Performance Evaluation of Standalone NavIC for the Indian Missile Program

Abstract

Global Positioning System (GPS) is used for navigational purposes in the missiles during developmental, trials, and war scenario deployment. In this paper, the authors demonstrate typical time and location-dependent visibility problems of the GPS satellites for the elevation angles higher than 60° over a large part of the Indian sub-continent and the adjoining water bodies over the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, which has the potential to adversely affect the missile flights during developmental trials and war scenarios, especially for the low elevation cruise missiles. The Indian regional navigation satellite constellation NavIC can effectively mitigate this visibility problem and ensure system independence from a strategic viewpoint. In this work, the standalone position solution quality of NavIC is evaluated statistically and compared with GPS from the Test Range. Promising results will encourage using the Indian constellation NavIC to ensure better position solution quality and system independence from a defence perspective.