Achievements and status:

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The next generation of GNSS is expected to be more demanding in terms of RF power transmission in order to guarantee a proper availability and quality of the service, hence, enhanced interference immunity and indoor positioning could be achieved.The HPA currently under development for this application are targeting power levels in excess of 300 W.

Over the last decades, the spaceborne remote sensing community has been focused on the development of imaging radars at RF frequencies such as S-band, L-band, C-band and X-band.

ITU regulations currently permit the use of Ka-band for active spaceborne microwave remote sensing but only few missions are considering applying this frequency band such as the SARAL mission with the ALtiKa instrument (launched 2013).

The effects of propagation impairments, in particular multipath on GNSS receivers is well known, affecting availability, accuracy and continuity of service. Initial investigations on the possibility to reduce complexity of channel models for characterizing GNSS Rx in terms of tracking and/or PVT performance has been performed for example in the "GALILEO SIS TESTING" activity.Although promising results have been seen for the characterization of the statistics of the Rx, still limitations exist in this model reduction for characterising punctual fails (e.g. false lock due to high delay).

Future X-ray astronomy missions have identified a need for large area, optical filters with very high transmission in the soft X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Current single-frequency Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) and planned dual-frequency multi-constellation (DFMC) SBAS systems enable approach operations with vertical guidance with time to alarm (TTA) of 6 seconds, but do not support auto land operations with decision height (DH) much less than 200 feet, and time to alarm down to 1-2 seconds . These critical TTA requirements cannot be met by having all integrity monitors centralized at the Ground Segment. Therefore, there is a need to distribute the integrity monitors amongst different Ground, Space and User Segments.

GNSS and other positioning systems are expected to have a very important role in Smart Cities. In this context, the design of the high-level architecture of a testbed to support future applications of GNSS and other positioning systems in Smart Cities is of high interest. The design of this testbed shall consider as baseline the availability of a network of distributed smart sensors, which are remotely accessible and configurable from the cloud, and existing network infrastructures shall be considered.

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Light-trapping helps enhance the light absorption in space solar cells and hence enables their thickness to be reduced to increase the radiation hardness. We have optimised light-trapping structures (LTS) inspired in the diatom frustule and moth’s eyes. As a solar cell reference, we use the commercial 3G30C model from Azure Space Solar Power GmbH. We have developed a physical model to describe the solar cell absorption and derive the efficiency. The optical description relies on the Fourier modal method and the solar cell performance on the detailed balance limit.