GPS Advanced Control Segment (OCX)

Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Discuss Pending OCX Contract
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/northrop-grumman-raytheon-discuss-pending-ocx-contract-8778?print=1

August 26, 2009
By: Alan Cameron

With a planned initial operational date in 2013, the GPS Advanced Control
Segment (OCX)
will improve GPS accuracy, integrity, availability, and continuity for military
and
civilian users around the world, as well as providing more efficient
functionality to GPS
operators, maintainers, and analysts. A final down-select by the U.S. Air Force
(USAF)
Space and Missile Systems Center to one of two contractor teams, led
respectively by
Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, is expected at the end of September. GPS World
spoke to
project leads from each team in the final weeks of this contract competition,
and their
comments follow.

OCX will bring better situational awareness to all GPS users. A robust and
rapidly updated
information set is expected to become available publicly, both directly from OCX
and
through the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center (NavCen). This information set
will include
more detailed constellation, coverage, dilution of precision (DOP), accuracy,
and planned
schedule information than is currently available. The new information will allow
users to
more effectively plan their missions based on expected GPS performance and that
of GPS
combined with other navigation and augmentation systems.

For a lot mote of the article, see:
http://www.gpsworld.com/gnss-system/northrop-grumman-raytheon-discuss-pending-ocx-contract-8778?print=1