Fugro Launches Seastar XP2

Fugro Satellite Positioning released its Seastar XP2 PPP GNSS augmentation service on July 1, 2014, which provides increased redundancy for mission-critical offshore GNSS position and navigation applications.

Like Fugro’s flagship Seastar G2 service, XP2 is an L1/L2, phase-based, Orbit and Clock PPP service. Similar to the 24+ American GPS satellites, XP2 incorporates a number of Russian GLONASS satellites to generate corrections that permit the calculation of a real-time position solution.

The new XP2 service mimics Fugro’s flagship G2 and offers accuracies approaching it. Though, it exclusively uses corrections from an independent network. This feature aids in meeting customer needs that require an additional Orbit and Clock PPP augmentation service complementary to Seastar G2, or to provide increased redundancy.

XP2’s ability to use the 50+ available GPS and GLONASS satellites helps in delivering extra performance compared to the GPS, serving as the only XP service enabling receivers to output accurate international decimeter positions, irrespective of the vessel’s distance from a reference station.

Seastar XP2 is broadcast on all Fugro beams and via NTRIP. It is suitable for dynamically positioned offshore oil and gas vessels, such as: drill ships and rigs, platform supply vessels, dive support vessels, anchor handling tugs and multipurpose vessels.