EGNOS/INTEGRAIL Demonstration
Gauteng, South Africa, 24th November 2005
In 2005, INTEGRAIL was selected as the system best suited to demonstrate the advantages of EGNOS to the rail sector in Africa. Under the ProDDAGE programme, sponsored by the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU), a presentation and demonstration of EGNOS and the INTEGRAIL system took place near Johannesburg, South Africa on 24th November 2005. The event included a live demonstration of the INTEGRAIL Mobile Unit in operation which was made possible through local logistical support kindly given by Spoornet, a South African transport and logistics company.
During the morning, presentations were made on EGNOS/Galileo, ISA (Inter-regional SBAS for AFI) implementation in southern Africa (by Air Traffic Navigation Services company), on the INTEGRAIL system itself and finally on the details of the demo. Lots of questions were received on the ‘Introducing EGNOS and Galileo’ presentation, mainly concerning how EGNOS and INTEGRAIL-type systems could be used in practise for rail applications, and how it differs from GPS alone. Considerable interest was also shown in the future Galileo system, its performance capabilities and the foreseen combined use with GPS and EGNOS.
In the afternoon the demonstration included a live INTEGRAIL operation presented by Kayser-Threde in partnership with Bombardier Transportation using the EGNOS African System Test Bed (ASTB) satellite signal. The demo involved a specially equipped train vehicle with onboard performance monitoring and control of the INTEGRAIL mobile unit. The selected train scenario showed the benefits of GNSS based navigation for railway traffic management and signalling such as autonomous position/velocity determination, status, performance and integrity monitoring, remote control and command, etc. All these were successfully demonstrated on the complex NASREC rail line which included the ability of INTEGRAIL to clearly distinguish between the many sets of parallel tracks.
One of the main aims of the demonstration was to promote the benefits of EGNOS outside the European navigation community and into the user communities in the wider world. INTEGRAIL proved to be the ideal medium to do this within the Southern African rail community and as such went a long way to publicize the benefits that EGNOS can bring to rail navigation.
The INTEGRAIL ZA rail demonstration on 24 November went extremely well. Around 40 persons attended the demonstration with representation from Spoornet, Metrorail (commuter rail company), E-Freight (logistics company), Alstrom ZA, Swaziland Railways, the Southern African Rail Association, as well as the National Ports Authority and other local companies. In their concluding remarks, Spoornet thanked the organisers for giving them a glimpse of the future regarding technologies in rail control systems.