The Decca Navigator System was a hyperbolic radio navigation system that allowed ships and aircraft to determine their position by using radio signals from a dedicated system of static radio transmitters. The system used phase comparison of two low frequency signals between 70 and 129 kHz, as opposed to pulse timing systems like Gee and LORAN. This made it much easier to design receivers using 1940s electronics, and operation was simplified by giving a direct readout of Decca coordinates without the complexity of a cathode ray tube and highly skilled operator.
Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation.
Radar is a radiolocation system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (ranging), angle (azimuth), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is used to detect and track aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, map weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the objects. Radio waves from the transmitter reflect off the objects and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects' locations and speeds.
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other vessels.
Radio navigation or radionavigation is the application of radio frequencies to determine a position of an object on the Earth, either the vessel or an obstruction. Like radiolocation, it is a type of radiodetermination.
In navigation, bearing or azimuth is the horizontal angle between the direction of an object and north or another object. The angle value can be specified in various angular units, such as degrees, mils, or grad. More specifically:
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the ship's captain or aircraft commander of estimated timing to destinations while en route, and ensuring hazards are avoided. The navigator is in charge of maintaining the aircraft or ship's nautical charts, nautical publications, and navigational equipment, and they generally have responsibility for meteorological equipment and communications. With the advent of satellite navigation, the effort required to accurately determine one's position has decreased by orders of magnitude, so the entire field has experienced a revolutionary transition since the 1990s with traditional navigation tasks, like performing celestial navigation, being used less frequently. Using multiple independent position fix methods without solely relying on electronic systems subject to failure helps the navigator detect errors. Professional mariners are still proficient in traditional piloting and celestial navigation.
Direction finding (DF), or radio direction finding (RDF), is the use of radio waves to determine the direction to a radio wave source. The source may be a cooperating radio transmitter or may be an inadvertant source, a naturally-occurring radio source, or an illicit or enemy system. Radio direction finding differs from radar in that only the direction is determined by any one receiver; a radar system usually also gives a distance to the object of interest, as well as direction. By triangulation, the location of a radio source can be determined by measuring its direction from two or more locations. Radio direction finding is used in radio navigation for ships and aircraft, to locate emergency transmitters for search and rescue, for tracking wildlife, and to locate illegal or interfering transmitters. During the Second World War, radio direction finding was used by both sides to locate and direct aircraft, surface ships, and submarines.
In aviation, an electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) is a flight instrument display system in an aircraft cockpit that displays flight data electronically rather than electromechanically. An EFIS normally consists of a primary flight display (PFD), multi-function display (MFD), and an engine indicating and crew alerting system (EICAS) display. Early EFIS models used cathode ray tube (CRT) displays, but liquid crystal displays (LCD) are now more common. The complex electromechanical attitude director indicator (ADI) and horizontal situation indicator (HSI) were the first candidates for replacement by EFIS. Now, however, few flight deck instruments cannot be replaced by an electronic display.
A fishfinder, also called a sounder in Australia, uses sonar to locate fish underwater. It operates by emitting sound waves into the water and detecting the reflected echoes, which indicate the presence of fish, underwater terrain, and other objects. These sound reflections are visualized in detail by the advanced graphical displays equipped in modern fishfinders, enabling users to identify schools of fish, underwater debris, and the contours of the waterbed.
A second mate or second officer (2/O) is a licensed member of the deck department of a merchant ship holding a Second Mates Certificate of Competence, by an authorised governing state of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The second mate is the third in command and a watchkeeping officer, customarily the ship's navigator. Other duties vary, but the second mate is often the medical officer and in charge of maintaining distress signaling equipment. On oil tankers, the second mate usually assists the chief mate with the cargo operations.
A marine radar with automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA) capability can create tracks using radar contacts. The system can calculate the tracked object's course, speed and closest point of approach (CPA), thereby knowing if there is a danger of collision with the other ship or landmass.
The Yeoman Plotter was a plotter used on ships and boats to transfer GPS coordinates or RADAR echo locations onto a paper navigation chart and to read coordinates from the chart. It was manufactured from 1985 to 2014/2015 and was an intermediary step between traditional paper chart navigation and full electronic chart displays. It was easy to understand for people that were accustomed to paper charts and much cheaper than electronic chart displays available at the time. The continuing fall in prices of electronic chart displays, their increase in functionality such as radar overlay and the advent of cheap tablets eventually made the Yeoman plotter uncompetitive.
An airport surveillance radar (ASR) is a radar system used at airports to detect and display the presence and position of aircraft in the terminal area, the airspace around airports. It is the main air traffic control system for the airspace around airports. At large airports it typically controls traffic within a radius of 60 miles (96 km) of the airport below an elevation of 25,000 feet. The sophisticated systems at large airports consist of two different radar systems, the primary and secondary surveillance radar. The primary radar typically consists of a large rotating parabolic antenna dish that sweeps a vertical fan-shaped beam of microwaves around the airspace surrounding the airport. It detects the position and range of aircraft by microwaves reflected back to the antenna from the aircraft's surface. The secondary surveillance radar consists of a second rotating antenna, often mounted on the primary antenna, which interrogates the transponders of aircraft, which transmits a radio signal back containing the aircraft's identification, barometric altitude, and an emergency status code, which is displayed on the radar screen next to the return from the primary radar.
A Chartplotter is a device used in marine navigation that integrates GPS data with an electronic navigational chart (ENC).
Radar navigation is the utilization of marine and aviation radar systems for vessel and aircraft navigation. When a craft is within radar range of land or special radar aids to navigation, the navigator can take distances and angular bearings to charted objects and use these to establish arcs of position and lines of position on a chart. A fix consisting of only radar information is called a radar fix.
Wave radar is a type of radar for measuring wind waves. Several instruments based on a variety of different concepts and techniques are available, and these are all often called. This article, gives a brief description of the most common ground-based radar remote sensing techniques.
Submarine navigation underwater requires special skills and technologies not needed by surface ships. The challenges of underwater navigation have become more important as submarines spend more time underwater, travelling greater distances and at higher speed. Military submarines travel underwater in an environment of total darkness with neither windows nor lights. Operating in stealth mode, they cannot use their active sonar systems to ping ahead for underwater hazards such as undersea mountains, drilling rigs or other submarines. Surfacing to obtain navigational fixes is precluded by pervasive anti-submarine warfare detection systems such as radar and satellite surveillance. Antenna masts and antenna-equipped periscopes can be raised to obtain navigational signals but in areas of heavy surveillance, only for a few seconds or minutes; current radar technology can detect even a slender periscope while submarine shadows may be plainly visible from the air.
A track algorithm is a radar and sonar performance enhancement strategy. Tracking algorithms provide the ability to predict future position of multiple moving objects based on the history of the individual positions being reported by sensor systems.
