Manuel del Castillo, VP at Focal Point Positioning, explains why global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) – which includes GPS – are not just tools of convenience, but critical components of modern logistics.
When the UK Space Agency and London Economics modelled what would happen if satellite navigation were switched off for a week, the results were eye-opening. Their report found the UK economy would lose an estimated £7.64 billion, with road transport and logistics among the hardest-hit sectors.
The calculation of a £7.64 billion hit if GNSS was down for a week highlights the importance of this technology to the economy, but for most delivery operators, the issue isn’t the total loss of satellite navigation; it’s the frequent, localised inaccuracies that arise in complex environments. Imagine a delivery driver navigating a busy city centre. The building canyons bounce satellite signals in unpredictable ways and the GNSS receiver can be off by tens of metres.
The driver might arrive at the wrong side of a block or be directed to the rear entrance of a building rather than the front door. After circling the area for ten minutes and calling the customer, the parcel is eventually handed over – but the schedule has already slipped. Multiply that by hundreds of deliveries per day, across thousands of vehicles, and the cost of unreliable positioning becomes clear.
The urban canyon challenge
Accurate location data has become the foundation of efficiency in logistics. It determines route optimisation, estimated arrival times, proof-of-delivery records and customer visibility. Yet in dense urban areas, where demand is greatest, traditional GNSS receivers are most likely to struggle.
Multipath interference – where signals reflect off glass, steel or concrete before reaching the receiver – can create positional errors of several metres. Trees, tunnels and even heavy vehicles can further degrade signal quality. These errors are often invisible to operators; a driver’s app may still show them on the map, even if they are tens of metres away from the correct location. The result is wasted time, rising fuel consumption and customer frustration.
The scale of the challenge is growing. The World Economic Forum predicts that the number of delivery vehicles in cities could rise by 61 per cent by 2030, as e-commerce continues to accelerate. This growth amplifies the impact of every inefficiency. If each driver loses just a few minutes per hour to poor positioning, the cumulative effect across a national fleet is enormous, both economically and environmentally.
These challenges aren’t limited to human drivers. As logistics companies test autonomous delivery vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the demand for trustworthy navigation data becomes even greater. For these technologies to be deployed safely and at scale, GNSS performance must be reliable in the most complex real-world conditions.
Smarter navigation for reliable logistics
At Focal Point Positioning, we’ve focused on addressing these challenges directly. Our patented S-GNSS technology enhances the accuracy and reliability of existing GNSS receivers, improving their ability to handle signal reflections, interference and spoofing. Crucially, this is achieved through software, without the need for new hardware, allowing logistics operators to upgrade performance across existing fleets.
The result is positioning data that is not only more accurate, but more reliable. With improved signal processing, S-GNSS helps ensure that every location fix represents the vehicle’s true position with a reliable associated confidence level, even in the most challenging “urban canyon” environments. For logistics operators, this translates into tangible efficiency gains: fewer missed turns, reduced idle time and more predictable delivery schedules.
Reliable positioning also strengthens the broader ecosystem that supports logistics. Regulators, insurers and fleet managers increasingly expect operators to verify their data integrity. As autonomous systems mature, the ability to prove where a vehicle was – and to do so with confidence – will be essential to safety, compliance and public trust.
The efficiency of global logistics now depends on the quality of invisible infrastructure in orbit above us. The UK Space Agency’s findings highlight the national value of GNSS, but on the ground, it’s the micro-failures that quietly erode productivity every day. With smarter, more resilient satellite navigation, logistics operators can reclaim those lost minutes, cut costs and improve customer experience – turning the urban canyons, once unreliable scenarios for logistics systems, into scenarios where those systems continue to work seamlessly without disrupting the delivery chain.
Author biography:
Manuel del Castillo, VP at Focal Point Positioning Manuel has over 20 years experience in the GNSS industry including product line management with popular telco, smartphone and wearable brands. Prior to FPP, he spent 14 years with Broadcom.
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