The government on Thursday said that it would make Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) mandatory to be incorporated in all hardware/devices, including gadgets used in automobiles, to promote localisation.
The NavIC global positioning system (GPS) is also being used for the first time, as a choice of GPS in the latest iPhone 15 by Apple to be used in the India oceanic region.
Speaking to select mediapersons, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, said, “Increasingly, we will make it mandatory as it is already in the automobile segment, we will make it almost mandatory that all the devices that use GPS, use the NavIC-powered chipsets or NavIC chipsets.”
NavIC, earlier known as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), is established by ISRO to meet the positioning, navigation and timing requirements of the nation. It is designed with a constellation of seven satellites and a network of ground stations operating 24×7.
Better accuracy
NavIC signals are designed to provide the user position accuracy with better timing accuracy and its signals are interoperable with the other global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals such as Glonass (Russian), Galileo (European) and BeiDou (Chinese).
“One of the start-ups, Accord Software & Systems (Bengaluru-based), we have recognised, is the first Indian company to design the NavIC chips; they have already designed and manufactured over a million NavIC IC chips in 28 nanometer – designed in India and manufactured in Global Foundries (US) – for the automobile segment,” Chandrasekhar informed.
He said this how it will aggregate value that arises out of the electronics ecosystem and will be significant in the short and medium term.
PLI scheme
Therefore, going forward, Chandrasekhar said the government would also make it part of the IT Hardware production linked incentive (PLI) scheme so that companies which use NavIC chips can be incentivised.
“In the IT Hardware PLI scheme, there are incentives for those system designers and manufacturers who incorporate Indian-designed chips or manufactured chips. So, it is very conceivable and certainly our goal as mobile phone designs and our chip design mature, and reach the granularity and the sophistication required for mobile devices that the chips themselves that power mobile devices, will be NavIC chips,” he added.