OMEGA was the first truly global-range radio navigation system, operated by the United States in

cooperation with six partner nations. It enabled ships and aircraft to determine their position by
receiving very low frequency (VLF)(3 kHz to 30 kHz) radio signals in the range 10 to 14 kHz,
transmitted by a network of fixed terrestrial radio beacons, using a receiver unit. It became operational
around 1971 and was shut down in 1997 in favour of the Global Positioning Satellite system.
HISTORY
John Alvin Pierce, the "Father of Omega," first proposed the use of continuous wave modulation of VLF
signals for navigation purposes in the 1940's. Working at the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, he proved the viability of measuring the phase difference of radio signals to
compute a location solution. Pierce originally called this system RADUX. After experimenting with
various frequencies, he settled on a phase stable, 10 kHz transmission in the 1950's. Thinking this
frequency was the far end of the radio spectrum Pierce dubbed the transmission "Omega," for the last
letter of the Greek alphabet.
Radux-Omega showed the possibilities of very-low-frequency propagation, but there were fears about
ambiguity errors if a single low frequency were used on its own. In the 1950's two new factors appeared the inertial navigation system (INS) and the great increase in electronic system reliability following the
introduction of the transistor. INS was not all that accurate, particularly in ships, where it had to run for
days on end without correction, but it could certainly carry over short losses of signal and resolve any
cycle slippage that might have occurred, while better reliability meant that such outages were far less
likely anyway.
Thus, ambiguities might be much less of a problem than thought, and the development of a single
frequency system began to seem feasible. The 40 kHz of Radux was dropped and a new system using
transmitters in California and Hawaii was set up, transmitting at 12.5 kHz. They provided good results
and two further transmitters were added in Panama and the Post Office station at Criggion, North Wales.
All these stations ran on their own time standards, the development by Dr L. Essen of the National
Physical Laboratory. This new type of extremely stable crystal oscillator, named after him, made this
progress possible. Later, Dr Essen also built the first cesium beam atomic resonator.
These experiments continued throughout the 1950's and provided a great deal of data on propagation
characteristics. Nothing that was found discouraged the idea of a navaid operating at low frequencies. In
1963, an Omega Implementation Committee (OIC) was formed chaired by Prof. Pierce and consisting of
most of those who had been concerned with the earlier experiments. They were charged with designing
the new navaid and, on the basis of their experiments, took the decisions about how Omega would work the choice of frequencies, location of transmitters, power levels, etc. Originally it was calculated that a 10
KW power level from each transmitter would prove more than sufficient for reliable reception. Due to the
high cost of constructing VLF antennas (Omega antenna towers were more than 1,200 feet in height), the
first experimental transmissions were actually existing VLF communications stations that were modified
for Omega transmissions. This committee always denied later that the Decca work on Delrac, disclosed 9
years earlier, had had any effect on their deliberations, but it was interesting that they chose identical
frequencies and other characteristics.
Over 31 possible transmitting sites were considered. Eventually, eight locations were established as
permanent transmitting stations. The Bratland, Norway station (near the Arctic Circle) and the Haiku
Valley station on Oahu, Hawaii, originally experimental stations, were among the first in the system. In
1968, the U.S. Navy authorized full scale implementation of the Omega System based on the OIC report.

