Up to Seven New Glonass Ground Stations Planned for Foreign Countries

Russia plan to deploy a maximum of seven new ground-stations in foreign countries in a bid to improve satellite navigational capabilities with Glonass system monitoring by the end of 2014. The new ground-stations will join 46 that currently operate within Russian territory, three in Antarctica and one in Brazil.

The news was announced at the Security Technologies exhibition conference earlier this month and the focus, according to Vladimir Klimov, Glonass Association Executive Director, is to create a worldwide Glonass augmentation network.

In order for high-precision navigation and communications to operate seamlessly, it is critical that satellite networks can communicate globally with a series of ground-based stations or receivers. High frequency data link communications for example, can only be seamlessly effective if geostationary satellite transmissions can form a truly global network, including remote, Polar Regions and vast oceanic expanses. This is made possible by overlapping coverage zones with carefully placed ground-stations and high frequency receipt and transmission technology is installed within aircraft.

Other aviation HFDL providers include ARINC who successfully achieve global coverage utilising the Iridium and Inmarsat satellite networks.