Girasole Receiver Development for Safety of Life Applications

Abstract

The GIRASOLE Safety of Life Receiver is developed in the frame of the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) Research and Development activities, in the context of the European Commission 6th Framework Programme 2nd call by ALCATEL ALENIA SPACE Italia (AASI), manufacturer leader of advanced, high performance GPS/EGNOS/Galileo receivers for space and safety-critical applications. Differently from GPS, which relies on an external signal (EGNOS), one of the most appealing features of Galileo is the signal embedded integrity. As this characteristic provides the users with information about the availability and correctness of the Galileo system and signal, Galileo is particularly attractive for all the critical applications that undergo the general name of Safety of Life, or SoL for brevity. The Safety of Life Services (SoL) are targeted at users who need assurance of service performance in real-time. Typically they are safety critical users, for example Aviation, Maritime and Rail, whose applications or operations require stringent performance levels. Other