BRUSSELS, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States and the European Union (EU) announced their agreement on Thursday to make their respective satellite navigation systems -- the GPS and Galileo -- compatible.

    A joint working group has overcome technical challenges to design interoperable civil signals, said the European Commission.

    The experts have agreed that a multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) waveform will be used on both systems. Future receivers using the MBOC signal should be able to track the GPS and/or Galileo signals with higher accuracy in challenging environments that include multipath, noise, and interference, said the commission.

    The United States is upgrading its GPS (Global Positioning System) to compete with the EU's Galileo system, which is still under development.

    Galileo, which is scheduled to be operational by 2012, will be more precise than the U.S. system.