GADSS and ADS-B

By now ADS-B technology is well understood. It allows for aircraft tracking which has become so popular and is now de rigueur for every avgeek with a smartphone. Which includes just about every reader of this site.

We spoke with Amir Bhatti, CEO of Star Navigation about the origins of GADSS: “After the sad disappearance of MH370, International Telecommunications Union (ITU) a subdivision of ICAO and United Nations, with the help of Malaysian Ministry of Telecom and MultiMedia organized “Expert Dialogue” on real-time flight tracking and DFDR downloads. They invited the avionics manufacturers along with aircraft manufacturers and airlines around the world.

I was fortunate to be the team lead on one of those groups tasked with identifying the use cases of DFDR data. We presented a lot of use cases on real-time flight tracking and DFDR data downloads. Fortunately, the ICAO mandated a few of them in the shape of the GADSS program in the later years. Ever since then, the industry is still struggling to provide the complete solution in a single avionics box with a dashboard that suffices the need to comply with GADSS requirements. Star Navigation is able to do it on a single platform where the end-users are able to identify the aircraft in distress in real-time and start streaming the DFDR data in both, forward and backward directions.”