CGEOS Creative Geosensing is a Belgian company specialized in engineering geodesy and high precision positioning applications. CGEOS was founded by Professor Joël van Cranenbroeck in January 2014, taking advantage of his long-term (more than 30 years) experience with GNSS technology acquired at the Belgian National Geographic Institute along with other professional experiences. CGEOS addresses three major market segments at an international level: engineering geodesy consultancy services, GNSS high accuracy positioning and GNSS monitoring of human-made structures and natural elements. CGEOS delivers these services to both the public and private sectors, not only in Belgium but worldwide.
Prof. Joël van Cranenbroeck, current Managing Director of CGEOS, recognizes the usefulness and applicability of EGNOS, commenting that “CGEOS has tested EGNOS corrections for several years and we are using it for multiple applications related to agriculture, transportation buses, and GIS (geospatial information systems) surveys”. In addition, CGEOS not only takes advantage of the signal in space of the EGNOS open service, but they also employ EDAS, the EGNOS data access service through the Internet, “to apply DGNSS corrections to both GPS and GLONASS constellations signals by means of NTRIP”.
For CGEOS, the wide integration of EGNOS, available in most professional surveying and mapping equipment, from manufacturers all over the world, is an important feature that facilitates its adoption. In this sense, CGEOS is using EGNOS “mainly with GNSS OEM boards from ComNav Technology (China) and u-blox (Switzerland) chipsets”. Prof. Joël van Cranenbroeck also refers to the main benefits that EGNOS offers to CGEOS asserting that “EGNOS provides DGNSS performances for portable receivers without the need to subscribe or/and to access any GNSS network positioning infrastructure”.
EGNOS not only supports the nominal GIS and surveying tasks of CGEOS, but it also allows them to achieve high-accuracy technical requirements for specific works, such as the case of a “proposal for using EGNOS in a public transportation management project”. Prof. Joël van Cranenbroeck anyway believes that EGNOS has still some potential to be exploited, remarking that “EGNOS deserves well a sound promotion and overall much stability for delivering 30 cm of horizontal accuracy”. From CGEOS experience, Prof. Joël van Cranenbroeck concludes that “EGNOS is an extraordinary service that will be continuously developed to achieve more performing results”.