GNSS Students Sought for ESA Summer School

The 10-day course — lasting from the afternoon of Aug. 31 to the morning of Sept. 10 — will cover all aspects of satellite navigation, up to and including the creation of a satnav-based business.

Hosted by the University of Barcelona at the four-star Hotel Alimara, the Summer School is open to graduate students, PhDs and postdoctoral researchers, as well as young engineers and academics working within industry or agencies, aged 35 or younger.

Internationally renowned scientists and specialists will be giving lectures as well as overseeing practical exercises and lab work. Participants will receive a full-spectrum overview of satellite navigation, starting from the theoretical basis of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), its signals, the processing performed by signal receivers and how the position-navigation-time solution is worked out.

Discussion will also be made of threats to satnav systems, such as spoofing or jamming, and the countermeasures available against them, along with back-up navigation solutions for a GNSS-denied environment.

Practical exercises will include receiving the various satnav constellations now in orbit — including Europe’s eight-satellite Galileo, the foundation of the full system soon to come — to give course members direct, hands-on experience.

In addition, lectures will cover business aspects, including patents and intellectual property rights.

The main emphasis of the course will be the development of a group business project, building on an innovative idea to take in the planning of the product or service, its technical realization and finally its marketing to customers.

Register before the end of May to benefit from an early registration discount. The number of participants is limited to 50, on a first-come, first-served basis.

The ESA International Summer School is taking place in conjunction with the GNSS Summer School of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and is organized by Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in cooperation with Stanford University in the US, the Institut Supérieur de l’Aeronautique et de l’Espace in France, Graz University of Technology in Austria and University FAF Munich in Germany.