After smartphones, wearables are the second most sold GNSS device, with 70 million shipments in 2019 alone. Given this trend, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) was motivated to test smartwatch devices under various conditions. Three devices were selected that, to a certain extent, characterise the Galileo-enabled device offering on the market in 2020: the Suunto 9, Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 and Garmin Fenix 6X PRO. The tests delivered some interesting results.
The tests were carried out by the Airbus Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) team under a Galileo System Support contract with the GSA. The main objective was to evaluate the navigation performance of the wearables in different receiver configurations and environments. To evaluate the devices’ performance, the tests assessed positioning accuracy and PVT availability.
All the tests were carried out close to an Airbus site south of Munich, and included an open sky static test, an open sky pedestrian test, and an open sky bike test. In addition, there were three suburban dynamic tests (two pedestrian – one with the watch worn on the wrist and one on a backpack, and one bike test), an urban static test, and two forest dynamic tests (pedestrian and bike), both of which had alternating vegetation of broadleaf trees and conifers.
Each test was executed three times in order to cover all the possible GNSS receiver configurations.
