The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a contract to CGI, a provider of mission-critical solutions across many industries, to enhance the navigational capabilities of drones in areas where global navigation satellite system signals are blocked, according to GPA World.
CGI and its partners plan to use 5G networks combined with traditional navigation systems, to provide a hybrid-positioning solution to increase accuracy, as well as offering increased resilience against intentional disruption of positioning, navigation and timing services.
CGI will work with the ESA, Swiss-based semiconductor manufacturer u-blox, the University of Sussex and an air navigation service provider to define use cases and system requirements for the 5G-based complement to existing GNSS receivers. In 2019, the ESA predicted that 5G would accelerate the trend of hybrid positioning, increasing accuracy, providing additional corrections to GNSS local accuracy and complementing GNSS when satellites are not visible.
“And because positioning performance will have to remain at the same high standard as user receivers move around – whether they be people, cars, shared bikes or drones – additional positioning solutions will also be employed, such as inertial sensors or device-to-device relative positioning,” the ESA said on its website.
In August, 5G and WiFi 6 connectivity was unveiled as the centerpiece of Qualcomm’s Flight RB5 5G Platform, which enables long-range, low-latency connections with UAVs. How long? The Qualcomm flight platform was used to communicate with NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter, which just completed its 14th autonomous flight on Mars.
“Designed for small, unmanned aircraft systems, the Qualcomm Flight RB5 Platform combines heterogeneous, low-power computing and camera systems with AI, and long-range connectivity such as 5G, and WiFi 6 to bring together the processing power of 15 TOPS [trillion operations per second] with advanced imaging capabilities and drone-to-drone communication,” Qualcomm said.
By J. Sharpe Smith Inside Towers Technology Editor
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