Potential of Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) in Test and Evaluation of Missiles in Indian Test Range Applications

From the beginning of World War II, dual-axis tracking radars have played an important role in the tracking of missiles in test ranges. These radars operate mostly in S- or C-band of frequencies. However, these Radars have associated problems with the costly maintenance budget, various errors that creep into the data, and inter-radar bias correction. The modern-day global navigation satellite system (GNSS) together with space-based augmentation systems (SBAS) have provided scope to obtain internally generated and telemetered trajectory data from the missile under test (MUT) from the onboard GNSS receiver with SBAS capabilities within comparable or better accuracies. This research presents a comparison of the precession parameters of the MUT’s position solutions between data from several tracking radars and those from the enhanced GNSS data. Also, experiments have been conducted using various satellite navigation constellations including NavIC and SBAS augmentation to demonstrate the improvement in accuracy and precession parameters applicable to the Indian scenario. To compete with the outcomes of contemporary satellite-based navigation system together with the augmentation systems for trajectory generation of cooperative missile targets, radar manufacturers must reconsider their design philosophies for usage on missile test ranges.