Fundamental Elements – EU R&D funding for EGNSS-enabled electronics

Fundamental Elements is a new EU R&D funding mechanism supporting the development of EGNSS-enabled chipsets, receivers and antennas. The Fundamental Elements projects are part of the overall European GNSS strategy for market uptake, led by GSA. The objectives of the Fundamental Elements can be summarised as following:

• Facilitate the adoption of the European GNSS Systems, building on their innovative services and differentiators;
• Improve the competitiveness of EU industry;
• Address user needs in priority market segments;
• Maximise benefits to European citizens.

The total budget for all the projects, to be carried out from 2015 – 2020, is EUR 101 million.

Fundamental Elements complements the EU’s Horizon 2020 research programme. Horizon 2020, on the one hand, aims to foster adoption of Galileo and EGNOS mostly via content and application development and supports the integration of services provided by these programmes into devices and their commercialisation. Fundamental Elements, on the other hand, focuses on supporting the development of innovative chipset and receiver technologies that industry would not yet invest in on its own initiative, thus accelerating their integration of Galileo and EGNOS into market-ready devices.