The World’s Largest Wide Area Multilateration System to be Deployed in Russia

The world’s largest wide area multilateration (WAM) system based on CRTS Digital Radio Systems equipment has been successfully deployed in north-west Russia. The network of geographically distributed stations with high sensitivity and aircraft signal real-time update rate (less than 1 second) is capable of providing continuous surveillance coverage in all airspace classes, from low altitudes to 20,000 m (60,000 ft.), thereby allowing the participants to “see” the air traffic situation according to the principle of “everyone sees everyone”.

The North-West WAM system, which is considered the largest in the world, consists of 32 widely separated stations and covers about 1 million square kilometers of airspace.

“The system detects and identifies objects in the 1,000 km zone from west to east and 1,500 km from north to south, providing high-precision surveillance with horizontal position accuracy of 27 m en route (which exceeds the standard of 350 m more than 12 times) and 17 m in the TMA (instead of 150 m prescribed by the standard)”, claimed Yury Kapoyko, MLAT chief designer at CRTS.

The WAM deployment costs are around 234 million rubles ($3.6 million). The implementation project owner is FSUE “State ATM Corporation”.

The CRTS R&D enterprise (Digital Radio Systems), representing best practices of the globally recognized Russian engineering school, is one of the leading experts in multilateration, automatic dependent surveillance, and radar technologies for ATC. The company develops cutting-edge innovative solutions for civil aviation and U-SPACE.

Development efforts and products of CRTS are intended to optimize and upgrade the air traffic management system, enhance flight safety, airspace capacity and digitalization. All CRTS products are developed in compliance with ICAO, RTCA, and EUROCAE standards.