Ch 7. IRNSS/NAVIC

Overview:

During the days of Kargil war in 1999, the Indian military was dependent on GPS data in the war zone for positioning and timing applications. With the selective availability (SA) off on‐board GPS satellites, accurate positioning was not possible. This and the thought of a GNSS owned by a foreign country, denied regionally at crucial times, motivated the need for an indigenous satellite‐based navigation system. Both military‐ and consumer‐grade applications that use navigation and timing information primarily based on GNSSs would be greatly benefited by this regional navigation system.

Indian space programs are conceptualized, designed, developed, and deployed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). From a navigation perspective, the satellite‐based augmentation system (SBAS) and regional navigation system were set up by ISRO in the last decade. The results of this are GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN), an operational system, and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). The latter program was approved by the Indian government in May 2006, with a plan to have the system fully operational by 2016. Recently, IRNSS was renamed as NAVIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation)