GLONASS - News

Fees for the GPS equipment will be upgraded
20.07.2009

Duties on imports in Russia end GPS devices can be increased by at least 25%. According to RIA Novosti about it on Friday told journalists the Vice-Premier Sergey Ivanov. "Minpromtorg with RF Federal Customs Service sent to the government proposal to zap all import duties on electronic component base GLONASS, while a sharp increase in duties on import of the final hardware GPS.

These fees will be at least 25% ", - said Ivanov. According to him, GLONASS now actually works." We almost closed the matter with the space system. This year we guarantee launch several more satellites of the GLONASS system will be global, "- he said.

Currently, Russia is actively developing international cooperation in the field of GNSS and today signed two agreements on joining the GLONASS system - with India, and Kazakhstan. Expressed an interest in this system and other countries, said Vice-Premier.

He said that negotiations with European partners on the possibility of docking systems GLONASS / GPS with the new European satellite navigation system Galileo. He schitatet that receiver, combining the three systems will be very competitive.

Earlier, representatives of Minpromtorga reported on proposals to introduce a blocking duties on imported GPS-receivers for the creation of equipment preferences, using a Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS.

There GLONASS-GPS-navigators exceed device for the price of energy and weight characteristics. Reports of the draft new duties on browsers appeared a week ago and talked about their increasing from 5 to 50% of customs value. Reported that the fee for smart phones with GPS module will not be entered.

Proposal sent to Government Minpromtorgom Russia and the Federal Customs Service. Ministry of Finance and the Ministry will consider it before the end of July.

GLONASS - the American GPS and the analogue in the presence of 24 satellites in orbit to ensure the accuracy of 5.5 m. The system is designed to determine with the help of handheld portable devices, satellite navigation and positioning speeds of sea, air and land facilities. In the long term orbital family planned to increase up to 30 spacecraft.
19.07.2009

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The GLONASS sets we have now it is hard to compete with the little Garmin I have.

GaryB,

I understand that the Russian GLONASS system is more accurate than the American GPS (So I was told when doing my Yacht Master Nav course). Just is, the Ynaks system has swamped the world so it is our default setting.

Not even, GLONASS is half as accurate as the old US GPS and 1/10th as accurate as the new relay systems. India ditched GLONASS for the new US repeaters.

GLONASS will improve as Navstar improved.

GPS just means global positioning system and could relate to any method of establishing position on the surface of the Earth.

Regarding the Tulip, it was the first Soviet weapon to get a laser guided shell for because of its calibre and its low velocity compared with tank gun tube velocities.
It would make sense that a 240mm GLONASS guided shell would make sense as now that receivers are getting smaller and cheaper and the government has made a commitment to actually support the GLONASS system and keep it running and further develop it with newer better satellites it is now worth developing GLONASS guided weapons.

GLONASS accuracy, and indeed Navstar accuracy is largely dependant on the accuracy of the clocks on board the satellites and the maths used to allow for the speeds the satellites are travelling.
If the theory of relativity is not taken into account they would be useless.


BTW the GLONASS system has two levels of accuracy and according to "A Review of GLONASS" Miller, 2000,

At peak efficiency, the SP signal offers horizontal positioning accuracy within 5–10 meters, vertical positioning within 15 meters, a velocity vector measuring within 10 cm/s, and timing within 200 ns, all based on measurements from four satellite signals simultaneously (this reference is outdated, as it's based on URAGAN satellites while the current constellation is 18/19 URAGAN-M satellites.

Of course this was in the year 2000 when there were less than 20 operational satellites and there were none of the new GLONASS-K satellites in service.

Accuracy comparisons show that GLONASS is slightly less accurate than GPS with GPS accuracy something like 2.5m through to 8.0m and GLONASS something like 6.2-9.5m accuracy. When used together the accuracy range is improved over either.

Regarding accuracy read this:

http://www.rian.ru/science/20090512/170848130.html

GLONASS accuracy is 25-30m. I know that first hand. GLONASS is an expensive system to not only maintain, but improve. I really do not believe we have the resources to keep up with it as both the US and Europe are making better systems. It won't be competitive in relation to their services making it a big money pit. It would be much cheaper, and better quality to join the Galileo of the EU. It would bring us business making launches and components of the constellation. We wouldn't have to waste money every time our satellites fail.

If you want a military navigation system that you have complete control of there is little alternative ATM.

There are a few measures you can take to improve the accuracy of such systems, including positioning it on a known point (like the end of a runway) and then calculating the current error. The variable error over time is not that bad so if you compensate for the longer term error you can dramatically reduce actual error.

I understand that the Russian GLONASS system is more accurate than the American GPS (So I was told when doing my Yacht Master Nav course).

There are very few GLONASS only recievers in the west, it is most likely this person was talking about a combined GLONASS Navstar receiver, which probably explains why he thought it was more accurate than Navstar alone (because it probably was).

