The main objective of this activity was to develop and demonstrate new techniques which are expected to improve the current state-of-the-art Space Weather forecasting techniques and products related to Space Weather effects for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems in the Arctic, with particular attention to the Greenland area. For this purpose, the activity investigated and tested innovative methods for monitoring and predicting Space Weather impacts on PNT in interested area.

With the increased frequency of shipping activities, such as tourism and freight’s transport, navigation safety has become a major concern, especially when human casualties, environmental issues and economic losses are considered. Even if new technologies have already supplied aids to pilots for the navigation risk reduction, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) reports that the majority of accidents could have been avoided by providing suitable input to the navigation decision-making process.

Background and justification:

•The railway simulation testbed is an essential tool / capability needed to support validation of GNSS receiver technologies / techniques / integrity algorithms for safety-related applications in railway

•Testbed complements field testing allowing conditions that are statistically unlikely to be observed in the field to be simulated in a highly controlled and repeatable environment

Achievements and status:

The objective of the Space Weather impact on Arctic Navigation (SWAN) project has been to
develop and demonstrate new techniques, which are expected to improve on the current
state-of-the-art space weather forecasting techniques and products related to space weather
effects for Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems in the Arctic, with particular
attention to the Greenland area.

The activity aims at developing a tool that can investigate the failure modes of GNSS systems. Such tool can then be used for detection of failures, and/or to characterise the tolerance of GNSS system or subsystem architectures to failures. Focus will be given primarily to failures and failure modes that may impact critical services (e.g. Safety-of-Life). The tool shall be able to model GNSS systems and subsystems (i.e. ground or space segments, elements and/or components) and its failure modes in a modular way.

More and more applications rely on the Position and Time solution provided by a GNSS equipment to enable services of critical nature.

The aim of the LIFELINE project was to perform a feasibility study of a Relativistic Positioning System. Nowadays, all GNSS in operation are based on Newtonian physics and rely on global reference frames fixed to Earth. Relativistic effects are treated as deviations that need to be corrected. A practical RPS would consist, for example, in a constellation of satellites, each one broadcasting not only its General Relativity coordinates (proper times or other observables) at emission but also the coordinates that it receives from the other satellites.

Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) are rapidly approaching market-readiness, with numerous partly-autonomous and teleoperated systems either under development or already performing operational demonstrations for applications such as bathymetric surveying (SEA-KIT Maxlimer, Deep BV), maintenance of offshore installations (Thales Halcyon), and commercial shipping (Yara Birkeland, Maersk VISTULA-Class).

Currently, GNSS is the backbone of most Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) solutions, in providing 24/7 continuous, all-weather, global coverage to an unlimited number of receiver-equipped users. There is an increasing dependency on the availability and reliability of GNSS. However, GNSS is widely known to be vulnerable to an evolving range of threats (natural and man-made, unintentional and deliberate).