Context

The Centre has been pushing cell phone makers in India to make their instruments compatible with NavIC.

More about the news:

• The Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) will soon be integrated into Aadhaar enrolment devices according to the Department of Space (DoS).
• The department has facilitated successful conduction of field trials, and is providing technical expertise in finalisation of procurement specification of the devices
• Currently the Aadhaar enrolment kits that are used to collect and verify personal details are linked to the American Global Positioning System (GPS).
• The process of making the devices compatible with NavIC will involve hardware alterations.

About NavIC

• ISRO has established a regional navigation satellite system (NavIC) to meet the positioning, navigation and timing requirements of the nation.
• It was erstwhile known as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
• NavIC is designed with:
  • Three satellites placed in geostationary orbit. Four satellites are placed in inclined geosynchronous orbit with equatorial crossing.
  • The ground network: It consists of control centre, precise timing facility, range and integrity monitoring stations, etc.
• NavIC offers two services: Standard Position Service (SPS) for civilian users and Restricted Service (RS) for strategic users.
• NavIC coverage area includes India and a region up to 1500 km beyond Indian boundary.
• NavIC signals are designed to provide user position accuracy better than 20m and timing accuracy better than 50ns.
• NavIC SPS signals are interoperable with the other  global navigation satellite system signals namely GPS, Glonass, Galileo and BeiDou.

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