Operating EGNOS

The ESSP (European Satellite Services Provider) has been created in April 2000 to operate the EGNOS system and provide signal and data services to users in Europe. The company has now seen seven shareholders, all European Air Traffic Service Providers: NATS (UK), DGAC/DSNA (F), AENA (E), ENAV (I), DFS (D), NAV-PT (P) and skyguide (CH). These organisations are also responsible for the hosting and operations of EGNOS system infrastructure. The EGNOS system has been designed, developed and deployed by Alcatel under a European Space Agency (ESA) contract as part of the ESA ARTES IX programme. The EGNOS system ESA milestone Operational Readiness Review (ORR), which concludes the EGNOS design and deployment activities led by ESA, was completed on June 16th 2005 and is followed by the EGNOS Initial Operation Phase (IOP). A contract has been finalised between ESSP and ESA, to cover the EGNOS Operations Management for the duration of the Initial Operations Phase. This paper addresses the activities to be performed during the EGNOS Initial Operation Phase. Updated from the article with the same title in, and reprinted with permission from, The Institute of Navigation (http://ion.org/) and The Proceedings of the 18th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation, (pp. 419-423). Fairfax, VA: The Institute of Navigation