CHENNAI: After the Government of India offered GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN), which has been jointly developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI), to South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and Asia Pacific nations, civil aviation representatives from SAARC and South-East Asian nations are now being trained on use of the technology to harmonise satellite navigation.
According to AAI, a two-day international workshop was conducted on GAGAN, which will establish, deploy and certify satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) for safety-of-life civil aviation applications.
AAI and ISRO had deployed SBAS which augments GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) signals through additional satellite-broadcasting techniques. India is among the four world nations to develop and deploy this ingenious technology. This also comes as the government is planning to come out with a notification soon on making it mandatory for Indian carriers to induct aircraft which are compliant with the newly-developed GAGAN navigation system in their fleet from January 1, 2019.
The system is inter-operable with other international SBAS systems and GAGAN GEO footprint extends from Africa to Australia and has expansion capability for seamless navigation services across the region. GAGAN provides the additional accuracy, availability and integrity necessary for all phases of flight, from enroute through approach for all qualified airports within the GAGAN service volume.