Expert Advice: GLONASS Business Prospects

By VASILIY ENGELSBERG, IVAN PETROVSKI, and VALERY BABAKOV

Similar in many aspects to GPS, GLONASS has performed much less successfully on a commercial scale, failing — so far — to create significant business worldwide. Today, however, the commercialization of GLONASS has taken a new and more promising direction, receiving strong encouragement from the Russian government. We look forward to GLONASS being completely restored to its full operational capabilities within the next few years, and we are certain that this time GLONASS will create successful business opportunities worldwide.

Why did GLONASS fail to create a worldwide business opportunity in the past? First, many GLONASS satellites of the first generation had required replacement at approximately the same time. This coincided with a difficult period for the Russian economy, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and much of its infrastructure. Budget for space applications suffered, not only for GLONASS, but other space programs that were temporarily frozen. Many companies that had started to work on combined GPS/GLONASS receivers worldwide stopped these initiatives at that time.

The other reason for GLONASS’s halting commercial history is in its frequency division multiple access (FDMA) signal structure instead of code division multiple access (CDMA), as is the case with GPS, and now Galileo. FDMA, though more immune to interference, results in bulkier user equipment. Today the situation may change in two respects. First, there is a possibility of introducing CDMA within GLONASS. Second, and even more important, today GNSS user equipment progresses toward multifrequency anyway with all the possible combinations of GPS, Galileo, L1, L2, and L5. It will ultimately boost the technology, and even multifrequency and wide-band RF components will be miniaturized.

All these considerations allow us to confidently foresee exceptional opportunities for GLONASS-related business tomorrow.

Policy. Today, GLONASS is required for social infrastructure within Russia for all federal users. President Vladimir Putin has paid special attention to rapid GLONASS development, urging completion of the system ahead of the original plan.

As expected, three more GLONASS-M satellites were launched by the end of 2007, and have since been declared operational. GLONASS-M satellites have a guaranteed lifespan of seven years, that is, the lifespan of these satellites runs until the year 2015.

There is also a new generation of satellites, GLONASS-K. This upcoming modification represents an entirely new concept based on a non-pressurized platform. The estimated service life of GLONASS-K satellites has been increased to 10–12 years, and the spacecraft will carry an additional third civilian L-range frequency.

GLONASS-K is smaller and considerably lighter than previous models, allowing the use of a wider range of launch vehicles and thus making them less costly to put into orbit. The weight of a GLONASS-K satellite falls to 700 kilograms instead the of 1,415 kilos of previous satellites. After the complete constellation is deployed, it will require one Soyuz launch per year to maintain the constellation in full.

We expect that at least six GLONASS-M satellites will be launched in 2008, and six more in 2009. There will also be two GLONASS-K satellites launched in 2009. The earlier satellites with three-year lifespans will be decommissioned.

Altogether, there should be 24 satellites in near-circular orbits with 64.8-degree inclination in three orbital planes. Initially, system completion was planned by the year 2012, but with close attention from the Russian government, the system may be deployed in full scale by the end of 2009.

Interoperability. Moving as planned toward interoperability with GPS and future Galileo, the GLONASS coordinate frame had been changed. According to the Russian Federation government decree issued on June 20, 2007, the improved version of the national geocentric coordinate system “Earth Parameters 1990” (PZ-90.02) has been applied to GLONASS. The transformation between PZ-90.02 and the International Terrestrial Reference Frame ITRF2000 contains only origin shifts along X, Y, Z by –36, +8, and +18 centimeters, respectively. An update to the GLONASS Interface Control Document has already been published and made available trough the Internet. The update to ICD, current information on GLONASS status, and a current almanac is available from the Information-Analytical Center (IAC).

Worldwide Use

All restrictions on positioning service in Russia were lifted in January 2007, including a restriction on allowed positioning accuracy. This was one of the barriers that limited GLONASS commercialization in the past.

Today, GLONASS plus GPS user equipment appears more and more frequently in stores in Russia. It is now necessary and highly popular equipment for airplanes, marine applications, surveyors, mapping applications, and so on.

What advantages does GLONASS offer to worldwide users who already have GPS? Due to its orbit inclination, GLONASS provides better coverage than GPS in northern latitudes. It was designed for use in the territory of the former Soviet Union and Europe. The combined usage of the two systems allows better coverage over the full globe.

