www.aena.es

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service Programme (EGNOS) is a global navigation satellite system designed to increase GPS services. The programme is promoted by the European Union, Eurocontrol and the European Space Agency (ESA) and uses the free American GPS signal.

Using three geostationary satellites and a broad terrestrial network that is still under construction, EGNOS is considered one of the three SBAS augmentation systems that are currently being developed world-wide and which made up the first stage of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS-1). The other two augmentation projects are the American Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), and the Japanese MSAS (MTSAT Satellite Based Augmentation System).

Chronology

• In the 1990s, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), in an attempt to define and perfect a Global Navigation System (GNSS) with world-wide coverage (GNSS), stated the need to create augmentation systems that avoided the errors and insufficiencies in the existing operative constellations. It defined this function as augmentation and described one of its variants: SBAS systems.
• In June 1994, the Ministries of Transport from the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) proposed developing one of the European augmentation components for the GNSS, in order to achieve a certain degree of independence from the North American GPS. In December of that same year, the European Union approved the EGNOS programme.
• Between 1995 and 1998, the initial EGNOS phase concluded the definition and preliminary project design and carried out the initial testing.
• Up to 2005 the programme was developed and deployed. 
• From mid 2005 until early 2009 the EGNOS services were validated in order to certify the system as a valid augmentation service for civil aviation and the EGNOS service provider was certified under the Single European Sky standard.
• From early March 2009 a new contractual framework will come into effect in which the system will be owned by the European Commission, the service provider will be European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP), and the design agent will be the European Space Agency (ESA).

For more information on the EGNOS system, visit the official web site of the European Space Agency:

Navigation: www.esa.int/navigation

EGNOS: www.esa.int/navigation

EGNOS (ESSP) has an official website:

www.essp.be

For information on the EGNOS system operations (EGNOS user support), architecture and services, alerts on failures etc.:

http://www.asqf-gnss.com