EGNOS Terrestrial Regional Augmentation Networks Based on AIS for River Information Services

Within the ESA Advanced Research Telecommunications program ARTES-5, the project GALEWAT (Galileo and EGNOS for Waterway Transport) aims at introducing EGNOS into River Information Services (RIS) through the Automatic Identification System (AIS), a link that is mandatory for seagoing vessels above 300 GT. The GALEWAT project comprises several phases: During the initial definition phase, the system architecture and user equipment have been defined in line with standards and international recommendations. This phase was followed by the implementation phase, aiming at developing and setting up the equipment. Finally, the 8 ION GNSS 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division, 13-16 September 2005, Long Beach, CA project will be completed by an extensive demonstration phase, which is currently under execution. Up to now, public GALEWAT demonstrations in Vienna (Austria), and Lisbon (Portugal) have been successfully executed. The last demonstration in Constanta (Romania) will take place in fall 2005. These demonstration sites have been chosen to test and demonstrate the GALEWAT system in different environments: river navigation, harbour approach, and open sea operations. The paper gives a short idea of River Information Services and an overview of the GALEWAT project. The main part concentrates on the presentation of field measurement results, which were collected in Lisbon, to show the performance of the GALEWAT concept. Finally, the paper presents an overview of user feedback resulting from the first two public demonstrations.