EGNOS, initially deployed for safety of life navigation services in aviation, has expanded its applications to emerging domains such as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) operations, which have evolved exponentially in the recent years.
In this type of operations, GNSS has become essential for a safer and more reliable navigation of UAS, and GNSS receivers are integrated on most of new commercial UAS as a standard feature. European GNSS (EGNSS) -EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) and Galileo-, provide significant added value to UAS navigation, positioning and related applications, with respect to other systems.
EUSPA and ESSP have developed a white paper that reviews the EGNOS services and their current and future applications in unmanned aviation. It includes not only present EGNOS services and their immediate application in non-safety critical applications, but also the main considerations for the development of a possible future safety critical EGNSS service based on EGNOS tailored to UAS operations akin to the current EGNOS SoL Service for manned aviation.
Following this comprehensive overview, it provides an in-depth analysis of the current performance of the EGNOS Open Service (OS) and the EGNOS Data Access Service (EDAS) in UAS operations. The document, which shows the performance in real operating conditions, contains the analysis of tests flight data which show that EGNOS OS and EDAS provide improved accuracy to UAS non-safety-critical operations by reducing the Navigation System Error (NSE) and Total System Error (TSE).
Feel free to read the full paper in the guidance material section of the EGNOS User Support Website.