Technology Demonstration
A national plan for satellite navigation including implementation of Technology Demonstration System (TDS) over the Indian air space as a proof of concept had been prepared jointly by Airports Authority of India (AAI) and ISRO. TDS was successfully completed during 2007 by installing eight Indian Reference Stations (INRESs) at eight Indian airports and linked to the Master Control Center (MCC) located near Bangalore. Preliminary System Acceptance Testing has been successfully completed in December 2010. The ground segment for GAGAN, which has been put up by the Raytheon, has 15 reference stations scattered across the country. Two mission control centres, along with associated uplink stations, have been set up at Kundalahalli in Bangalore. One more control centre and uplink station are to come up at Delhi. As a part of the programme, a network of 18 total electron content (TEC) monitoring stations were installed at various locations in India to study and analyse the behaviour of the ionosphere over the Indian region.
GAGAN's TDS signal in space provides a three-metre accuracy as against the requirement of 7.6 metres. Flight inspection of GAGAN signal is being carried out at Kozhikode, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Bangalore airports and the results have been satisfactory so far.
Read more about this topic: GPS-aided Geo-augmented Navigation