NIS Glonass Signs Agreement With Indian Company

Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
Aug 27, 2010

BUSINESS

BENGALURU, INDIA - In a new agreement with Hyderabad-based HBL Power Systems, Russian Navigation Information Systems (NIS) Glonass will market, manufacture and jointly propose products in India that draw upon the Russian satellite navigation system.

HBL is a major player in India for batteries and standby power offerings in the railway, defense and telecom domains. It will mainly promote the product — Intelligent Transport System (ITS) — for police and rail systems. ITS helps in automated road traffic control, optimization of routes and emergency response.

The deal will “build business opportunities in India for receivers and software for ITS,” Chairman Aluru Jagadish Prasad tells AVIATION WEEK. “We believe Glonass will offer better features that will be superior to the GPS. The system will operate on GPS and Glonass.”

Integration of different satellite navigation systems helps prevent the reliance on just one system and allows a more robust position solution, Prasad adds.

Glonass is currently used as an augmentation to the U.S. Global Positioning System to provide better redundancy, and results show that using Glonass does not degrade the position solution.

“With the launch of more Glonass satellites, it should be possible to calculate a Glonass-only solution,” an Indian official said at the Bengaluru Space Expo. It can be done today but coverage is limited, the official noted, and it will be completed by the end of 2010. The 50-50 joint venture may be signed by the end of 2011. NIS Glonass plans to sign two more agreements, including one with a private company. At this stage, the cooperation will be limited to joint tendering.

Opportunities are abundant in India, with 100 cities planning to look into ITS in the next 8-10 years. Already, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai have ongoing projects. Mysore and Surat are looking at the systems, while New Delhi recently floated a bid for management of traffic by the Delhi Police.

The NIS Glonass system will provide automation for staff control of vehicles in normal and emergency situations; provide personnel with data on vehicle location for management decision-making; display graphical data on vehicle position, as well as other data on a dispatcher’s monitor. It also will create and store data archives on operating vehicle routes and interact with outer systems, according to a senior official.

- Neelam Mathews