The European Space Agency Free Resources for SBAS Education: Learning, Practicing, and Accessing the EGNOS Performances in Real-Time

This paper presents a large number of Education tools developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the last 5 years. These have been already tested with high success by recognized professors in several undergraduate and graduate GNSS programs. The way to access these tools (most of them free) will also be explained in this article. It is believed by the Authors that these tools will provide a useful contribution to the GNSS Education and professional community. Since 2002, ESA has introduced two important data access elements. First, the SISNeT (Signal-In-Space over the InterNET, see [2] – [5]) data server, and later, in 2003, the EMS (EGNOS Message Server) [6] data server, offering real-time and offline access to the messages transmitted by the ESA EGNOS system [1], respectively. In addition to the wide mosaic of applications that SISNeT has opened (especially in urban environment), and the potential of EMS in the context of EGNOS performance qualification and monitoring, ESA has found a remarkable potential oriented to SBAS Education behind those two services. Indeed, ESA is working, since 2002, on the development of tools to support SBAS Education, mainly based on the exploitation of SISNeT and EMS potential such as SISNeT User Application Software (SISNeT-UAS), SISNeTlab and SBAS TeACHER. In addition, ESA has created an online EGNOS performance monitoring tool [7], which provides in quasireal time the measured performances by a European network of fourteen monitoring stations. ESA has also identified the need of a starting point for new students wanting to obtain a deep technical knowledge about EGNOS. Responding to that need, ESA has produced the “EGNOS Book”, co-edited with the support of European Industry, which compile all the technical knowledge resulting from EGNOS experience in the previous 8 years. The Authors believe that the “EGNOS Book” will be an invaluable resource for SBAS students, teachers and other GNSS professionals. This paper presents a brief description of the developed SBAS educational resources, and provides some testimonials from some of the key players in making these resources develop their main mission: teaching SBAS. Finally it includes several Internet links allowing the reader to obtain more information and even download and try the tools in their current version