Press TV - Iran has awarded a contract to a local electronics company to manufacture a high-tech device used in the airports.

A senior official at Iran Airports and Air Navigation Company (IAC) said on Saturday that Shiraz Electronics, a subsidiary of Iran�s IEI Corporations, had been commissioned last month to produce distance measuring equipment (DME), a device for which Iran normally relied on Western suppliers.

Ahmad Momeni Rokh said Iran would become the first country in the region to manufacture the DMEs, saying the device would seriously improve the approach control services in the Iranian airports at a time the country�s aviation industry is supposed to suffer from sanctions imposed by the United States.

Momeni Rokh said Iran is increasingly using local companies and start-ups to produce complex devices used in the airports and to offset the impacts of the American sanctions on air transport.

He said sanctions had in fact led to a boom in domestic production of sensitive and modern devices used in the aviation industry.

Among major equipment commissioned by the IAC to the Iranian companies, he said, were MSSR radars, friction testers, and recorders used across the air traffic control systems.

He said a local company had managed to carry out a successful reverse engineering on friction testers, devices that are exclusively manufactured in Western Europe where companies normally refrain from engaging in deals with Iran due to the US sanctions.

On MSSR radar, a modern system used to to substantially increase the safety of the flights, he said Iran would get the delivery of a first batch of domestically-produced radars in late 2021.

The official said that Isfahan University of Technology and IAC were finalizing an agreement for production of MSSR/Mode S radars.