The Genesis of the Decca Navigator System

Abstract

The Decca Navigator System was very unusual among radio-navigation systems in that the entire system was championed and marketed by a commercial company. How it came about was also unusual -it was neither the product of market research nor a military specification. It was a solution to one of the major problems of the 1930s facing those who attempted to use radio methods for the location of vehicles, that of measuring extremely small time intervals. The problem was eventually solved by pulse methods (radar), which were kept very secret at the time, but Decca offered an alternative particularly suited to marine navigation because of its use of low frequencies. No matter how good a technical solution, many systems fail if they are not actively supported by proper marketing and in this Decca Navigator was fortunate to have the backing of a major British company, the Decca Record Company. This paper describes the inception, wartime trials and eventual acceptance into general marine use of Decca Navigator. Some previously unpublished historical material from the company archives is included.

Reserve navigation system for ships based on coastal radio beacons

“…In the last century they were allayed terrestrial navigation systems, e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4]: Decca, Syledis, Omega, Loran-A, Loran-C, Chayka. They were phase hyperbolic systems using also the over-the-horizon propagation.…”

A History of Maritime Radio-Navigation Positioning Systems used in Poland

“…DNS was a mid-range hyperbolic radio-navigation system, developed by William O'Brien in the years 1936-1939 in the USA. Later, the concept was developed jointly with Harvey Schwarz (Januszewski, 1997;Proc, 2014) in the UK by the Decca Record Company (Blanchard, 2015). Tests, carried out in the Irish Sea 1942-1943, helped to develop technical solutions facilitating the launch of the first chain on the day before the landing of Allied forces in Normandy …”

“…3 in 1944 (a chain of three stations: Chichester -Master A station, Swanage -Slave B station, and Beachy Head -Slave C station) provided the ability to precisely position the Allied fleet (Blanchard, 2015;Proc, 2014).…”

Doppler‐based navigation for mobile protection system of strategic maritime facilities in GNSS jamming and spoofing conditions

“…The proposed solution has higher accuracy in comparing to historical maritime navigation systems like the Decca [42], Loran‐C, and its Polish equivalent – the Jemioluszka [43, 44], which were based on signal phase measurements. In the spoofing or jamming conditions, using a differential GNSS [45] does not allow the autonomous USV control.…”