Breaking The Ice: Navigation In The Arctic

Arctic navigation is becoming increasingly important, because oil exploration and normal shipping in the region are both on the rise. Navigation integrity is particularly important, because an accident could be very damaging to the sensitive Arctic environment. Thus, this article investigates the Arctic extension of space-based augmentation systems (SBAS) such as WAAS, EGNOS, and MSAS. More specifically, it analyzes the potential benefit of adding new SBAS reference stations for the far North, use of Iridium satellites to broadcast integrity information to the users, and multi-constellation GNSS to improve vertical performance.