Nav Canada last month awarded its national ADS-B program to Syracuse, N.Y.-based Sensis, and installation of the first system ground stations is now under way. The FAA, on the other hand, faces some unexpected pre-contract issues as it moves toward its implementation plan. The system forms the foundation of the two agencies’ future air traffic management system, but the FAA’s goal is to have a nearly exclusive ADS-B environment, while Nav Canada plans to use different systems to meet its operational needs.
Nav Canada will initially install ADS-B stations around Hudson Bay in the north and multilateration (MLat) systems at Vancouver and at the oil exploration center of Fort St. John in the mountainous interior of British Columbia. Sensis ground stations can support either ADS-B or multilateration (a positioning technique aviation authorities worldwide are adopting as an introductory step in the transition to ADS-B).