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ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization
IMO International Maritime Organization
Inclination The angle between the orbital plane of a body and some reference plane (e.g. E Equatorial plane).
Initialization Refers to the simple procedure of telling a new GPS receiver "where it is", when it is turned on for the first time. Information required includes: approximate present position in latitude/longitude coordinates; and the current local time and date.
Inmarsat International Maritime Satellite.
INS Inertial Navigation System, which contains an inertial measurement unit (IMU).
Integer ambiguity (bias term) The receiver counts the radio waves from the satellite, as they pass the antenna, to a high degree of accuracy. However, it has no information on the number of waves (complete wavelengths) there were between the satellite and the antenna when it started counting. This unknown number of wavelengths between the satellite and the antenna is the integer ambiguity. Resolving the integer ambiguity for each satellite is an essential part of differential processing for land surveying applications.
Integrated Doppler A measurement of Doppler shift frequency or phase over time.
Integrity The ability of a system to provide timely warnings to user when the system should not be used for navigation as a result of errors or failures in the system.
Interface A shared boundary between various systems or programs. An interface is also the equipment or device that makes it possible to interoperate two systems. For example, it is common to interface the 911 telephone system with a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. Both hardware and software are needed to provide that interface.
Ionosphere The band of charged particles 80 to 120 miles above the earth's surface, which represent a nonhomogeneous and dispersive medium for radio signals.
Ionospheric Delay A wave passing through the ionosphere is held up or "delayed" for various reasons. Phase delay depends on the electron content of the atmosphere and therefore this affects the carrier signals. Group delay additionally depends on dispersion in the ionosphere and this affects signal modulation (code signals). The phase and group delay are of the same magnitude but opposite sign. In practice ionospheric disturbance such as delays can affect the accuracy of GPS measurements when measuring at long range.
Ionospheric refraction The change in the propagation speed of a signal as it passes through the ionosphere.
IVHS Intelligent Vehicle Highway System
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