Civil aviation
From INVESaTWIKI
Civil aviation
Civil Aviation is a highly regulated industry under the mandate of ICAO, with over 160 member states. Being a Safety of Life industry, the navigation
aids used must comply with ICAO Standards (SARP: Standard And Recommended Practice) and these SARPs take many years to generate and be approved. SARPs make it
possible for an aircraft to fly over and between several States and navigate safely with minimum equipment, they specify the characteristics for
a signal-in-space, creating a unified system in which ATS providers and the international aviation community can implement standardisation.
Responsibility for Air Navigation Services for aircraft in national airspace is the responsibility of the nation, which is a simple legal matter as
navigation aids are generally within the airspace agreements for that nation (see Figure 1).
GALILEO should enable GNSS to become the sole service navigation system, for the provision of positioning and timing data, for all phases of flight. This will permit decommissioning of a significant number of conventional ground and airborne radionavigation aids. It is thought that this could only be achieved if GALILEO were to be used in combination with GPS, to provide an approved “sole service” for navigation. This raises the questions regarding:
- Global integrity concept;
- Space-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS);
- Ground-Based Augmentation Systems (GBAS).
For safety approval, GALILEO will have to demonstrate an ability to achieve certification globally. The first step in this process is international
standardisation, and to show that there were no significant means of common modes of failure between GPS and GALILEO.
This policy of having an "open” signal enables any manufacturer to be able to design equipment that either transmits a signal, receives a signal
or both. Under this system, manufacturers or States do not have any direct commercial rights over the access or use of the signal. The signal is,
therefore, available free of direct user charges.
As a result of this policy, an attempt is always made to ensure there are no patent or intellectual property rights on any standardised ARNSS
signals. If patent or intellectual property rights prevent a signal from being freely transmitted or received, the holder of such patents or rights is asked to waive its entitlement so that the system can receive State approval.
The signal-in-space itself must be free of patents and that any patents on the generation and reception of the signal does not inhibit other methods
of generation or reception.
In the case of GPS, the first satellite navigation system to be standardised, there is a form of protection allowed to exist on the "pseudo random
codes” which are used to differentiate one satellite signal from another. In the case of GPS, only codes approved by the United States can be
used, with the GPS codes being protected by the standardisation process required to prevent interference.
Normally it is the State's responsibility to ensure that air navigation facilities conforms to the published standards. This works well with traditional
navigation aids, where the systems are located within the territory of a State. In the case of satellite navigation, jurisdictional questions arise, of:
- Who is in control of the satellite navigation system;
- Who will approve a satellite navigation system’s compliance with the SARPs;
- Who guarantees the signal-in-space;
- Who guarantees the protection period. [1],[2]
References
[1] G.Dippel-Hens (GALILEAN working group report)
"GNSS business issues".
[2] European Satellite Services Provider
"EGNOS".
