Geoscience Australia is seeking a prime contractor for a new satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) that Australia and New Zealand have committed to implement.
The SBAS will improve position, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities to end-users in Australia and New Zealand.
The system, which will be called the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network, will augment standard positioning capability provided by GPS and Galileo across all of Australia and New Zealand, with expected user applications in agriculture, construction, resources, utilities and other industries; with decimeter accuracy.
It will also support the aviation and road transport sectors, which have requirements for high-integrity positioning data with sub-meter level accuracy, Geoscience Australia said.
Full operational capability will require a number of satellite payloads in geostationary orbit needed to broadcast data to users. These may be hosted payloads rather than dedicated SBAS satellites, Geoscience Australia added.
This procurement process is administered by Geoscience Australia and is undertaken for the benefit of Geoscience Australia and its New Zealand counterpart, Land Information New Zealand.