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London - As political wrangling over funding stalls the advent of Europe's fledgling Galileo satellite navigation system, a wealth of R&D is under way to ensure working terminals will be available when, if not before, the system moves into commercial operation. That's now expected to be in 2012 or 2013.
One pan-European program, for example, has just completed its two-year project and delivered a library of demonstrable intellectual property for future receivers. The so-called Great (for "Galileo receiver for the mass market") Consortium has also developed a combined Galileo/GPS receiver with prototype baseband and a wideband dual-frequency radio front end.
Galileo received another boost last month when Giove-B, the second demonstrator satellite, was launched into orbit and immediately started transmitting and receiving signals. Built by a consortium led...