An IndiGo-operated ATR 72-600 plane landed at Kishangarh airport Thursday, utilizing an method course of guided by India’s personal satellite-based augmentation system named GAGAN, or GPS-aided GEO Augmented Navigation. With this trial touchdown on the small airport close to Ajmer in Rajasthan, India joined a small group comprising the US, Japan and Europe with its personal satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS).
While the SBAS developed by the US, Japan, Europe and India are already operational, there are a number of extra below improvement. These embody China’s BeiDou SBAS, South Korea’s Korea Augmentation Satellite System (KASS), Russia’s System for Differential Corrections and Monitoring (SDCM), and the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SPAN) of Australia and New Zealand.
The check flight that landed at Kishangarh is part of the approval course of with aviation security regulator DGCA, which incorporates coaching of pilots, validation of method and simulator periods. The flight was carried out with a DGCA crew on board and after the approval, the process can be out there for utilization of business flights.
The SBAS is a navigation system, which builds on the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GLONASS), and provides to the accuracy and integrity of those navigation instruments. For plane operators, each civilian and navy, it implies that pilots can land plane at smaller airports and airstrips utilizing navigation steering with out costly instrument-based touchdown methods being put in on the bottom.
According to a senior official on the Airports Authority of India (AAI), guided approaches made utilizing GAGAN are “operationally nearly equivalent” to ILS Category-1 with out “the need for ground-based navigational infrastructure”.
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While GAGAN is primarily meant for aviation, it would present advantages to a number of different segments corresponding to clever transportation, maritime, highways, railways, safety companies, telecom, and so forth. Once totally rolled out, it would make a number of smaller airports corresponding to these within the North-East able to having compliant plane land in low-visibility eventualities.
“Number of airports including airports under Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) are being surveyed for development of GAGAN-based instrument approach procedures, so that suitably equipped aircraft can derive maximum benefit in terms of improved safety during landing, reduction in fuel consumption, reduction in delays, diversions and cancellations etc,” the AAI mentioned in a press release.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had set a deadline of July 1, 2021 for all India-registered plane to be outfitted with GAGAN-compliant devices. According to a authorities supply, most of India’s fleet is now compliant with GAGAN requirements. The solely exception is the Boeing 787 plane, that are operated by Air India and Vistara.
GAGAN makes use of a system of floor stations – in Delhi, Guwahati, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Jammu and Port Blair – to supply vital augmentation to the GPS navigation sign. A community of exactly surveyed floor reference stations is strategically positioned throughout the nation to gather GPS satellite tv for pc knowledge. Using this info, the grasp management centre in Bengaluru generates messages to right any sign errors. These correction messages are then uplinked and broadcast by way of geostationary communication satellites to receivers on board plane utilizing the identical frequency as GPS.
The GAGAN system has been developed by the AAI and the Indian Space Research Organisation, and along with the aviation use-case, could be deployed in a number of different areas. “AAI in coordination with Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) has implemented GAGAN Message Service (GMS) through which alert messages to fishermen, farmers, and disaster affected people will be sent on the occurrence of natural disasters, calamities, such as flood, earthquake etc. The additional capabilities of GAGAN are also being explored to utilize it in non-aviation field such as railways, surveying, agriculture, power sector, mining etc,” the AAI mentioned in a press release.
