NovAtlel Builds First North American GPS and Gallileo Receiver
NovAtel Inc. (NASDAQ: NGPS), a precise positioning technology company, announced today that it has successfully demonstrated the performance of a dual mode GPS and Galileo L1/E5A dual frequency prototype receiver to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), developed under a contract awarded in September 2004. These receivers will be ready to accept signals from the first Galileo satellites scheduled to launch later this year or in early 2006. Galileo is Europe’s state-of-the-art satellite navigation system, which is expected to be operational by 2010/12 with up to 30 satellites orbiting the earth.
NovAtel is developing two sets of L1/E5A engineering receivers and L1/E5A transmitters for the CSA for use with Galileo satellites. The receiver is being integrated into a modified version of NovAtel’s WAAS-GII system, which also includes the Euro-3M L1/L2 dual frequency GPS receiver. The signal generator is based on a previous design built for the new U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) uplink system.
“This is the first operational, near-production standard, dual mode GPS and Galileo dual frequency receiver in North America,” said Tony Murfin, VP Business Development at NovAtel. “We are particularly pleased to have the receiver working this early in the CSA program. We believe the technology we are creating here is unique, and will enable NovAtel to provide GPS/Galileo receiver solutions worldwide and, hopefully, in the ground infrastructure of the Galileo system itself.”
Currently, NovAtel supplies GPS navigational receivers to a number of national satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) around the world, including the U.S. WAAS, European EGNOS, Japanese MSAS, Chinese SNAS, and, more recently, the Gagan system in India. These complex receivers incorporate NovAtel’s Narrow Correlator tracking technology, MEDLL multipath reduction technology and Signal Quality Monitoring, and receive and process both WAAS L1/L5 GEO and GPS L1/L2/L5 signals.
