Galileo and EGNOS Adoption in Automotive Emergency Call System (eCall)

Abstract

The Commission Delegated Regulation 2017/79 establishes that all new passenger cars and light duty vehicles must be equipped with eCall; in Annex VI, the technical requirements for compatibility of eCall with EGNSS are reported. GSA launched the eCall testing campaign which was jointly designed and performed with the Joint Research Centre. The test campaign allowed both supporting manufacturers in reaching full compatibility with EGNSS signals and providing guidelines to the technical centre designated to grant EC type-approval of the vehicles. Fifteen devices were tested under static and dynamic scenarios. The tests were conducted using simulated signals characterised by different signal power levels and propagation conditions. The JRC has set up a test-bed specifically designed to assess the performance of the eCALL devices with respect to the technical requirements for compatibility with the positioning services provided by Galileo and EGNOS systems. This test-bed is based on a GNSS simulator from Spirent Communication (Spirent GSS9000). The GNSS simulator has been configured to generate the Open Service Signal of GPS L1, Galileo E1, and SBAS (Satellite-Based Augmentation System), in accordance with the specifications given in the eCALL Guidelines Report and with Galileo and EGNOS control documents. The variety and the volume of data lead to the generation of a unique dataset, which was useful to verify that the adoption of Galileo is quite mature, despite its early service provision stage, and provides a substantial contribution to reach the regulation objectives in the interest of EU citizens and in particular providing quality positioning information to enable a safer emergency service in European roads. At the same time, the campaign also allowed the manufacturers to identify margin for improvements in terms of capability to optimally acquire track and use EGNSS signals.