Jorge Querol and Adriano Camps from the CTE (IEEC – UPC), Barcelona ESNC Challenge Award 2015
Jorge Querol, project’s junior researcher, received his award last week at the international ceremony in Berlin.
Awards Ceremony (220)_Barcelona
The FENIX project
The FENIX project (Front-End Interference eXcisor GNSS) focuses on solving the problems that cause interference to satellite navigation. It is a system that minimizes the effects of inhibitors frequency (jammers) in GNSS receivers (GPS, Galileo, Beidou etc.). These inhibitors, increasingly frequent as they are sold very cheaply as PPDs (Personal Privacy Devices), have become a major security risk and increase the likelihood of theft, sabotage or terrorist attacks.
FENIX is therefore aimed at eliminating the interference and thus increase safety in critical applications based on satellite navigation such as autonomous drones, transporting valuable goods, aviation and shipping, automated railway signalling, the geolocalized insurance rates of vehicles and tolls, autonomous driving vehicles, synchronization of telecommunications networks or the positioning of emergency and police bodies. According to Jorge Querol, “it is a measure against inhibitors, which protects the signal for these systems to function normally.”
Sketch_FENIX
FENIX advantages over other similar products is that it can be integrated between the antenna and the receiver of any system that can mitigate any interfering signal and works with all spread spectrum-based GNSS (GPS, Galileo, Beidou, etc. ). The results show that the attenuation of unwanted signals by FENIX is a factor of 100 to 1000, superior to other systems integrated into some receivers.
ESNC Barcelona Challenge
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) is an international innovation contest that recognizes the best ideas for satellite navigation. The ESNC Challenge Barcelona is the regional category of this global event, and has the organization Barcelona Activa, with the coordination of Torres Armengol and the collaboration of ESA Business Incubation Centre Barcelona and Barcelona NewSpace Community.
The regional contest winner receives a cash prize of 3,000 euros and the chance to enter the incubation program six months to develop his idea. For the FENIX project, which has already been tested in the laboratory and is now in the prototype development phase, that means being able to count on the support of space ESA BIC incubator based in Castelldefels Barcelona and management assistance to carry the device to market.