SERENITY: SAR/Galileo Return Link Service Evolutions. Two Way Communication Service Prototype and Demonstration

Executive summary

Contract Number: Call for Tenders No DEFIS/OP/2020/0003

Project Segment: Horizon 2020, Galileo Mission and Services evolution

Duration: 18 months (January 2021 - June 2022), extended to 22 months.

Budget: € 700 000

Project Partners: Telespazio (France), Thales (France), CNES (France), Orolia (France), Pildo Labs (Spain)

Project Coordinator:

Laurent Arzel (Telespazio France)

laurent [dot] arzeltelespazio [dot] com (laurent[dot]arzel[at]telespazio[dot]com)

European Commission Project Manager:

Antonio Rolla

antonio [dot] rollaec [dot] europa [dot] eu (antonio[dot]rolla[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

Background

With the long-term vision of making the TWC service adopted, this project sought to address the following objectives:

• define the new TWC service, mission and system requirements;
• specify a SGB enabling the TWC, and develop a prototype;
• perform a TWC service demonstration with the SGB prototype, the SAR operational chain.

These objectives have been addressed through the following activities:

• Reviewing the preliminary work on TWC done in the former EU project GARELISE;
• Consulting the service stakeholders (Beacon users and SAR forces) to build TWC user needs;
• Specifying Service/mission requirements;
• Specifying Second Generation beacon requirements;
• Specifying RCC user interface requirements;
• Specifying RLSP interface requirements;
• Designing and developing the TWC service demonstrator;
• Ensuring that the demonstration induced no security risk to the RLSP;
• Performing end-to-end validation testing;
• Performing demonstration with the operational chain and the SAR forces;
• Collecting feedbacks and lessons learnt from the demonstration participants (EC, SAR forces, Consortium) and issuing recommendations to consolidate the TWC service/mission and system requirements;
• Disseminating the results and supporting EC for preparing papers to C/S and IMO.

Results

In the consortium perspective, SERENITY was a successful project that achieved all its objectives.

The wide stakeholder consultation clearly confirmed the need for a Two-Way Communication system in particular for decreasing the C/S false alert rate (currently ~95%) and improving SAR mission success and SRU crew safety.

The user needs have been analysed from the stakeholder consultation and have been translated into technical specifications ensuring a consistent level of performance (in particular a low latency for exchanging information).

The service demonstration has been organized with the French RCC Gris-Nez for a maritime use-case. The demonstration involved the full operational chain (Galileo, FMCC, RLSP, MEOLUT), the RCC Gris-Nez, the SNSM (Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer) and the French civil security.

Despite very harsh meteorological conditions the demonstration took place allowing a very rich debriefing sessions with all participants.

The demonstration results have been presented by EC to the Open Meeting of the 67^th Session of the Cospas-Sarsat Council (CSC-67/OPN), and decision was taken to create a correspondence working group on the TWC implementation (C/S CWG TWC).

Expected impact

The SAR community was overall very supportive, and a lot of expectations is now placed upon the TWC service.

The wide stakeholder consultation, the information papers presented at C/S, and the successful demonstration created the strong momentum envisioned by the consortium towards the service adoption.

The TWC service will improve drastically the SAR operations (safety, preparation, execution, costs…), while the entry into operation will not be in the short term and may follow different paths.

The CWG TWC has now taken over the endeavour initiated by SERENITY, and the TWC implementation will be studied in detail. Further support activities would be very helpful to keep the momentum, ease CWG TWC work and foster the SAR/Galileo TWC service adoption.

Disclaimer

The project results represent the views of the consortium. They do not necessarily represent the views of the European Commission and they do not commit the Commission to implementing the results.