The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentially, WAAS is intended to enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including precision approaches to any airport within its coverage area.
WAAS uses a network of ground-based reference stations, in North America and Hawaii, to measure small variations in the GPS satellites' signals in the western hemisphere. Measurements from the reference stations are routed to master stations, which queue the received Deviation Correction (DC) and send the correction messages to geostationary WAAS satellites in a timely manner (every 5 seconds or better). Those satellites broadcast the correction messages back to Earth, where WAAS-enabled GPS receivers use the corrections while computing their positions to improve accuracy.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) calls this type of system a satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS). Europe and Asia are developing their own SBASs, the Indian GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN), the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and the Japanese Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), respectively. Commercial systems include StarFire and OmniSTAR.
Read more about Wide Area Augmentation System: Operation, History and Development, Comparison of Accuracy, Benefits, Drawbacks and Limitations
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