Recommendations for a GPS III System Safety Program

Kanwaljit S. Sandhoo

Abstract:	In Fiscal Year (FY) 2000, the Air Force initiated the GPS III program to develop a cost-effective system to meet future military and civil GPS requirements. In November 2000, the Air Force awarded two competitive contracts for conducting trade studies to evaluate various technologies and architectures that could meet user needs from 2010 to 2030. The objective of these trade studies was to identify and evaluate various GPS III architectures that can meet user requirements. Some of the proposed architectures include the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) functionality within GPS III. WAAS and LAAS, as developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), meet safety assurance requirements corresponding to various phases of flight. The fact that there are no such requirements for the current GPS space- or ground-based components is a situation that would need to be rectified if WAAS and LAAS functionality is to be included within GPS. At the completion of the trade studies in 2002, the Air Force will award another contract(s) to identify and mitigate the risks associated with the proposed architectures. So as not to prematurely preclude an architecture that either interfaces with WAAS and LAAS or includes their functionality within GPS III, it is necessary to implement a system safety program (SSP) for GPS III that ensures that user safety is not compromised. Safety risks can be identified and mitigated/eliminated at an early stage, by establishing an SSP at the beginning of the GPS III program. This would result in reduced system life cycle costs. The objective of this paper is to provide recommendations for an SSP for GPS III.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002) September 24 - 27, 2002 Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR
Pages:	1565 - 1574
Cite this article:	Sandhoo, Kanwaljit S., "Recommendations for a GPS III System Safety Program," Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002), Portland, OR, September 2002, pp. 1565-1574.
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