J K Ray of Accord is interviewed by GPS World for its Jan, 08 issue.
-February 4, 2008 -

Jayanta Ray (JR) received his Ph.D. from the University of Calgary in 2000. He has worked in the GPS field since 1992, and is group manager at Accord Software and Systems in Bangalore, India.

FAlan Cameron: Tell us about Accord’s new GPS-SBAS (satellite-based augmentation systems) receiver.

JR: The development of the aerospace GPS-SBAS receiver called NexNav is complete...

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Accord launches NexNav™ -a unique flight safety solution for the aviation industry.
-November 16, 2007 -

First ever Indian Avionics product to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

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NexNav is submittal for US FAA for TSO-C145b Approval. -September 25, 2007 -

NexNav™ is the GPS WAAS Class Beta-3 sensor designed by Accord to the newest US FAA  standard, TSO-C145b.     

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L-3 Avionics Selects NexNav for Smart Decle -September 26, 2007 -

L-3 Avionics Systems, a company known for bringing cost-effective and advanced technologies, has selected NexNav for Smart Deck.

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Eclipse Aviation chooses NexNav - September 25, 2007 -

"We are excited that Eclipse Aviation has chosen our technology," said J M Sundaresan, Managing Director of Accord Software & Systems.

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Accord and Spectralux™ Announce WAAS Beta-3 Sensor -Wednesday,October 11,2006 -

Accord announced today, a strategic alliance with Spectralux Corporation based in Redmond, Washington, USA to create GNSS sensor products for civil aviation applications. The product named NexNav™, is a GNSS sensor circuit card assembly (CCA) designed to meet the WAAS Beta 3 requirements.

WAAS Beta-3 is a performance standard for Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers that allows for LPV (localizer performance with vertical guidance) approaches at many airports in the United States. LPV approaches allow for low-visibility landings without the need for expensive instrument landing system (ILS) installations for each runway. It is widely expected that many regional airports will be certified for LPV approaches in the next few years, reducing the number of aircraft diversions due to low visibility.

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Accord has been certified for its quality management system complying to ISO 9001:2000 & Tickit IT standards by DET NORSKE VERITAS(DNV). Tuesday, May 20,2003
On May 20th, 2000, Accord Software and Systems Private Limited, a Bangalore based company was awarded ISO 9001:1994 & TickIT from Det Norske Veritas (DNV), for the....

Accord Software partners with ISRO - Wednesday,June 22,2005 - The Hindu, Bangalore Accord Software and Systems has partnered with ISRO on its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) spacecraft programmes. It has delivered a GPS based Spacecraft Positioning System(SPS) for the IRS spacecraft.The Executive Director of Accord,S.Purushotham, said "The onboard SPS receives signals from GPS satellites and computes position,velocity and time for the IRS spacecraft, These parameters are stored for the entire orbit duration and downloaded to the ground station eith a tele-command".

When GPS technology was introduced by the US department of defence way back in 1984, it was envisaged to be used predominantly by the military. However today it is the civilian community that has benefited immensely from the GPS technology, so much so that upwards of 80 percent of the users are from this segment. The civilian community has contributed immensely to the development of the GPS receiver technology by giving birth to several enhancements to the basic GPS functionality. One such enhancement to arise out of this civilian involvement is the advent of 'telematics' for automobiles.
What is Telematics
Telematics is the amalgamation of technologies that in the end serve one or more of the following needs in an automobile.

• Navigation
• Entertainment
• Communication
• Security
• Tracking

Entertainment mainly consists of audio/video directed towards entertaining the occupants rather than navigation. This would be running an MP3 player or playing a movie on a display screen.

Communication enables the occupant to communicate with the external world over the wireless network. This could be GSM,CDMA or any other wireless communication technology. Instead of picking up a phone, dialing and then talking, a person can initiate a call just by speaking outs commands. Automatic speech recognition software can recognise the command (fro example, dial XYZ) and place the call. This, of course, requires the database of the persons and their phone numbers to be already stored in the unit. The microphone and the speaker of the phone are connected to the car audio system and hands free environment is created.

Security is an added features that is used both to save lives and also as a deterrent to vehicle theft. For example, a GPS+GSM system could relay the position of the vehicle to another caller thereby identifying the location of a stolen vehicle. The position computed by the GPS can be transmitted by the GSM phone through the use of popular SMS messaging service. The position can be plotted onto a digital map to trace the stolen vehicle. Tracking again is feature by which a remote vehicle can be tracked using any of the wireless links

GPS technology plays an important role in the navigation, security and tracking needs of the vehicle.By providing the all-important positioning information, a GPS receiver embedded in a vehicle could be a guide for a newcomer into the city with the help of digital map and/or route guidance. It could alert the emergency service by relaying the position of the vehicle through any of the wireless networks. The same means could be used to track the vehicle either to detect theft or to manage a fleet.

