United Kingdom’s Brexit from the European Union implies restricted access to the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) System – Galileo; with no access to the secured and encrypted signal used for defense and government purposes, which is restricted to European Union (EU) members. To mitigate this issue, the United Kingdom can, as a matter of urgency, launch a payload on a national military Communications Satellite to provide Navigation Overlay Services for the United Kingdom territory, surrounding waters and neighboring ally countries to meet the requirements of: Defense systems, Aviation, Maritime requirements and the effectiveness of Location-based Services for Emergencies and Crisis management etc.
This paper recently published in IJRDO-Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering describes the design of a navigation overlay service system as a hoisted payload on a national satellite and the required supporting ground infrastructure, highlighting various applications, services and solutions.
The lead author of the paper is Dr. Lawal S Lasisi of the Satellite Applications and Development department of the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited while the co-author is Prof. Chatwin R Chris of the Engineering and Design, School of Engineering and Informatics University of Sussex, UK.
“For the short and medium term objectives, rather than building and launching more than one satellite for redundancy, entire global coverage and reliability of services, a cooperative agreement can be reached with managers of the NIGCOMSAT-1R Navigation system; a geostationary satellite with a navigation overlay service broadcasting corrections and integrity information for GNSS satellites in the L1 frequency band (1575.42 MHz) as well as L5 in the frequency band (1176.45 MHz) with the service coverage area meeting the requirements of the United Kingdom (EIRP ≥ 30dBW) in case of a geostationary satellite link failure.
The Navigation payload of NIGCOMSAT-1R has been designed to support and operate in both L1 and L5 frequency signals meant to augment the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) over Africa starting with Nigeria by achieving its aim of improving accuracy, reliability, Integrity and Continuity of GNSS information through NOS on 2nd Generation Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) using Dual Frequency Multi-Constellation (DFMC) for the African continent and beyond. The Navigation Overlay Services is meant to serve maritime, defence utility, aviation, transport sector (roads & rail), public safety utility, and security of strategic national infrastructure, service and products in the African market and beyond. Figure 7 and 8 shows downlink coverage areas with overlaid Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power of NIGCOMSAT-1R Geo-Navigation Satellite on both L1 and L5 frequencies. Figure 9 shows pictorial architecture of Nigerian Satellite Augmentation System (NSAS) (NigComSat-1R, 2009).” – Excerpt from the paper.
Click here to download the full paper.
