By the end of 2007, the authorities in Moscow say, the Russian space agency plans to launch eight navigation satellites that would nearly complete Russia’s own system, called Glonass, for Global Navigation Satellite System.
The system is expected to begin operating over Russian territory and parts of Europe and Asia, and then go global in 2009 to compete with the Global Positioning System of the United States.
And Russia is not the only country trying to break the U.S. monopoly on navigation technology, though its system, funded by government oil revenue, is furthest along. China has already sent up satellites to create its own system, called Baidu after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper. And the European Union has also started developing a rival system, Galileo, although work has been halted because of doubts among private contractors over its potential for profit.
What is driving the technological battle is, in part, the potential for many more uses for satellite navigation than the one most people know it for - giving driving instructions to travelers. Businesses as disparate as agriculture and banking are integrating the technology into their operations. Satellite navigation may provide the platform for services like site-specific advertising, with directions that appear on cellphone screens when a user is walking, for example, near a Starbucks coffeehouse or a McDonald’s restaurant.
Sales of GPS devices are already booming. The global market for the devices reached $15 billion in 2006, according to the GPS Industry Council, a Washington trade group, and is expanding at a rate of 25 percent to 30 percent annually.
But what is also behind the battle for control of navigation technology is a fear that the United States could use its monopoly - the system was developed and is controlled by the U.S. military - to switch off signals in a time of crisis.
“In a few years, business without a navigation signal will become inconceivable,” said Andrei Ionin, an aerospace analyst with the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow. “Everything that moves will use a navigation signal - airplanes, trains, yachts, people, rockets, valuable animals and favorite pets.”
When that happens, countries that choose to rely only on GPS, Ionin said, will be falling into “a geopolitical trap” of U.S. dominance of an important Internet-age infrastructure. The United States could theoretically deny navigation signals to countries like Iran and North Korea, not just in time of war, but as a high-tech form of economic sanction that could disrupt power grids, banking systems and other industries, he said.
The United States formally opened GPS to civilian users in 1993 by promising to provide it continually, at no cost, around the world.
GPS devices are currently at the center of a dispute over the Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors and marines. The British maintain that the devices on their boats showed that they were in Iraqi waters; the Iranians have countered with map coordinates that it said showed the 15 had been in Iranian waters.
The Russian project, of course, carries wide implications for armies around the world by providing a navigation system not controlled by the Pentagon, complementing an increasingly assertive foreign policy stance from Moscow.
The Russian system is also calculated to send ripples through the fast-expanding industry for consumer navigation devices by promising a slight technical advantage over GPS alone, analysts and industry executives say. Devices receiving signals from both systems would presumably be more reliable.
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who speaks often about Glonass and its possibilities, has prodded his scientists to make the product consumer friendly.
“The network must be impeccable, better than GPS, and cheaper if we want clients to choose Glonass,” Putin said last month at a government meeting on the system, according to the Interfax news agency.
“You know how much I care about Glonass,” Putin told his ministers.
GPS has its roots in the United States military in the 1960s. In 1983, before the system was fully functional, President Reagan suggested making it available to civilian users around the world after a Korean Air flight strayed into Soviet airspace and was shot down.
GPS got its first military test during the Gulf War of 1991, and was seen as a big reason for the success of the precision bombing campaign, which helped spur its adoption in commercial applications in the 1990s.
The Russian system, like GPS, has roots in Cold War technology developed to guide strategic bombers and missiles. It was briefly operational in the mid-1990s, but fell into disrepair. The Russian satellites send signals that are usable now but work only intermittently.
To operate globally, a system needs a minimum of 24 satellites, the number in the GPS constellation, not counting spares in orbit.
A receiver must be in the line of sight of no fewer than three satellites at any given time to triangulate an accurate position. A fourth satellite is needed to calculate altitude. As other countries introduce competing systems, devices capable of receiving foreign signals along with GPS will more often be in line of sight of three or more satellites.
Within the United States, Western Europe and Japan, ground-based transmissions hone the accuracy of signals to within a few feet of a location, better than what could be achieved with satellite signals alone. The Russian and eventual European or Chinese systems, therefore, would make receivers more reliable in preventing signal loss when there are obstructions, like steep canyons, tall buildings or even trees.
Still, a Glonass-capable GPS receiver in the United States, Western Europe or Japan would not be more accurate than a GPS system alone, because of the ground-based correction signals. In other parts of the world, a Glonass-capable GPS receiver would be more reliable and slightly more accurate.
U.S. manufacturers that are dominant in the industry could be confronted with pressure to offer these advantages to customers by making devices compatible with the Russian system, inevitably undermining the U.S. monopoly on navigation signals used in commerce.
In this sense, the Russians are setting off the first salvo in a battle for an infrastructure in the skies. Russia sees a great deal at stake in influencing the standards that will be used in civilian consumer devices.
To encourage wide acceptance, Putin has been pitching the system during foreign visits, asking for collaboration and financial support.
The market for satellite navigators is growing rapidly. Garmin, the largest manufacturer in the United States, more than doubled sales of automobile navigators in 2006, for example, and in February it aired an advertisement during the Super Bowl that was interpreted as a sign of coming of age for GPS navigators as a mass market product.
For now, only makers of high-end surveying and professional navigation receivers have adopted dual-system capability. Topcon Positioning Systems of Livermore, California, for example, offers a Glonass and GPS receiver for surveyors and heavy-equipment operators. Javad Navigation Systems is built around making dual-system receivers, and has offices in San Jose, California and in Moscow.
Javad Ashjaee, the president of Javad Navigation Systems, said in an interview that wide adoption was inevitable because more satellites provided an inherently better service. “If you have GPS, you have 90 percent of what you need,” Ashjaee said. The Russian system will succeed, he said, “for that extra 10 percent.”
Adding Glonass to low-end consumer devices would require a new chip, with associated design costs, but probably not much in the way of additional manufacturing expenses, Ashjaee said. Already this year, in a sign of growing acceptance of Glonass, another high-end manufacturer, Trimble, based in Sunnyvale, California, introduced a Russian-compatible device for agricultural navigators, used for applying pesticides, for example. Whether consumer goods manufacturers will follow is an open question, John Bucher, a wireless equipment analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said by telephone. Garmin, which has more than 50 percent of the American market, has not yet taken a position on Glonass. “We are waiting,” Jessica Myers, a spokeswoman for Garmin, said by telephone. For most consumers, she said, devices are reliable enough already.Growth in the industry is driven instead by better digital mapping and software, making what already exists more useful. Garmin’s latest car navigator, for example, alerts drivers to traffic jams on the road ahead and the price of gas at nearby stations.The Kremlin is guaranteeing a market in Russia by requiring ships, airplanes and trucks carrying hazardous materials to operate with Glonass receivers, while providing grants to half a dozen Russian manufacturers of navigators. Technically precise they may be, but even by Russian standards, some of the Russian-made products coming to market now are noticeably lacking in convenience features. At the Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time in St. Petersburg, for example, scientists have developed the M-103 dual system receiver. The precision device theoretically operates more reliably than a GPS unit under tough conditions, like the urban canyons of New York City. With its boxy appearance, the M-103 resembles a Korean War-era military walkie-talkie. It weighs about one pound and sells for $1,000, display screen not included. To operate, a user must unfurl a cable linking the set to an external antenna mounted on a spiked stick, intended to be jabbed into a field. “Unfortunately, we haven’t developed a hand-held version yet,” said Vadim Holnerov, a deputy director of the institute.
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