It would bring us business making launches and components of the constellation. We wouldn't have to waste money every time our satellites fail.

Now that you have a full constellation of 24 plus 3 spare satellites I think it would be pretty dumb to drop it all and go for Galileo now. Especially considering you will probably get launch opportunities anyway.

Vladimir79 wrote:GLONASS accuracy is 25-30m. I know that first hand. GLONASS is an expensive system to not only maintain, but improve. I really do not believe we have the resources to keep up with it as both the US and Europe are making better systems. It won't be competitive in relation to their services making it a big money pit. It would be much cheaper, and better quality to join the Galileo of the EU. It would bring us business making launches and components of the constellation. We wouldn't have to waste money every time our satellites fail.

GLONASS has Civil and Encrypted mode , the free civil mode has accuracy of 25-30 m while the encrypted mode accuracy is in single digit.

They are building better GLONASS satellite of 3rd gen called Glonass-K with longer life and lower weight.

India will get access to military signal from GLONASS Fifth generation fighters to plug into satellite network

A senior Russian diplomat, speaking anonymously to Business Standard, reveals that after extended negotiations with India, Moscow has okayed the provision of military data from GLONASS, in the form of digitized signals. So far, Russia had only agreed to provide India with civilian-grade navigation signals, which permitted an accuracy of 25-30 metres. Now, the military grade signals will allow a far higher accuracy, crucial for military operations.

Austin wrote:

GLONASS has Civil and Encrypted mode , the free civil mode has accuracy of 25-30 m while the encrypted mode accuracy is in single digit.

The military grade signal is 15m.

They are building better GLONASS satellite of 3rd gen called Glonass-K with longer life and lower weight.

Yet to be launched, been delayed for three years.

India will get access to military signal from GLONASS Fifth generation fighters to plug into satellite network

GLONASS receivers also get GPS and India has chosen NAVSTAR with GAGAN.

Vladimir79 wrote:The military grade signal is 15m

GLONASS ,milgrade accuracy is a classified subject but like others I would expect it to be under 5 m , it will just get better as more satellites in GLONASS series are available.

Yet to be launched, been delayed for three years.

True , the GLONASS program got delayed but it is just getting better from here

GLONASS receivers also get GPS and India has chosen NAVSTAR with GAGAN.

GAGAN is a civilian navigation program for civil aviation navigation purpose, the Indian military will use GLONASS signal , note the recent test of Brahmos using GLONASS signal where Dr Pillai mentioned that performed reliably and consistently

http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20100825/160334563.html

All I know is that they have the 24 needed satellites in position now, with 3 spare satellites and that the K model satellites will be launched between 2011 and 2013 to replace older satellites with a shorter lifespan. The new Satellites are only about 750kgs and have a longer lifespan and are much better.

I also know that the Russian government is negotiating with the South Africans for a base there to help monitor the satellites which will further improve accuracy.

I have also read that the Indians are very happy with the GLONASS receivers being used with the Brahmos missiles.

As I understand it, the GLONASS constellation is not yet "fully" operational" (but it should be good enough for general usage, no?). According to some sites I've read from, GLONASS v.s. Navstar, Navstar has a slightly better accuracy (although slightly is very qualitative for something that needs to be as precise as possible like GPS). I've also read that in some places in the world, the accuracy of GLONASS v.s. Navstar is either on par or heavily worst than that of Navstar (on the order of 15-30m if I remember correctly).

Also, I knew about GPS guided munitions thank you very much
But the reason why I asked about GPS guided artillery shells is because GPS is much harder to install on a Gun-fired weapon, such as a tulip, as the G forces produced upon launch would in theory simply eradicate the function of the electronics in a system so sensitive like GPS. That explanation has been used to explain why the Excaliber is the only GPS guided shell out there and operational as of date.

Gun-fired weapon, such as a tulip, as the G forces produced upon launch would in theory simply eradicate the function of the electronics in a system so sensitive like GPS. That explanation has been used to explain why the Excaliber is the only GPS guided shell out there and operational as of date.

The electronics for laser guidance are no less delicate than those for GPS, and the Tulip, being a mortar has a much lower muzzle velocity than any tank gun. The Russians have a wide range of laser guided shells fired from most of their large calibre guns and mortars so a GPS version should be rather easy and cheap in comparison. The space available in the 240mm round should be enough for a TV guided shell let alone GLONASS, though the GLONASS guidance would be cheaper and all weather day night capable.

Austin wrote:
GLONASS ,milgrade accuracy is a classified subject but like others I would expect it to be under 5 m , it will just get better as more satellites in GLONASS series are available.

The accuracy isn't classified and I can tell you what the P grade is as I have used it, 15m. Our dual-band receivers picked up both GPS and P grade GLONASS, we always used civilian GPS as the GLONASS signal would often go off 1km+ when a satellite went down.

