GLONASS: The Decade of Transition to CDMA Signals

GLONASS remains a core of Russia’s positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) system and is utilized by people around the world. Annual shipments of new GLONASS/GNSS receivers for the communications, transport, agriculture and power industries exceed 25 million units in Russia alone. These users are interested in continuously increasing the quality of PNT primarily based on the improvement of the basic service radio navigation field generated by the GLONASS space complex.

This space complex consists of the constellation comprising medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellites, the modernised ground control complex and the ensemble of user equipment. The current constellation consists of 26 satellites comprising three generations and five modifications. For the past 15 years, GLONASS-M has been the core satellite and now the constellation includes 21 of them. The fact that 14 of them successfully function beyond their guaranteed active lifetime verifies their high reliability. They are steadily being replaced with GLONASS-K satellites, of which there are already four in the constellation. Along with GLONASS-K launches, the in-orbit testing of the first GLONASS-K2 satellite was initiated on August 7, 2023.

Read more in GPS World article.