How can app developers easily enhance the GNSS position in their apps with EGNOS?

EGNOS is a European system that provides greater accuracy than GPS does over Europe through the use of geostationary satellites that broadcast data used to correct the GPS positions. It offers an innovative feature - "Integrity" - that gives you a guarantee of your position and alerts you when GPS satellite data should not be trusted. It is of importance in case of solar activity peaks (like those in 2012 and expected in 2013) that can disturb satellite emissions. When the EGNOS satellite signals are not accessible (e.g. in urban canyons or under a tree canopy) EGNOS corrections can still be retrieved from the internet (with SISNeT or EDAS).

To help you benefit from these advantages, the European Commission provides easy and ready to use EGNOS toolkits for free!

Performances of the EGNOS toolkits

During the test phases evidence was collected to demonstrate the benefits of using EGNOS:

- The EGNOS SDK provides a software receiver to enhance GPS positions, and tests show that the position accuracy increases on average by 30%.The test results shown in the figures below represent a static test over 30.000 points (approx. 8 hours) which support the above statement.

As, so far, GPS chips inside smartphones are "blackboxes", the only way to retrieve the GPS raw data needed to apply EGNOS corrections is to rely on an external GNSS receiver connected to the smartphone by Bluetooth. However, the European Commission and smartphone manufacturers are discussing ways to get access to the raw data from the GNSS internal chip.