FIGURE 1. GPS (green) and GLONASS (pink) constellation visibility in Tokyo for 48 hours.
Note that GPS visibility picture repeat itself every 24 hours, and GLONASS visibility changes.
It also illustrates why GLONASS satellite orbits are less affected by gravitational filed irregularities.

Further, more systems mean more reliable service. Healthy competition will only benefit users. Compatibility of the systems had been be improved and will be improving further. Two systems will provide higher accuracy and higher integrity.

The international GLONASS market can increase due to the fact that countries that do not own their satellite navigation system can provide some redundancy in their infrastructure if they implement GNSS from different owner/operators. This, however, becomes less important as other navigation satellite systems, such as Galileo, come to life. Also, more satellites will benefit users, who operate in urban or other obstructed environments.

Accuracy. It has been generally accepted that the real-time accuracy of GLONASS is less than that of GPS. The main source of accuracy degradation comes from broadcast ephemeris and clock parameters. For many users, it is possible to use precise ephemeris, freely available on the Internet from, for example, the International GNSS Service (IGS), formerly the International GPS Service, a voluntary federation of more than 200 worldwide agencies that pool resources and permanent GPS and GLONASS station data to generate precise GPS and GLONASS products.

We also have analytical centers similar to, and some within, the IGS. Four analytical centers wi
thin the IGS are estimating GLONASS ephemerides, and two of them are estimating GLONASS clocks. The accuracy of precise GLONASS ephemeris are within 4 centimeters, 1 sigma.

Using precise ephemeris, or differential service, a GLONASS user can mitigate the above-mentioned error sources and enjoy higher accuracy comparable with those of GPS. In the future, a global network, even a commercial one, can further benefit GLONASS in terms of higher real-time accuracy.

Summarizing, we expect the GLONASS market worldwide to grow, though less rapidly than the internal market in Russia. We see our business in providing global solutions, which includes GLONASS, GPS, and Galileo, to the global market of GNSS users worldwide. The standard for navigation systems in the future will be multifrequency, multi-constellation user equipment, and we are well on the way to meeting this standard.

VASILIY ENGELSBERG is president of NVS Technologies AG and co-founder of NAVIS.

IVAN PETROVSKI is NVS director. Among his numerous responsibilities, he is in charge of research and development and the Asia-Pacific region.

VALERY BABAKOV is co-founder and general manager of NAVIS. Babakov explains, “Our company is a center of the NAVIS group, which is the main supplier of GLONASS receivers in Russia. NAVIS itself is about a 300-person company. The main area of our activity is the creation of navigation and timing equipment, based on GLONASS/GPS signals.

“We produce technologies and equipment that use GLONASS and GPS signals, including navigation equipment for marine and airborne applications, devices of time-and-frequency synchronization for communication systems, and GPS, GLONASS, satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS), and Galileo simulators.Our current GPS/GLONASS receiver Navior seems to present interest to a wide range of customers worldwide. “Working in today’s market, we are covering all components of user service starting from conceptual engineering, to technical project development, delivery, assembling and launching of equipment, and finally providing users with training, technical support, and maintenance during exploitation.

“As part of the process of integration of our technologies into the worldwide GNSS market, NVS Technologies had been established. NVS Technologies is a new company, which aims to bring a wide range of GNSS products to the market and is envisioned to combine the experience of Russian NAVIS and NAVIS Ukraine in GPS and GLONASS user equipment development with Swiss quality and expertise in international marketing.

“Our company group now is not only engaged in the GLONASS business, but also looking forward contributing to Galileo equipment development. We are participating in the Galileo Integrated Receiver for Advanced Safety of Life Equipment (GIRASOLE) project together with Thales Avionics and Thales Aleniaspace. Our part in the GIRASOLE project is to provide the Galileo L1/E5 simulator. To facilitate simulator development, we have built a Galileo prototype receiver, which can acquire and track the GIOVE-A signal. Working with our SN3806 simulator, the receiver can also make a positioning. In November 2007 our engineers conducted a three-day tutorial on our GNSS simulator in Thales Avionics premises in Valence.”