People travel to different cities for various reasons. Often, they do so in their own vehicles or on rented ones. It is also common to find out the same people stopping by the roadside and asking for directions.

• I do not know where I am (which street. Cross road, locality etc)
• I know where I have to go (address of the destination is known)
• I do not know how to get there (the shortest route, avoiding one-ways etc)

GPS is a made-to-order technology for such problems. Problem statement one is easily addressed by the GPS technology. It provides the user with a precise co-ordinate of his/her location. A digital map that can interface with the outputs of the GPS receiver can solve the problem statement 3. Digital maps usually provide prompts for the user to enter the destination. The map software looks up the co-ordinates of the destination from its exhaustive database. It compares the destination co-ordinates with the current co-ordinates given by the GPS receiver and identifies the shortest route to the destination. The position updates from the GPS receiver enable the user every second to monitor the direction he is headed by looking at the trace on the map. However, there seems to be only one hitch. With more and more streets being converted to one ways in the major cities, our user could end up paying a hefty fine if the map software is not the recent one.

Vehicle theft is a major concern all over the world. A simple mechanism to detect/prevent theft would be possible using GPS and the GSM link.

As from the previous case study, the position co-ordinate of the stolen vehicle can be precisely obtained using GPS. Using as GSM link, the instantaneous position can be obtained by a simple SMS call. A more sophisticated way would be to use the combination of GPS and GSM to effectively disable the vehicle. If the owner detects that his/her vehicle is stolen, he/she can send a command through the GSM. The GSM and GPS are interfaced to be a part of the vehicle electronics network GPS technology has emerged as a boon to the automobile industry. The onus has shifted from just being able to travel from one place to another to a different plane where people are also worried about the time and distance to travel, the quality of travel and above all the safety factor.

28 th February 2005
GPS for better flights - The New Indian Express
BANGALORE: Come winter, and fog plays havoc with air services in our national capital and other northern India airports due to poor visibility leading to diversion or cancellation of flights. This has been happening year after year and there is no sign of any improvement, as yet. Global Positioning System (GPS) can play the critical role of safe landing and take-off of the aircraft at including very poor visibility condition, avoiding disruption of air travels.

Conventionally aircraft uses an Inertial Navigation System (INS) for navigation in the air. The INS has a very good short-term accuracy, but poor long-term accuracy. The INS derived position, if un-corrected, is too erroneous after a few hours of flight and unsuitable for aircraft approach and landing. The presently available Nav-aids for approach and landing are too many, terrestrial in nature, expensive to maintain and technologically inadequate for better usage of airspace to facilitate more air traffic without compromising the safety margin of the aircraft and passengers. GPS can be used for more efficient use of airspace, preventing delays to passengers and saving fuel costs for airlines in the coming years.

GPS alone provides accuracy in the order of 10 m, that is sufficient for cruising altitude mid-air aircraft navigation. However it is vastly inadequate for aircraft approach and landing into an airport. Overlay systems such as Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) of United States of America (USA), European Global Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS) of Europe, Multifunctional Transport Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS) of Japan and our own GAGAN are intended to detect any failure in the GPS satellite and improves the position accuracy in the order of 2-5 m. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of USA has commissioned WAAS in 2003-04 and allowed aircrafts to use GPS-WAAS system as a primary mode of navigation during high altitude flight, aircraft descent and precision approach up to a decision height of 250 ft. With almost all aircraft presently using GPS receiver, FAA has last month announced a tighter air control by allowing aircraft to have a height separation of 1000 ft, down from 2000 ft, which is expected to save more than $5 billion over the next decade.
FAA is now undertaking trials of another augmentation system to GPS called Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS), which is a ground-based pseudolite system giving instantaneous correction to GPS signals, integrity of the GPS signal, as well as additional ranging signal. With the help of LAAS and WAAS, GPS can then be used for up to CAT III. This will result in a lot more approaches not available earlier, less time for take-off and landing at even poor visibility and adverse weather conditions, reduction in cost - all without any reduction in safety margin.

