To strengthen the Research and Development (R&D) of NaVIC or the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) messaging service, the Indian Space Research Organisation has signed a pact with Oppo India.
NavIC is a messaging service platform, which provides regional navigation services covering the entire country and an area up to 1,500 km beyond the Indian boundaries.
Notably, the messaging platform primarily provides PNT (position, navigation, and timing) services along with the capability of broadcasting short messages (safety-of-life alerts) in areas with poor or no communication, particularly in oceans.
As per the Memorandum of Undertaking (MoU), both ISRO and Oppo India will exchange technical information of NavIC messaging services to build rapid, ready-to-use, end-to-end application-specific solutions. This will enable integrating NavIC messaging service with the mobile handset platform keeping in mind the need of Indian users.
“The memorandum will pave the way for future collaborations between ISRO and Oppo India to develop indigenous solutions by incorporating the NavIC short messaging feature in the smartphones released by OPPO India,” a statement by Oppo India mentioned.
Deciphering NavIC
Independent regional navigation satellite system (IRNSS) or NavIC is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from Indian boundaries.
The platform provides two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS) which is provided to all the users, and Restricted Service (RS), which is an encrypted service, provided only to the authorised users.
Some applications IRNSS provide are:
Terrestrial, Aerial, and Marine Navigation
Disaster Management
Vehicle tracking and fleet management
Integration with mobile phones
Precise Timing
Mapping and Geodetic data capture
Terrestrial navigation aid for hikers and travellers
Visual and voice navigation for drivers
Scaling the indigenous R&D capacities:
In line with the Make-in-India, ISRO will lead the industry-ready R&D capabilities to provide a seamless experience to the users of the NavIC application. Further, OPPO will also ramp up its competitive and experienced R&D team for the messaging platform.
ISRO chairperson, K Sivan appreciated the efforts of OPPO India in scaling NavIC applications through their innovative R&D initiatives and urged to include NavIC in all their upcoming mobile platforms that use location-based solutions.
