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Interfacing and interlacing
Most radars today are capable of interfacing with other navigational equipment, such as GPS, electronic compasses, logs, sounders, weather instruments, engine instruments and autopilots. For example, when interfaced with a GPS navigator, electronic compass and log, the position and vector of any radar target on the screen that has been acquired by the ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aids) can be digitally displayed on the chart. In order to interface the instruments must be able to communicate with each other in the same software language. To allow this most manufacturers have adopted a standard code defined by the National Marine Electronics Association (of America). A later version of this standard is NMEA-0183.
The above figure shows a north-up radar display interfaced with the GPS and other instruments to give own ship’s position, position of target acquired by the ARPA, SMG, CMG, waypoint information, air temperature, sea temperature and barometer reading.
