European Space Agency supports FocalPoint in pioneering London automotive GNSS project
Supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), FocalPoint has developed a new Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver to demonstrate its S-GNSS Auto software.
Last year we covered how the Cambridge-based company’s S-GNSS Auto solution helps to improve positioning accuracy in urban environments, as well as being more resilient to radio frequency (RF) spoofing attacks – with clear benefits for self-driving. Now, thanks to ESA’s Navigation Innovation and Support Programme (NAVISP), it can evidence this in real-time.
Gonzalo Martin de Mercado, NAVISP Element 2 Manager at ESA, said: “We are very proud to have supported FocalPoint in developing their S-GNSS receiver. We are confident this technology will have significant growth potential in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and even in consumer markets like smartphones and wearables.”
GNSS for self-driving
Cars of the Future spoke to FocalPoint CEO, Scott Pomerantz, and VP of Business Development, Manuel del Castillo, to find out more…
SP: “ESA’s NAVISP is a key enabler for innovation in the European positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) landscape. This newly developed receiver will support our commercialisation strategy, underpinning IP development and providing that much-needed proof of impact.
“Being able to rely on the accuracy of GNSS is key for ADAS and automated driving systems. Our Supercorrelation technology has already won multiple awards, including the Business Innovation Award from the Institute of Physics in 2023.
“By determining the arrival angle of satellite signals, permitting only the line-of-sight signals and ignoring reflections, it will help reduce the number of accidents worldwide. All the major automotive manufacturers are interested.”
MdC: “Applying for ESA NAVISP support and funding proved to be extremely successful for FocalPoint. The project ran for two years. We hit milestones throughout the period, and we have just submitted our final paper and made our closing presentation.
“The main goal was to develop our own software defined receiver to prove the commercial implementation of our S-GNSS software – our patented, chip-set level technology which enhances the positioning performance of a consumer-grade GNSS receiver.
“Our Supercorrelation technology has several functions in the GNSS receivers for the automotive autonomy industry. GNSS’s core function is to provide the essential cross-checking of the accuracy and reliability of the sensors, cameras and radars, which can become very challenging, particularly in urban areas.
“As the only sensor capable of determining the vehicle’s absolute position anywhere on earth, as well as the sensor typically used to discipline inertial sensors, enhancing the reliability of the GNSS receiver itself is a logical first step to help overcome the typical challenges facing today’s traditional GNSS receivers.
“Needless to say, in the automotive sector we want GNSS to be accurate to the lane at least, but often that doesn’t happen without our technology. Across many routes in inner city London, around Canary Wharf, where there are lots of very tall buildings, and therefore a huge number of reflections, in testing without Supercorrelation, many times the positions computed were on the pavement or even inside buildings.
“The first baseline of performance for our tests was a dual frequency L1 and L5 commercial receiver, which represents the state-of-the-art. The second baseline was our own GNSS software defined radio (SDR) without Supercorrelation. When applying Supercorrelation, the results were always within the correct lane, clearly demonstrating a level of accuracy that’s essential for advancing ADAS functionality.
“Another core benefit we have been able to demonstrate is the enhanced urban accuracy irrespective of the quality of the antenna used. We can compute very accurate positions even with lower quality antennas.
“In many new cars the manufacturers try to embed the antennas for aesthetic reasons, which unfortunately can compromise the performance. The enhancement of Supercorrelation facilitates a sensitivity boost in the GNSS receiver.
Resistance to spoofing
“Finally, for advancing ADAS and self-driving vehicles, it is critical that the GPS is resistant to spoofing attacks, so rejecting those is the third major benefit that the addition of Supercorrelation brings to the chip.
“We’re now discussing a phase two with ESA to further develop new Supercorrelation technologies, including its application to Real Time Kinematic (RTK) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP) GNSS correction services. Early research has shown dramatic improvement of these services, but with ESA’s backing, we will bring these to market even sooner.
“The aspect of resistance to spoofing attacks could be hugely valuable as all cars from a given manufacturer could be constantly monitoring the environment and sharing this data between them, a crowdsourcing effort to increase the reliability of GNSS for automotive.”
SP: “You covered our strategic investment from General Motors last year and we will definitely be doing more testing in London because that’s interesting for many car manufacturers, particularly JLR. We’ve been testing in Seoul, in a place renowned for its modern skyscrapers and office buildings – an area critical to Seoul’s urban landscape called Teheran-ro in Gangnam, a challenging landscape that is local to Hyundai and Kia.
“We’ve also been testing in Tokyo’s skyscraper landscape, results that will be of interest for brands including Suzuki, Subaru, Nissan and Toyota, and also in Frankfurt and the Black Forest for brands including BMW, Mercedes and Audi. Of course we’ll keep testing in Michigan and San Francisco, home of US automotive OEMs. It is all commercially driven, to prove that we can overcome the challenges associated with GNSS for these manufacturers in their own test environments.
“Open sky is relatively easy, but the minute you move into urban areas, motorways with big barriers, or roads with deep foliage, you can often find yourself with reduced GPS accuracy. Similarly, if, say L1 were spoofed and the network went down, and you didn’t have an L5 acquisition capability, that could be a problem, so we need to be multi-band.
“The whole spoofing and jamming piece has been getting a lot of press and our three buzzwords are mitigation, identification and localization. This will be a theme for every car maker – to establish whether there was an error on their side that requires correcting, or whether it truly was due to a bad actor. In the case of the latter, how did that play out and what are the liabilities? FocalPoint provides the fundamental data.”
