The EU and the US have announced a bilateral agreement regarding the use of their GPS systems.

The EU is currently developing its Galileo GPS system, a network of 30 satellites that will give EU countries an independent GPS network from 2014. Currently most GPS devices use the US GNSS system.

A working group concluded that cooperation would improve the reliability for a wide range of aviation services and significantly improve robustness in the case of  GPS satellite outages.

The group also analysed the potential of dual frequency receivers which could take a signal from both networks.

They found that the combination of GPS and Galileo services provided significant performance improvements, particularly in partially obscured environments, where buildings, trees or terrain block large portions of the sky.

The US and the EU have been working together since 2004 to ensure that GPS and Galileo are compatible and interoperable at the user level and to improve the general public’s understanding of how the technologies can be beneficial.