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Airport Authority of India (AAI) has spearheaded Indian efforts towards satellite-based navigation by initiating installation of a WAAS-like overlay system for the Indian aerospace called GPS And Geostationary Augmentation Navigation System (GAGAN). India being a country in the tropical region, has a very different ionospheric anomaly and scintillation compared to that of the USA. Indian scientists are trying to model the ionosphere over the Indian region by studying the ionospeheric behaviour at about two dozen locations across India using advanced L1/L2 GPS receivers. However, Indian airports are still way behind in terms of having infrastructure for GPS-based precision approach. Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Airport Authority of India and other concerned authorities should closely monitor the satellite-based aircraft navigation and precision landing related developments in the United States. They should encourage the local GPS industry, which already has developed indigenous GPS-WAAS receiver technology for civilian aircraft and exploit them for use in Indian airports and aerospace.

All future aircraft shall have GPS-based avionics for navigation and landing. Further, all older aircraft are being retrofitted with GPS-based avionics for the same purpose. The International Civil Aviation Organization has a CNS/ATM program to move away from terrestrial based techniques and moving closer to satellite based techniques for aircraft navigation and the gradual transition is expected to happen in the 2010-2012 time frame. India, being a leader in satellite and satellite launching vehicle technologies, should also gear up to take leadership in the satellite based navigation and landing to make a safe journey by air.

20 th January 2005
Accord Software bags $4-m deal from Diehl Avionik -TIMES NEWS NETWORK
BANGALORE: As the Airbus A380 — the biggest civil aircraft ever built — readied for rollout in Toulouse, France, on Tuesday, there were celebrations in Bangalore.

Mr Werner Burger, head of software development, Diehl Avionik Systeme (Germany), was in the city visiting Accord Software, a company that’s been doing work offshore for Diehl.

Mr JM Sundaresan, MD, Accord Software and he were a satisfied duo, having successfully supplied their portion of software to the gigantic flying machine.

Diehl, the largest avionics supplier in Germany, develops and manufactures highly sophisticated avionics systems for civil and military aircraft and is the number one software supplier to Airbus.

For the software development of the avionics computer for the new Airbus, Diehl selected Accord Software as a partner in India.

The partnership with Accord Software started with small project work, but for the calendar year January-December 04, Accord has already clocked business with Diehl worth $2 million.

“We will offshore to Accord development work worth $4 million in 2005,” said Mr Burger, up from $2 million in 2004 and expects a steady increase in the years to come.

The low-profile Accord Software was short listed by Diehl when it was exploring offshore development to India because Accord was started by avionics experts, some of whom were ex-HAL.

“I met them in the year 2000 and we started with very small projects. Initially, we wanted to outsource the work to overcome the shortage of development time, but then we were convinced about the quality; also they are always on schedule for deliveries and they are very flexible. Aircraft development means that there are a lot of modifications in the designs and Accord engineers are very flexible,” said Mr Burger.

Mr Sundaresan expects the relationship to have a huge impact on Accord’s turnover in the future. “Diehl would not have given us more work if they were not satisfied with what we were doing. That itself creates goodwill and we expect to ride on this goodwill,” said Mr Sundaresan.

In addition to offshore development, Accord also does R&D for its own products. Mr Sundaresan talks about a GPS (global positioning system) product that Accord has patented globally and which is slated to get FAA certification this year.

“By 2010-12, all aircraft in the world will have to have GPS for navigation, especially for landing. This will mean a half-billion dollar market for such a product. We will partner with a company which does flight navigation systems, probably a US-based company,” he said.

The objective of of the event was to bring all Accordians and their families together to celebrate the anniversary and the success and growth of the company.

The foundation day was also an occasion to recognise several employees who had put in dedicated service of five and ten years at Accord.

Awards were given to the winners of the various sports events that were held in the current quarter.

The managing director of the company,Mr J.M Sundaresan presented to the Accord family the company's achievements of the year in the areas of Aerospace, GPS, Wireless, Digital Signal Processing and Enterprise Solutions domains. Mr Sundaresan also shared the company's growth plans,which according to him would result in 50 percent growth rates year on year for the next 2 to 3 years.

20 th May 2003
Accord has been certified for its quality management system complying to ISO 9001:2000 & Tickit IT standards by DET NORSKE VERITAS(DNV).

On May 20, 2003, Accord upgraded its Quality Management System to ISO 9001:2000 & TickIT standards that places additional emphasis on customer satisfaction and continual improvement goals.

Accord views quality as an integral part of each aspect of its day-to-day functioning, it seeks to make quality as a way of life.

We have scaled new heights in customer satisfaction, as noticeable from our customer retention.