The MISTRALE project proposes to address soils moisture management in agriculture as well as wetlands or flooded areas monitoring by using Global Navigation Satellite Systems reflected signals (GNSS-R) as a powerful technology for humidity or flooded mapping. The detection by GNSS-R is known to be much more reliable than visible/NIR imagery, and will be usable even under a cloud cover, during the night and even under vegetation (bushes, grass, trees) when passive remote sensing is not applicable. The main objective is to demonstrate a service chain in different use cases : pilot projects will be carried out in soil humidity mapping for agriculture (optimizing the water resource management), wetlands and flooded areas (risk management, flood-prone areas, damages evaluation). In order to meet the objectives, a GNSS-R receiver embedded into a small RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) will be developed and implemented into an operational chain to provide the service. GNSS-R technology aims at measuring the GNSS signals reflected on the ground, and, compared to the direct signals, permits a measurement of the soil humidity (from 0 to 100%) as well as flooded extend. The use of GALILEO signals will significantly improve the precision of mapping. The operational system will integrate three main axes of development: adapting the GNSS-R technology for the requirements, making a compact GNSS-R receiver and optimizing an existing RPAS. Using EGNOS and GALILEO in the project will also improve navigation capabilities of small RPAS (<4Kg) and contribute to the development of regulations for their integration in airspace. We assembled a consortium that addresses all aspects of the project : four SME specialized in GNSS receivers, GNSS-R technology, operational applications and dissemination, two labs for RPAS and GNSS-R technology. An advisory board composed of agronomy and environment specialists as well as end users will complete the skills of the consortium.

This project (R-Wake) aims at developing a simulation framework to assess the risk and hazards of potential wake vortex encounters for the en-route phase of flight.

GNSS Automated Virtualized Test Environment for Rail (GATE4Rail) deals with tasks TD2.4 and TD2.6 of the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan with the goals to: i) achieve a realistic characterization of the GNSS in the railways environment assessing the performance and properties of typical fail-safe train positioning components in nominal and fault conditions; ii) implement a common test process framework for zero on-site testing to minimizing cost and time. GATE4RAIL will implement a geo-distributed simulation and verification platform connecting GNSS centres of excellence, and ERTMS/ETCS laboratories to evaluate the GNSS performances in the railway environment with agreed methodologies and tools. This approach offers the advantage to stress the global system in presence of very rare fault events instead of long and expensive tests on field, developing a standard methodology for representative test cases. GATE4RAIL will develop methodology and tools for an automated update of tests, through Model-Based System Engineering philosophy to ensure that the simulation infrastructure can be maintained and extended reducing the need for re-assessments to increasing the test environment efficiency. The entire process will be reviewed by an independent Notified Body already engaged on GNSS assessment for rail applications and a demo on railway line in Italy and Spain is included. GATE4RAIL’s team is very competent bringing together expertise on the GNSS and rail sectors necessary for the exploitation of GNSS that is one of the Game changer of the ERTMS.