LONDON — British consultancy PA Consulting Group is to lead a five nation consortium to look into the enabling technologies needed to develop receivers for Europe’s Galileo GPS location based system.

The two year project, funded to the tune of Euros 6 million by the European Commission through grants from the sixth Framework Programme, is dubbed GREAT, for Galileo REceiver for the mAss market.

The Consortium comprises Spanish group Acorde, a specialst in RF design for satellite and communications systems; German Aerospace Center DLR, the Tampere University of Technology, specifically the Finnish University’s group specializing in algorithm design for GNSS systems; and u-blox AG - a Swiss fabless developer and manufacturer of GPS chipsets and GPS receiver modules.

The project will comprise three distinct phases - core technology development, prototyping and testing - achieving major blocks of demonstrable baseband IP that, the group says, will allow further developments to be kick-started.

Initial target of the project is the development of front-end RF designs, as well as the algorithms and baseband technology to allow the Galileo signal to be used in indoor locations.