GNSSBICS is a feasibility study carried out in the frame of the ESA’s General Studies Programme (GSP)
by DEIMOS-Space, Deimos-Engenharia and ESA.
This activity investigated what G/S infrastructure would be necessary to develop a System, named as GNSS-BICS (GNSS Bias Calibration System), in charge of providing, under demand, the GNSS MEO S/C SISBAF (Signal-In-Space Biases Amongst Frequencies), from GNSS observations gathered by GNSS multi-frequency receivers on-board LEO satellites (potentially from different missions).
According to a complete engineer process, with several iterations, the outline of GNSSBICS system was defined, and a demonstrator of the GNSS-BICS system named as GNSS-BICS-P (GNSS Bias Calibration System Prototype), able to provide the real GPS SIS biases amongst the L1 and L2 frequencies and TEC estimations profiting from the above calibration was developed.
Finally assessment of performance, in terms of accuracy of the calibration of the GPS L1-L2 differential group delay and estimation of the ionospheric total-electron content were evaluated through experimentation.