NavIC station in Russia

There is some headway

BENGALURU: Even as the work on having India’s own navigation system using the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) or NavIC satellites is going on in full swing, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) 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.Officials said Bengaluru was selected largely because the city has the Isro telemetry, tracking and command network (Istrac). Istrac will host the Russian station too, said an official, adding that the “ground- measurement gathering station” will extend the existing partnership between Isro and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.“The station will help get accurate locations and refine the satellite information,” said Isro chairman Sivan K.India, which has a space agreement with Russia, has also been using Glonass along with the US’ GPS that is being used globally. “Even the Indian armed forces use Glonass for specific purposes,” a source added.Roscosmos will host ground-measurement gathering stations in Russia for NavIC, which will boost the operations of the IRNSS satellites. “We’ve asked for some space in Russia, which we’ll use for IRNSS,” said Sivan.“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,” said a source. 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 are not ready yet.Bengaluru firm, Accord Software and Systems Private Ltd, along with Isro, has developed technology that can receive signals from the IRNSS satellites, compute locations and also decode its broadcast message as early as 2016. Also, Isro has designed a miniaturised version of the micro chipset to be used in 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.