BENGALURU: Even as work on having India's own navigation system using the

(IRNSS) or NavIC constellation of satellites is going on in full swing, the

's (

) is gearing up to host a ground station for the Russian version of global positioning system-Global Navigation Satellite System (Glonass).

The ground station, which will help Glonass become more efficient, will come up in Bengaluru, according to sources in the space department. "While there was an MoU signed between in 2016, we've now identified Bengaluru as the location," one source said.

Officials explained that the selection of Bengaluru was largely because the city already has the Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (Istrac). Istrac will host the Russian ground station too, an official said, adding that the "ground-measurement gathering station" will extend the existing partnership between Isro and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

"The station will basically help get accurate locations and refine the satellite information further," Isro chairman Sivan K said. These stations are generally called reference receivers and will use specific beacons, another scientist explained.

India, which has a space agreement with Russia has also been using Glonass along with GPS (a US system) that is used globally for a few years now. "Even the Indian armed forces use Glonass for specific purposes," one source added.

NavIC station in Russia

Further, in return, Roscosmos will also host ground-measurement gathering stations in Russia for NavIC, which will boost the operations of the IRNSS satellites. "We have asked for some space in Russia for NavIC, which we'll use for IRNSS," Sivan said.

This is part of an October 2016 agreement between Isro and Roscosmos. "The NavIC station in Russia will help enhance the baseline for orbit determination and of Ionosphere delays to improve the accuracy of the navigation solution," a source said.

India, which had a few hiccups with the IRNSS constellation-failure of atomic clocks; one satellite did not even reach the orbit because of a PSLV glitch-has now put in place a constellation of satellites and work for developing ground segments.

While Isro has put the satellites in space, the lack of indigenously-developed systems to tap data from this constellation and take it to lakhs of Indians through a variety of applications are not completely ready yet.

There is some headway: Bengaluru-based firm, Accord Software and Systems Private Limited, along with Isro developed technology that can receive signals from the IRNSS satellites, compute location and also decode its broadcast message as early as 2016, it is only useful for agencies and organisations.

Also, Isro has already developed a micro chipset to be used for navigation purpose and designed a miniaturised version of the micro chipset to be used in navigation devices. The space agency is also working on chipsets for very small navigation devices. However, the industry is yet to mass produce these receivers and chipsets, given that there is no apparent demand as most users prefer GPS.