Companies interested in becoming involved in multi-GNSS projects should register for a workshop that will take place in Melbourne later this month called ‘Multi-GNSS Asia’ (MGA).

Multi-GNSS is the practice of using more than one GNSS network to gain a satellite location signal.

Russian and European GNSS systems are on the horizon, while Japan recently launched its quasi-zenith satellite (QZS) that will greatly improve coverage of Japan and Australia.

The 2nd GNSS workshop will be jointly organised by the Satellite Positioning Research and Application Centre (SPAC) of Japan, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Society (IGNSS).

The workshop is open to all international organisations, government agencies, industries, universities and research institutes that have an interest in using multi-GNSS in the Asia Oceania region.

This could include those involved in precision agriculture, machine guidance, disaster mitigation, intelligent transport system applications, location-based services, ionospheric and tropospheric observation and multi-GNSS monitoring networks, amongst others.

Chris Rizos, a member of the International GNSS Service (IGS) Governing Board, said it was important to make Japanese colleagues aware of Australia’s keen interest in the area.

“I can assure you that there are many organisations and companies in Japan eager to develop joint projects with Australian partners,” he wrote in an update this week.

“We want this first activity of MGA to really demonstrate Australia's interest in being an early participant in next generation GNSS experiments and demonstrator projects.”

Rizos envisions a number of areas for co-operation, including a “precise positioning demonstrator”, Australia hosting some multi-GNSS receivers able to track the QZSS signals, and QZSS receiver design experiments.

The workshop begins on the 26th November. For more information visit the website.