True , the GLONASS program got delayed but it is just getting better from here

I've been waiting three years, how long do I have to wait? At the rate we are going, the EU will get their entire constellation up before we even repair ours.

GAGAN is a civilian navigation program for civil aviation navigation purpose, the Indian military will use GLONASS signal , note the recent test of Brahmos using GLONASS signal where Dr Pillai mentioned that performed reliably and consistently

GAGAN is for both civil aviation and military signal grades. It increases the timing accuracy to 3m and good enough for any military application. India will have access to it at any time as they will not be limited to P band restrictions.

Vladimir79 wrote:The accuracy isn't classified and I can tell you what the P grade is as I have used it, 15m. Our dual-band receivers picked up both GPS and P grade GLONASS, we always used civilian GPS as the GLONASS signal would often go off 1km+ when a satellite went down.

I am quite surprised that P grade is ~ 15 m , I would have expected it to be in single digit.

Was this recently that you have used it or some time back ?

Signal might degrade due to lack of required satellites or non availability of signal due to geographical/weather reasons

I've been waiting three years, how long do I have to wait? At the rate we are going, the EU will get their entire constellation up before we even repair ours.

Well they have said recently that they will get the entire conselation done by 2011 and as of today it still covers Russia completely

This might be useful to you http://www.glonass-ianc.rsa.ru/pls/htmldb/f?p=202:20:619766516490522::NO

GAGAN is for both civil aviation and military signal grades. It increases the timing accuracy to 3m and good enough for any military application. India will have access to it at any time as they will not be limited to P band restrictions.

No GAGAN (SBAS ) uses NAVSTAR sats and is limited to use only civilian navigation , Indian equivalent of GLONASS that can be used for miltary purpose is IRNSS , you can find details here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigational_Satellite_System


PS: Do you know any hand held device that uses combined GPS/GLONASS signal that is available to civilians and we can use ?

Russia may grant Ukraine access to Glonass for military use

Russia is ready to consider giving Ukraine access to high-precision targeting signals provided by the Glonass satellite navigation system, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Wednesday.

Glonass is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

"If the Ukrainian government shows interest in gaining access to a [Glonass] high-precision signal, we will readily consider this issue," Ivanov told reporters in Moscow.

Russia earlier proposed setting up a joint venture with Ukraine for the development and implementation of the Glonass system.

Ivanov said Russia has been successfully cooperating with India on the use of the Glonass system for defense purposes after Moscow and New Delhi signed a relevant agreement in March.

Russian-built Glonass receivers for aiming and target acquisition are used, in particular, on Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles. According to Indian sources, the receivers have so far performed reliably and consistently.

Russia currently has a total of 26 Glonass satellites in orbit, but three of them are not operational. Three more Glonass-M satellites are scheduled for launch by the end of 2010, allowing Russia to operate a complete Glonass network of 24 operational satellites and have 3-4 satellites in reserve.


http://en.rian.ru/russia/20101027/161106321.html

The earliest GPS receiver chip was developed in New Zealand and is the size of your little finger nail.

Obviously to create a GPS receiver with it you need an antenna and a power supply, but with the chip inserted into a cellphone design or laptop both generally have antennas and power supplies of all sorts already included in the design so demand was huge.

AFAIK many GPS receiver chips can handle Navstar and GLONASS as although the signals are different frequencies the basic concept is not very different at all... just satellites emitting a signal that is captured by the receiver. Get 4 or more signals and you can work out the direction from the signals and triangulate your position. Continue to calculate the position over time and you can work out speed and direction etc.

http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/GLONASS.html

Also as I said when the Russians set up a differential correction and monitoring centre in South Africa to further improve performance I really don't think there will be much of a problem with GLONASS. As they replace all the older satellites with the K model performance will improve, but for most tasks (including Brahmos) it is currently good enough and for the purposes of navigating it is fine.
Obviously with satellite guided weapons you want accuracy better than 15m, but then satellite guided bombs don't just rely on external signals for accuracy and use INS with updates from Satellite to ensure accuracy.

Austin wrote:

I am quite surprised that P grade is ~ 15 m , I would have expected it to be in single digit.

Was this recently that you have used it or some time back ?

2003 was the last time, it has gotten worse since then with all the degrading sats.

Signal might degrade due to lack of required satellites or non availability of signal due to geographical/weather reasons

It was pretty obvious when a satellite would go out, the signal was degraded for months until another launch was made to reach a constellation of 18.

Well they have said recently that they will get the entire conselation done by 2011 and as of today it still covers Russia completely

They said the same thing in 2008 for the year 2009... nothing.

