A REVIEW AND APPLICATIONS OF VLF AND LF TRANSMISSIONS FOR NAVIGATION AND TRACKING

J. M. Beukers

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	A review of existing Very Low Frequency and Low Frequency transmissions that can be used for navigation, position and location, tracking and rendezvous is given. This includes the USSR Loran-C system, the USSR Very Low Frequency navigational aid (VLF), the international Omega system, the U. S. Navy VLF communications system, and those transmissions employed in the international time dissemination network. The characteristics of these various systems are discussed in relation to various applications. The potential and limitations to accuracy of the various syaterns are presented. A number of applications are described. In particular, the use of retransmission techniques for positioning of remote objects and diierential techniques for enhancing accuracy are discussed. A piece of equipment is described which has been designed to utilize signals transmitted by the various navigation systems and an inter- mix of these transmissions. The simultaneous use of two or more systems to remove ambiguity and determine absolute position is described. The paper concludes that the VLF and LF transmissions are compatible and should co-exist and are not necessarily redundant. Several references are given which include descriptions of the various systems and studies that have been performed analyzing and comparing performance.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 21, Number 2
Pages:	117 - 133
Cite this article:	Beukers, J. M., "A REVIEW AND APPLICATIONS OF VLF AND LF TRANSMISSIONS FOR NAVIGATION AND TRACKING", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1974, pp. 117-133.
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