Responsibility for the operation was transferred from the U.S.Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard in 1971,
under the terms of title 14, USC 82. The Coast Guard created a new command, the Omega Navigation
System Operations Detail (ONSOD) to operate the system. ONSOD control of the synchronization of the
system was perfected while the Navy Project Office finished the task of constructing the stations. As
construction of the final six stations proceeded through the 1970's, ONSOD assumed the duties of
engineering maintenance for those stations as they were declared operational. Eventually, eight permanent
stations located in Bratland, Norway; Paynesville, Liberia; Kaneohe, Hawaii, US; La Moure, North
Dakota, US; Plaine Chabrier, La Reunion, France (Indian Ocean); Golfo Nuevo, Chubut, Argentina;
Woodside, Victoria, Australia; and Shushi-Wan, Tsushima Island, Japan were completed.
Separate bilateral agreements were negotiated between the U.S. and the six partner nations. ONSOD, later
the Omega Navigation System Center (ONCEN), was named the Operational Commander (OPCON) with
each partner nation maintaining responsibility for administrative control (ADCON). The U.S. owned and
maintained all the Omega related equipment at each station. The host nation provided personnel, funding
and non-Omega support for the station. Partner nation crews came from military and civilian sources. The
Argentine and French stations were crewed by both military and civilian members of their respective
Navies; the Japanese station was crewed by uniformed members of the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency,
while the Australian station were staffed by civilian employees of the Maritime Safety Agency
(equivalents of the U.S. Coast Guard); and the Liberian and Norwegian stations were crewed by civilian
government employees. It took a tremendous effort, on the part of Team Coast Guard, to provide the
system with world class support. The organizations involved in this unique international system included
Commandant (G-OPN-3); CG Navigation Center (NAVCEN), the current OPCON; Engineering
Logistics Center (ELC) Baltimore; Electronics Engineering Center (EECEN); Civil Engineering Unit
(CEU) Cleveland; Civil Engineering Unit (CEU) Honolulu; CG Finance Center (FMCEM, Chesapeake,
VA; the Eighth Coast Guard District, New Orleans, LA; and the Fourteenth Coast Guard District,
Honolulu, Hawaii.
Before OMEGA could even be inaugurated, it invoked litigation against the United States government as
the Decca Navigator Company of London, England had proposed a very similar system many years
earlier and called it DELRAC. In 1962, what eventually became the OMEGA system appeared in a U.S.
proposal to International Civil Aviation Organization using the title "DELRAC/OMEGA" although it
later defaulted to plain OMEGA. The technical similarity between OMEGA and DELRAC was obvious
and there was considerable bad feeling at Decca that they had not received due recognition of their much
earlier efforts. Decca eventually sued the U.S. Government in 1976 for infringement of DELRAC patents
and were awarded $44,000,000 damages. The U.S. never claimed OMEGA was a military navaid in the
court case. By then, they didn't really need it for either aircraft or submarines, having developed inertial
navigation systems. It had only implemented OMEGA world-wide by claiming it was a civilian navaid.
It was not the first time Decca had sued the U.S. Government over a navaid - they had done so in 1967
over Loran-C, and won the case there as well. Unfortunately for Decca, the Americans claimed Loran-C
was a military system necessary for "national security" and did not have to pay up even though found
guilty by a court of law. It's strange that the same argument was not raised in the case of OMEGA.
Omega achieved full eight station implementation in 1983 and was used by several airlines flying long
range routes over water as well as by military forces. Towards the end of its service life, the Omega
system was upgraded with new timing and control equipment; Paynesville, Liberia being the last station
to be upgraded in the Spring of 1996. Since the original equipment had been designed in the 1960's,
certain critical components had become obsolete and could no longer be procured for replacement
purposes. With an initial termination date set for the year 2005 or longer, this upgrade program had to be
executed to ensure that the system continued full and reliable operation in the short term.