No GAGAN (SBAS ) uses NAVSTAR sats and is limited to use only civilian navigation , Indian equivalent of GLONASS that can be used for miltary purpose is IRNSS , you can find details here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigational_Satellite_System

3m is good enough to use in military applications from navigation to bombs. IRNSS at 20m is only good enough for land navigation, can't be used for aviation, ports, or bombs.

PS: Do you know any hand held device that uses combined GPS/GLONASS signal that is available to civilians and we can use ?

All the commercial GLONASS receivers are dual band since the constellation is not reliable.

Vladimir79 or any body here can tell me if it is possible to buy a GLONASS/GPS receiver that I can use it in India , I mean any specific brand that sells it , is there any specific thing I should be aware of ?

Austin wrote:Vladimir79 or any body here can tell me if it is possible to buy a GLONASS/GPS receiver that I can use it in India , I mean any specific brand that sells it , is there any specific thing I should be aware of ?

Unless you can get your hands on an afterstock Glospace, it isn't possible right now. All the other models are obsolete... hell Glospace is obsolete to a Garmin, but at least it has the same functions. They stopped selling it last year as it can't compare to the smaller GPS receivers.

All the commercial GLONASS receivers are dual band since the constellation is not reliable.

Rather a few GPS receivers are dual band too, because the extra signals can be used to further improve overall accuracy.

So if Russia already has the capability to install a GPS receiver onto the Tulip, then why not do it now?

It depends on their plans for the Tulip. If they are going to get rid of it completely then it is not really in large scale service around the world so the cost of developing a satellite guided round might not be financially viable.
If they decide to keep it for mountain trained units then a satellite guided round would make even more sense than a laser guided round for several reasons. A satellite guided rounds are not effected by cloud layers or dust/snow/rain. They don't need a laser marking the target during the engagement so for fixed targets you don't even need any recon, though for effect recon to determine how successful you were it might be useful anyway. Another reason is that satellite guided weapons are cheaper than laser guided rounds... to the point where for a small number of vehicles (say the entire Russian Army has 24 Tulips in mountain units and the rest are kept for parts) then the entire ammo stocks could be a mix of laser and satellite guided rounds. Laser for when you have laser equipped spotters in place and satellite guided for when you don't or if the weather conditions don't allow the effective use of laser target markers (LTM).
Another reason is that the INS and satellite receiver would allow trajectory corrections to get specific targets, like those in the face of a cliff within a mountain valley, or close to and behind a tall building where you would need to fire shells high to get over the building itself and to fall nearly vertically down the other side to hit the target.

The calibre and relatively low velocity of the weapon would make it the ideal first round to develop a satellite guidance round for because it would be easiest. It could then be scaled down for other calibres.

Vladimir79 or any body here can tell me if it is possible to buy a GLONASS/GPS receiver that I can use it in India , I mean any specific brand that sells it , is there any specific thing I should be aware of ?

Would suggest you wait for a little bit, because now that India are going to use GLONASS too it will only be a matter of time before newer better receivers are made available. Perhaps an Indian brand will turn out to be the best... you never can tell.

3 GLONASS satellites lost during launch


Three Russian satellites have failed to enter orbit after they were launched on a rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russian aerospace experts said the satellites and the upper stage rocket carrying them probably fell into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
Officials said the satellites went off course after separating with a booster rocket from the main launch rocket.

The satellites were to be part of a navigation system meant to rival GPS.They were being carried on a Proton-M rocket launched earlier on Sunday.

A source in Russia's aerospace industry told Ria-Novosti news agency that the rocket had veered off course by eight degrees after its launch.
Russia has already successfully launched a number of the Glonass satellites this year. The navigation system is meant to be in place next year.

Bit of a shame they lost these Glonass-M satellites, but they will likely be replaced with better performing Glonass-K satellites now.

The main performance issue is clock accuracy, the more accurate the clock on board the Glonass satellite the more accurate the ground based receivers can be. The original satellites had a clock accuracy of 5 x 10^-13 which was improved to 1 x 10^-13 in the M model and 5 x 10^-14 in the K model. Those not familiar with scientific notation that means in the case of 5 x 10^-14 means 0. and then 14 zeros and a 5, or 0.000 000 000 000 005 of a second accuracy.

GLONASS:Navigation Satellite and Modernisation Prospects

GarryB wrote:Bit of a shame they lost these Glonass-M satellites, but they will likely be replaced with better performing Glonass-K satellites now.

There is no shame as such , satellite launch business is an expensive and risk proposition and any thing other then 100 % performance of launch vehical can result in failure or sub optimum performance.

As long as they do the Telemetry Analysis and figure out what went wrong and correct it in next launch then its job done.

Proton-M is a very reliable vehical but the failure shows even reliable vehical have their pit falls.

They still would be launching Glonass-M to complete global constellation a test of next gen satellite GLONASS-K is scheduled to be launch this month.