Galileo is a global navigation satellite system, created by the European Union (EU) and European Space Agency (ESA). Galileo is an alternative and complementary system to the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS. On November 30, 2007, the 27 EU transportation ministers involved reached an agreement that Galileo should be operational by 2013. Originally designed for open services (OS) only, the EU added security and defense applications in 2008.
Assisted Galileo (A-Galileo) is mainly used in mobile terminals to enhance performance by means of faster localization (time to first fix, TTFF) and higher accuracy. A-Galileo uses the coordinates of the base station serving the radio cell in which the mobile terminal is located and transmits this information to the mobile terminal via an assisted channel. The assisted data is transmitted via an IP channel (secure user plane location, SUPL) as defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).