Communications within the Galileo locally assisted services

Galileo provides the first satellite positioning and navigation system specifically for civil purposes. In this frame, the mission requirements were developed with a service-oriented approach. Business plan and market researches studies have shown that commercial services should play an important role on producing Galileo revenues. Nevertheless, communication capabilities are a "must" for advanced navigation related services. A promising revenue source is the exploitation of the allowance of broadcast navigation message to accommodate navigation/positioning information and data. The foreseen applications are based on data dissemination (provided by Galileo satellites) with a rate of 500 bps, for added value services. Galileo satellites orbit is optimized for navigation purposes and then broadcast communications could be a sub-optimal feature of the system. This paper presents an optimization algorithm for broadcast messages communications on geo-referenced sites and its preliminary results. The algorithm takes into account minimum mask angles from user terminals and maximum time delay for each category of messages. Galileo local components enhance Galileo navigation performance and capabilities to fulfill particular markets or user requirements that data broadcasting could not accomplish. These local elements are part of the overall Galileo definition and the Galileo programme forecasts the development of a few and selected experimental local elements. Taking into account the GALILEI studies (a cluster of studies under the growth thematic programme of the 5th research framework programme of the EU), some integration scenarios with 3G and 4G terrestrial communication networks are shown and detailed. Therefore, commercial applications of the "local component" concept are foreseen. The scenarios propose a frame of guaranteeing service agreements for advanced telematics and info-mobility applications. Finally, this frame could drive the price of selling policies regarding to "public utilities services", "best effort commercial services" and "guaranteed commercial services".