In a move to strengthen long range global flight tracking, the International Telecommunication Union's World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), on 11 November, agreed to allocate a part of the radio spectrum to a global flight tracking system.
The space-based technology will enable the flights to update their position every 15 minutes from anywhere in the world.
Flights which are enabled to send Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B signals to the land-based radars will be able to send the signals to satellites from Earth.
The land-based flight radar system, which is currently in use, is unable to cover 70 percent of the world's surface, according to Ars Technica.
"The frequency band 1087.7-1092.3 MHz is currently being utilized for the transmission of ADS-B signals from aircraft to terrestrial stations within line-of-sight. The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) has now allocated this frequency band in the Earth-to-space direction to enable transmissions from aircraft to satellites. This extends ADS-B signals beyond line-of-sight to facilitate reporting the position of aircraft equipped with ADS-B anywhere in the world, including oceanic, polar and other remote areas," the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said in a statement.
Since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, in 2014, with its 239 passengers, parts of which were found in the Indian Ocean, the inefficiency of land-based radar systems has been debated greatly.
However, in terms of air crashes, 2014 saw the lowest number in 80 years, standing at 111, CNN reported.
The ADS-B Earth-to-Space technology will help in bringing the count lower. The UN-linked ITU intends to implement the massive plan to shift to a global satellit-based tracking system, by 2017.
