Inland ASF Measurement by Signal of the 9930M Station

The LORAN system had been used widely and it was an essential navigation aid for ships in the ocean until the GPS is adopted actively. In particular, it was essential functionality for the ships to sail the oceans. According to the advancement of industry, however, the current accuracy of traditional Loran is insufficient for the utilization of harbour approach, land navigation, and the field of survey and timing. Therefore it is necessary that the study on the improvement of the positioning accuracy of Loran. The one of the improving methods is to measure and compensate the propagation time delay between the transmitter and user`s receiver, which is called as additional secondary factor (ASF). In this study, we measured the ASF between the Pohang master transmitting station (9930M) and four points where locate within 33 km apart from the transmitting station, using the measuring technique of the absolute time delay without a time of coincidence (TOC) table. As the result of measurement, the ranging error caused by the propagation delay was about 210 m at 33 km, however it can be reduced up to 40 m with ASF compensation.