Industry will fund development of the global positioning system (GPS) local area augmentation system (LAAS), the US Federal Aviation Administration has decided.
LAAS is a ground-based system which checks and corrects GPS signals, allowing precision approach and landing.
Teams certificating next-generation landing systems will get FAA help, which will then conduct a competition for 143 LAAS installations. The system is to be operational by 2006.
The FAA has abandoned its earlier Special Category I (SCAT I) standard for GPS-based landing systems and adopted an entirely new architecture for the LAAS. An industry insider says that this leaves companies with the task of evolving their original SCAT I designs to meet the LAAS specification, in a bid to recover their investment and safeguard that of customers which have purchased SCAT I systems.
Source: Flight International
