Cracking Galileo

The GPS group at Cornell had a pretty big week last week. My advisor was awarded a three year grant to develop FPGA and software GPS receivers. We've already made significant progress on these technologies over the past couple of years, but it's been through side projects, leeching off of other funded research. Now, we can finally put real resources behind it, and maybe even get a PhD student to work on it full time. I just hope it's not me...too much coding.

The second bit of good news is that my advisor has been awarded the Burka Award from the Institute of Navigation for the best paper published last year in Navigation. Truthfully, I haven't even read the paper, so I can't comment on its quality. The only thing I can say about it with any certainty is that it has a lot of equations in it.

The final bit of news, and the most exciting, is that the group has published the Galileo navigation codes. Let me explain. Galileo is the European global satellite navigation system that will compete with GPS. They plan to be operational between 2008 and 2010, or something like that. So far, though, they've only launched one satellite, which is up there broadcasting the signals. The problem is that the Galileo people want European companies to have a competive edge in developing receivers that can navigate with these new signals. They haven't yet published the navigation codes, +1/-1 sequences thousands of digits long. These codes are necessary to acquire and track the signals.

Well, we figured them out and have published them against the Europeans' wishes. As expected, we've gotten a tremendously positive response from everyone else. Check out the website: Galileo Codes. This project has been a lot of fun, but I have to be careful about offending Europeans lest I might offend my Icelandic girlfriend.

Speaking of whom, I have something I want to say about her: she is the best girlfriend ever. What a comfortable fit and what beautiful eyes! Come home soon astin min.