ANNEX A:  GLONASS: RUSSIAN S

EQUIVALENT NAVIGATION SYSTEM

This complete article was provided by

Mr. John Owen in 1995

and reflects the GLONASS situation at that date

A.1   HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Similarly to the US TRANSIT, Russia operates CICADA, since the 1970 s, the system

consists of dual frequency VHF signals (150 MHz and 400 MHz) from satellites in near

polar, low earth orbit. As the US has built up the Navstar GPS to replace TRANSIT, the

Russians have developed an equivalent system, the Global Navigation Satellite

Service, GLONASS.  GLONASS uses a similar architecture to GPS for most

components of its system users navigate with GLONASS in the same manner as GPS. 

The system saw its origins in the mid 1970s at the Scientific Production Association of

Applied Mechanics (NPO PM) a developer of military satellite in Kransnoyarsk 26.

Since 1982 a range of GLONASS satellites have been  launched three at a time, from

the Tyuratam space centre.  Although there was some doubt concerning the Russians

intentions in the early 1990 s, however several statements concerning the systems

future particularly to ICAO, and launches during 1994 and 1995 have confirmed

GLONASS will reach full operation by late 1995.

GLONASS is owned and operated by Military Space Forces of the Russian Ministry of

Defence. The Russian Institute of Radio Navigation and Time in St Petersburg

designed and supports the synchronization of master clock systems, maintains satellite

and Earth based time and frequency standards and develops receivers. 

A.2   PURPOSE OF GLOBAL SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEMS

GLONASS as Navstar GPS provides precision position fixing and time reference

systems for world wide continuous use.  An observer makes time of arrival

measurements simultaneously to four satellites and by using the received data to

compute the position of the satellites solves the four range equations for his three

unknown position coordinates and time. 

It is presumed the primary purpose of GLONASS is similarly to GPS for weapon system

navigation and guidance.  However as with GPS the wide interest in the use of satellite

navigation systems has resulted in parts of the system being offered for international

civil use. 

A 1