ENAC is a French University specialized in civil aviation and aeronautics that is under the authority of the French Ministry of Transportation. ENAC was founded in 1949 and its headquarters are located in Toulouse, France. It is the only aviation-oriented university in France offering a wide and complete panel of aeronautics-oriented training programmes and activities, serving the aeronautical world, and particularly the air transport sector. The ENAC is made up of :
- 2,000 students in 25 various training courses : engineering, air transport pilot, air traffic controller, etc.,
- 7,500 trainees each year in 400 continuing education programmes or advanced training courses,
- High level training materials associated with its multidisciplinary activities: 135 aircrafts, air traffic control simulators, flight simulators, fully equipped laboratories, etc...
- Recognized research laboratories in Telecommunications, Applied mathematics, Human-Machine interaction, Economics and UAV.
- An education team having an exceptional amount of professional skills and know-how
- An international audience: ENAC welcomes hundreds of international students and trainees from the 5 continents each year.
Through all these activities, the ENAC is committed to meeting the requirements of the aeronautical field, in which both private and public actors are involved, either in France or abroad. In more than 60 years, with 20,000 alumni, ENAC has acquired recognition, in France and internationally, of all the partners belonging to the wide range of its activities.
ENAC has also a dynamic research activity supported by 4 laboratories. The involvement of ENAC in the present project is through the TELECOM laboratory.
About TELECOM Lab and SIGNAV
The TELECOM lab is composed of 13 permanent staff, 5 post-docs and about 15 PhD students. It is structured in 3 research groups:
- The SIGnal processing and NAVigation (SIGNAV) group
- The ElectroMagntics and Antenna (EMA) group
- The Data Networks (RESCO) group
The involvement of the ENAC TELECOM lab in this project will be through the SIGNAV research group.
The SIGNAV research group is composed of 8 permanent staff, 3 post-docs and about 10 PhD students. It was created in 1993 and has since then acquired a recognized expertise on the general field of GNSS. The SIGNAV Research Group is strongly oriented towards 2 fields of application:
- GNSS for Civil Aviation :
- This domain is the central point of the research activity of SIGNAV group. It includes the activities related to advanced studies, to standardization and use of GNSS systems by civil aviation. It is built on technical knowledge in terms of signal processing and operational knowledge of the civil aviation world. This includes in flight navigation and airport navigation.
- Urban and peri-urban navigation :
- This domain is essentially focused on the needs of navigation for all type of terrestrial transport (pedestrian, vehicular, railway) or maritime with a stress on critical applications and the notion of reliability.
The scientific themes of the SIGNAV Research Group, supporting its R&D activities, are:
- Receiver Signal Processing
- Design and optimization of GNSS signals
- Alternative Navigation (in complement to GNSS)
- Sensors Hybridization
- Integrity Monitoring
The SIGNAV Research Group has established several collaborations on several axes:
- Support to standardization of the use of GNSS for civil aviation. In this frame, SIGNAV contributed or contributes to the following working groups : EUROCAE WG62, EU/US WGC, ICAO NSP, RTCA SC-159.
- Participation to European projects with European funding. In this case, the group is part of European consortiums with various types of partners: big European groups, SMEs or universities.
- Academic exchanges related to ENAC Engineering programs and Master GNSS. In this frame, the students are driven to do their final project within universities, research centers or companies in the entire world (University of Calgary in Canada, DLR in Germany, ENRI in Japan, University of New South Wales in Australia for example).
Finally, the SIGNAV research is the main contributor to the extensive GNSS education provided by ENAC: Master of Science in GNSS, professional training, GNSS fundamentals and advanced courses delivered in most of the training programmes.
The web site http://signav.recherche.enac.fr presents all important aspects of the research activities of the SIGNAV Research Group.