What is Wide Area augmentation System?

The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. ...

History of WAAS:
The WAAS was jointly developed by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as part of the Federal Radio navigation Program (DOT-VNTSC-RSPA-95-1/DOD-4650.5), beginning in 1994, to provide performance comparable to category 1 instrument landing system (ILS) for all aircraft possessing the appropriately certified equipment.[1] Without WAAS, ionosphere disturbances, clock drift, and satellite orbit errors create too much error and uncertainty in the GPS signal to meet the requirements for a precision approach (See GPS sources of error). A precision approach includes altitude information and provides course guidance, distance from the runway, and elevation information at all points along the approach, usually down to lower altitudes and weather minimums than non-precision approaches.

Wide Area Augmentation System

WAAS is an extremely accurate navigation system developed for civil aviation. Before WAAS, the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) did not have the potential to provide horizontal and vertical navigation for approach operations for all users at all locations. With WAAS, this capability is a reality.

WAAS provides service for all classes of aircraft in all phases of flight - including en route navigation, airport departures, and airport arrivals. This includes vertically-guided landing approaches in instrument meteorological conditions at all qualified locations throughout the NAS.

Accuracy
The WAAS specification requires it to provide a position accuracy of 7.6 meters (25 ft) or better (for both lateral and vertical measurements), at least 95% of the time. Actual performance measurements of the system at specific locations have shown it typically provides better than 1.0 meter (3 ft 3 in) laterally and 1.5 meters (4 ft 11 in) vertically throughout most of the contiguous United States and large parts of Canada and Alaska. With these results, WAAS is capable of achieving the required Category I precision approach accuracy of 16 meters (52 ft) laterally and 4.0 meters (13.1 ft) vertically.

Integrity
Integrity of a navigation system includes the ability to provide timely warnings when its signal is providing misleading data that could potentially create hazards. The WAAS specification requires the system detect errors in the GPS or WAAS network and notify users within 6.2 seconds. Certifying that WAAS is safe for instrument flight rules (IFR) (i.e. flying blind) requires proving there is only an extremely small probability that an error exceeding the requirements for accuracy will go undetected. Specifically, the probability is stated as 1107, and is equivalent to no more than 3 seconds of bad data per year. This provides integrity information equivalent to or better than Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM).

Availability
Availability is the probability that a navigation system meets the accuracy and integrity requirements. Before the advent of WAAS, GPS could be unavailable for up to a total time of four days per year. The WAAS specification mandates availability as 99.999% (five nines) throughout the service area, equivalent to a downtime of just over 5 minutes per year.

How it Works
WAAS consists of approximately 25 ground reference stations positioned across the United States that monitor GPS satellite data. Two master stations, located on either coast, collect data from the reference stations and create a GPS correction message. This correction accounts for GPS satellite orbit and clock drift plus signal delays caused by the atmosphere and ionosphere. The corrected differential message is then broadcast through one of two geostationary satellites, or satellites with a fixed position over the equator. The information is compatible with the basic GPS signal structure, which means any WAAS-enabled GPS receiver can read the signal.

Who benefits from WAAS?

Currently, WAAS satellite coverage is only available in North America. There are no ground reference stations in South America, so even though GPS users there can receive WAAS, the signal has not been corrected and thus would not improve the accuracy of their unit. For some users in the U.S., the position of the satellites over the equator makes it difficult to receive the signals when trees or mountains obstruct the view of the horizon. WAAS signal reception is ideal for open land and marine applications. WAAS provides extended coverage both inland and

offshore compared to the land-based DGPS (differential GPS) system. Another benefit of WAAS is that it does not require additional receiving equipment, while DGPS does. Other governments are developing similar satellite-based differential systems. In Asia, it's the Japanese Multi-Functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), while Europe has the Euro Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). Eventually, GPS users around the world will have access to precise position data using these and other compatible systems.

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