Marine Dictionary & Glossary of Boating Terms

WAAS

Similar Terms: Wide Area Augmentation System

WAAS - Wide Area Augmentation System. A satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS) used to improve the accuracy of GPS developed by the US. The system consists of ground stations to produce correction data, and satellites that send the data to the GPS receiver in the same frequency range used for GPS signals. The system is expected to provide positioning accuracy better than 2m 99% of the time. WAAS is the American variant of EGNOS, the Indian version is the GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) and the Japanese have Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS).