Qualification and certification of mission and safety critical applications are major milestones in the successful operational rollout of Satellite Navigation systems like GPS/EGNOS, Galileo, GLONASS and Compass (Beidou). The challenge in certification of SatNav receivers is that there is no single standard against which it can be certified. Another challenge in the successful implementation and use of EGNOS and Galileo is the lead time for certification of mission and safety critical applications. A timely success of Galileo will require a reduction in lead times for certification. The European Commission is in charge of certification processes for the signal-in-space based on the system safety cases.

The User Communities’ safety regulation / certification authorities are in charge of certification and approval of operations and equipment to support these operations based on application specific safety cases. Each of these user domains relies on their specific certification authorities that grant operational approval following different sets of rules, guidelines, and interests. In this context CERGAL concentrates on the measures already established and future activities which will demonstrate that all provisions are implemented which assure SATNAV systems certification and operational safety. CERGAL has been established as cross-border information exchange and discussion platform for system and application developers, operators, approval authorities and many different users.