NovAtel to Develop WAAS G-III - Galileo Prototype Reference Station Receiver for the United States Federal Aviation Administration

NovAtel Inc. today announced that US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NovAtel have exercised a bi-lateral option to produce a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) G-III – Galileo prototype receiver. Maintaining core NovAtel WAAS G-III functionality for GPS and SBAS signal processing, the new receiver will operate in the WAAS reference station test environment to facilitate research on multiple GNSS constellation utilization. The prototype receiver will also add functionality to support tracking and demodulating associated navigation data for Galileo satellites including:

• Galileo E1 and E5a tracking
• Ephemeris and almanac reporting/processing from E1 or E5a
• Automatic channel assignments
• Time solution computed from Galileo
• Correlator information for signal deformation on Galileo signals

The WAAS G-III – Galileo prototype receiver will be developed on NovAtel’s existing WAAS G-III receiver hardware and application software, and delivered as a field-loadable firmware package. The WAAS G-III – Galileo receiver will not be qualified to DO-178B Level D as part of this contract.

NovAtel’s WAAS G-III reference receiver platform was designed with expandability and multi-GNSS SBAS evolution in mind, and can be customized to meet the needs of individual satellite networks. NovAtel has already delivered G-III based reference receivers to several programs worldwide, including the WAAS G-III receiver (US WAAS, FAA), IRIMS G-III receiver (India IRNSS, ISRO),  and QZSS G-III receiver (Japan QZSS, NEC) variants.

The company’s reference receivers and uplink station equipment have been a central element of the US WAAS since its inception. The WAAS third-generation reference receiver (G-III) uses fully updated hardware, and tracks all GPS signals including the legacy GPS L1 C/A, L2P(Y) (semi-codeless), and the modernized L2C, L5, L1C signals as well as the WAAS L1 C/A and L5 signals. The WAAS G-III reference receiver provides a rich set of range measurement data, signal integrity metrics, and logs for processing by the system's data communication processor. The WAAS G-III – Galileo prototype receiver is the first G-III platform evolution for the FAA, an important step towards possible GPS + Galileo dual-GNSS SBAS operations in the future.

For further information on NovAtel’s WAAS G-III receivers, visit:

http://www.novatel.com/products/gnss-receivers/ground-reference-and-uplink-receivers/

About NovAtel Inc.

NovAtel designs, manufactures and sells high precision OEM positioning technology. Developed for efficient and rapid integration, our products have set the standard in quality and performance for over

20 years. State-of-the-art, lean manufacturing facilities in our North American headquarters produce the industry’s most extensive line of OEM receivers, antennas and subsystems. All of our products are backed by a team of highly skilled customer support and design engineers.

NovAtel Inc. is part of Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B; hexagon.com), a leading global provider of information technologies that drive quality and productivity improvements across geospatial and industrial enterprise applications.

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