Pioneer Galileo navigation fixes at the University of Liege

For more than 30 years, billions of position fixes are performed every day everywhere in the world. Nevertheless, the capability to measure positions using the European GNSS Galileo is recent.

For this reason, ESA decided to offer certificates for the very first 50 Galileo position fixes; the University of Liege is among the 50 rewarded Universities and companies.

In the frame of Galileo “In Orbit Validation” phase, the European Space Agency has launched 4 fully operational satellites (2 in October 2011 and 2 in October 2012). Indeed, to be able to measure positions with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), the user or more precisely his GNSS receiver must have at least 4 satellites in view. In addition, the receiver has to know the observed satellite positions. Since 12 March 2013, Galileo satellites have been broadcasting navigation messages allowing receivers to compute their orbits. Since then, all the conditions are fulfilled to measure positions with Galileo.

For many years, the Unit of Geomatics of the University of Liege (ULg) is involved in GNSS related research and teaching activities. Since 12 March 2013, the ULg has been performing positioning fixes with Galileo. The red dots on the google map figure below show position fixes obtained with our station ULG0 (on the roof of our B5 building in Liege) on 28th April 2014.