to Users as the starting point (expected after the ION GNSS event) for the EGNOS based services implementation through Europe afterwards. The EGNOS based services Implementation process and all the initiatives put in place to support that implementation by ESSP, GSA and EC in a coordinated approach will be described as well. Finally, the paper will highlight the main potential fields of application of EGNOS, the expected system improvements in terms of evolutions and the expected scenario for its integration into the future concept and the plans for the 3rd EGNOS Service implementation: the Commercial Data Distribution Service (CDDS)
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010) September 21 - 24, 2010 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	1984 - 1993
Cite this article:	de Blas, F.J., Sanchez, M.A., "The EGNOS Services Provision within the Single European Sky - The Start of the Safety-of-Life Service," Proceedings of the 23rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2010), Portland, OR, September 2010, pp. 1984-1993.
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