Omega
Omega was the first navigation system to provide continuous world-wide coverage. Its origins
lay in the DELRAC (see Section C.2.4) and Radux (see Section C.6.9) systems proposed in
the 1950s. A nascent Omega system, serving North America and the North Atlantic, was
implemented in the 1960s. This used four transmitters in New York state, Trinidad, Hawaii
and Norway [3]. Global coverage using eight stations was achieved in the early 1970s with
additional transmitters in Liberia, La Reunion (Indian Ocean), Argentina and Japan, while the
mainland United States transmitter was moved from New York to North Dakota. In 1982, a
new transmitter in Australia replaced Trinidad [2, 4, 5].
Using propagation models and databases, Omega was typically accurate to 24 km (1),
though errors could exceed 10 km during ionospheric storms. It was used by aircraft in mid
ocean, where more accurate positioning systems were out of range, and by submarines. Some
ships also used it, though many favored Transit integrated with INS. Omega was closed down
on 30 September 1997 after most of its user base had switched to GPS.
The original Omega signal format comprised unmodulated continuous-wave signals on
three frequencies, 10.2, 11.333 and 13.6 kHz, which were transmitted by each of the eight
stations in turn. The transmission cycle was divided into eight slots, or segments, of between
0.9 and 1.2 s, separated by 0.2 s intervals, with each station transmitting on one frequency at a
time. The transmission slots were of different lengths to enable user equipment to distinguish
between stations. The intervals were provided to allow time for the transmission on that
frequency to disperse and for the transmitter antenna circuits to be retuned to the next
frequency. All transmitters were synchronized to UTC with an error standard deviation of 2 s
(equivalent to 600 m in range).
With only carrier-phase positioning available, the range ambiguity was 29.4 km at 10.2
kHz, 26.5 km at 11.333 kHz and 22.1 km at 13.6 kHz. For basic user equipment using only the
10.2 kHz signals, the position solution ambiguity could be as low as 14.6 km, while for 2 or 3
frequency operation, the minimum position solution ambiguity was 131.4 km. The ambiguity
was resolved by initializing at a known position.
The signal format was upgraded in the late 1970s with a fourth common frequency of
11.05 kHz added. This improved the ambiguity by a factor of 4, with a range ambiguity of
1059 km and minimum position ambiguity of 529 km. Furthermore, a set of transmitter unique
frequencies was added for use during the remaining four transmission slots of each
station. With each station transmitting in all of the slots, the signal to noise performance and
dynamics response of the user equipment was improved. Figure C.2 shows the transmission
cycle.

8 station of OMEGA NAVIGATION SYSTEM

1. Norway
2. Liberia
3. Hawaii
4. North Dakota
5. La Reunion
6. Argentina
7. Australia
8. Japan

The RADUX system

Radux was an experimental long-range hyperbolic navigation system, developed in the USA
in the late 1940s [3, 8]. Ranging was performed using a 200 Hz signal modulated onto LF
carriers operating around 40 kHz. The carrier frequency differed between transmitters, while
the 200 Hz modulation was synchronized. The accuracy was around 4 km (1).
Using carrier-phase positioning to improve precision was considered. However, the
modulation could not be measured to sufficient accuracy to resolve the ambiguity on the
carrier measurements without long averaging periods (the same problem occurs with GNSS).
Therefore, around 1950, it was decided to add an additional 10 kHz continuous wave signal to improve
accuracy, with each station transmitting in turn for 1 s. The combined system was
known as Radux-Omega. As the VLF signals carried further than the 40 kHz signals, the
Radux component was dropped later in the 1950s and the Omega component evolved into the
system described in OMEGA.
Decca Navigator System
The Decca Navigator System, usually referred to simply as Decca, was a medium to longrange
low-frequency (LF) radio navigation system, which operated between 1946 and 2001.
Transmitters were grouped into chains of four, comprising the master, red slave, green slave
and purple slave. After 1973, a few chains operated with only three transmitters, usually
omitting purple. Each slave transmitter was phase-synchronized to the relevant master, but
there was no synchronization between chains. All measurements made by the receiver
compared a slave with its master. Hyperbolic positioning was then used to determine a latitude and
longitude solution. Most Decca user equipment could only receive one chain at a time.
However, multi-chain receivers were available. Coverage of each chain was up to about 400
km from the master station [2, 7, 1012].
Altogether, 55 Decca chains were operational over the history of the system. Figure C.3
shows the number of chains operating each year [13]. The first chain, opened in 1946, was the
English chain, reflecting the development of Decca within the UK. This was followed by
chains in Denmark, Germany, France and other parts of the UK. In 1957, a series of chains
were opened in Eastern Canada, with a New York chain opening the following year. Decca
coverage peaked in 1980, by which time all of North and West Europe, Japan and South
Africa had been added, together with California, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates,
Nigeria and parts of India and Australia.
7 Nations Developed OMEGA Navigation System
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

USA - Kaneohe, Hawaii, US; La Moure, North Dakota, US

France - Plaine Chabrier, La Reunion, France (Indian Ocean)
Norway - Bratland, Norway
Japan - Shushi-Wan, Tsushima Island, Japan
Liberia - Paynesville, Liberia
Australia - Woodside, Victoria, Australia
Argentina - Golfo Nuevo, Chubut, Argentina