back to article India reportedly asks smartphone makers to add local satnav silicon

India's Ministry of Electronics and IT has clarified that, while the world's second-most populous nation does want smartphone makers to include hardware to connect to its Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) satnav system, it is in no rush to make it happen. The clarification came after newswire Reuters reported that …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

    GPS is accurate.

    I doubt any other system will be that much more accurate.

    Granted, GPS is US-controlled and I accept that India would prefer to have its own system, but don't bring accuracy in question.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

      The GPS on my phone *is* accurate, but that's because it gets signals from US (GPS), EU (Galileo), Chinese (Baidu) and Russian (Glonass) satellites, using whichever is providing the best signal strength at the time. Might be worth looking to see which satellites your phone is using to achieve it's fix, because it might not be exclusively using the US controlled system.

      (EDIT):- The addition of an Indian satellite cluster can only improve accuracy.

      For the record, I don't pay for data, so my phone relies on pure GPS for location

      1. teknopaul

        Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

        Don't you use WiFi?

      2. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

        Hopefully it doesn't switch between constellations based on strength, but instead gathers information from them all and throws out any outlier results before averaging them.

        Otherwise it is easy to spoof.

    2. john.jones.name
      Go

      Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

      Yes it will be more accurate because the Indian Regional Navigational Satellite System (IRNSS) is a regional satellite navigation system and as such designed to reach into Valleys and Streets with tall buildings.

      There will be two kinds of services:

      1/ Special Positioning Service (SPS)

      2/ Precision Service (PS)

      This is compatible with GPS devices both services will be carried on L5 (1176.45 MHz) and S band (2492.028 MHz). The navigation signals are transmitted in the S-band frequency and broadcast through a phased array antenna to keep required coverage and signal strength.

      The data structure for SPS and PS takes advantage of the fact that the number of satellites is reduced since its not covering the globe and broadcast ionospheric corrections for a grid of 80 points to provide service to single frequency users.

      There is no reason why device manufacturers can not update the software to decode these messages if their devices are receiving L5 GPS signals.

      iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are the first iPhones to offer dual-frequency GPS they are being exceptionally lazy only doing L1C/A

      while ZenFone 6, OnePlus Nord, Galaxy S20, Pixel 4 etc all do L5 today

      L5 GPS is something I look for on phones, It makes a huge difference

      either way good for India for making Navigation better in their region !

    3. iron

      Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

      GPS is not accurate unless you're the US military.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: "reduce dependence on foreign systems while improving accuracy"

        Well it very much depends on how you define "accurate" as well as the location and resulting GDOP from visible satellites.

        But politics aside, even if that is possible, having more birds to track helps everyone and avoids screw-ups by one organisation (chough, EU, chough) downing a system for hours...

  2. Little Mouse

    "India's smartphone market is dominated by modestly priced devices."

    Obviously "modestly priced" means "cheaper", but what are the numbers?

    What sort of prices are we talking about? And what do you get for your money, compared to the UK/US markets?

    1. Ken G Silver badge

      Re: "India's smartphone market is dominated by modestly priced devices."

      Look online. You can see both local and global prices for the devices. You can usually order the same anywhere. The only difference is localisation software.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Good thing the UK has it's own already...

    Remember the loud noise coming from the UK Government about how we would develop our own Satnav system instead of joining in with Gallileo? How's that coming along?

    [Icon: not Paris as that's gone missing just like our satnav system.]

    1. teknopaul

      Re: Good thing the UK has it's own already...

      UK just doesn't have the resources, perhaps it could buy a satnav system of a larger nation, like India.

    2. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Good thing the UK has it's own already...

      >> we would develop our own Satnav system instead of joining in with Gallileo?

      Thats why we bought OneWeb wasn't it? nice £500m bung for someone that was....

  4. Norman Nescio

    ICBMs and IRBMs don't rely on GPS

    Assuming a mobile launch pad, the first thing you do when setting up for launch is work out where you are. This might use GPS (if available, and not knocked out/jammed/spoofed), but once launched and in the cruise phase (near the top of the trajectory), the missile will likely use a combination of inertial navigation and a star-tracker to work out where it is an issue course corrections. Star trackers/automated celestial navigators are quite sophisticated boxes, and used to be highly classified. It's a nice trick to navigate by seeing stars in daylight in hazy cloud.

    PDF: Automating Celestial Navigation

    But it's pretty much commercialized now. You can get solid-state star trackers that work a ground level. They also work on rockets an satellites:

    RocketLab: Star Trackers

    A lot has happened since the MD-1 automatic astro compass analogue star tracker on the B-52 and the 'R2D2' Nortronics NAS-14V2 on the SR-71. Solid state phased-array detectors instead of telescopes, and vastly larger star catalogues. GPS is convenient, but not necessary to lob missiles in the right direction.

    NN

  5. DS999 Silver badge

    A 2023 date was always ridiculous

    Unless/until this is built into the SoCs / RF chips from Qualcomm, Mediatek, Samsung etc. it isn't going to happen. Even if it already is built in, the phone has to connect it to an antenna (or be able to use an existing antenna...depends on the frequency India's system uses) so it isn't like this is some latent capability they can turn on with a simple software update.

    Clearly that original date was set by some bureaucrat who has no clue about real world supply chains and production realities.

  6. nautica Silver badge
    Boffin

    "No matter what they say the reason is, the real reason is always 'money'."

    "...India's administration staged talks...with major smartphone manufacturers, who pushed back strongly against a plan that would have required them to produce NavIC-compatible equipment..."

    U.S. auto manufacturers also "...pushed back strongly..." when the federal government mandated the use of windshield wipers on all automobiles.

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