NAVIC SYSTEM

The Union government is pushing tech giants to make smartphones compatible with its homegrown navigation system within months, worrying the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple who fear elevated costs and disruptions as the move requires hardware changes, according to two industry sources and government documents seen by Reuters.

NaviC

NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system established and maintained by ISRO.

Coverage

  • It covers India and a region extending up to 1,500 km beyond Indian mainland (primary coverage area) with plans of extension.
  • An extended service area lies between the primary service area and a rectangle area enclosed by the 30th parallel south to the 50th parallel north and the 30th meridian east to the 130th meridian east.

Satellites

  • The system currently consists of a constellation of seven satellites, with two additional satellites on ground as stand-by.
  • Three of the seven satellites in constellation are located in geostationary orbit (GEO) and four in inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO).

Accuracy

  • The system is intended to provide an absolute position accuracy of better than 10 metres throughout Indian landmass and better than 20 metres in the Indian Ocean.
  • In short, it provides position accuracy better than 20 m and timing accuracy better than 50 nanoseconds(20).

Applications

  • NavIC will provide two levels of service, the “standard positioning service”, which will be open for civilian use, and a “restricted service” (an encrypted one) for authorised users (including the military).
  • NavIC based applications are being used in various civilian sectors, including, transport, map applications, and timekeeping.
  • NavIC based trackers are compulsory on commercial vehicles in India.
  • Today major mobile chipset manufacturers like Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom already support NavIC across various chipset platforms.
  • A few mobile handsets have been released which can be enabled to receive NavlC.
  • Examples Redmi Note 9 series from Xiaomi, the Realme 6 series, the OnePlus Nord, etc.
  • NavlC is an indigenous positioning system that is under Indian control.
  • There is no risk of the service being withdrawn or denied in a given situation

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT

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