The military service is available to U. GPS is operated and maintained by the U. Space Force. Website host: NOAA. Privacy policy. This page was last modified on February 22, GPS, or the Global Positioning System, is a global navigation satellite system that provides location, velocity and time synchronization. GPS is everywhere. You can find GPS systems in your car, your smartphone and your watch. GPS helps you get where you are going, from point A to point B. What is GPS? Read this article to learn more about how it works, its history and future advancements.
The Global Positioning System GPS is a navigation system using satellites, a receiver and algorithms to synchronize location, velocity and time data for air, sea and land travel. The fourth satellite also moves us into the third-dimension and allows us to calculate the altitude of a device. GPS is made up of three different components, called segments, that work together to provide location information. GPS works through a technique called trilateration.
Used to calculate location, velocity and elevation, trilateration collects signals from satellites to output location information. It is often mistaken for triangulation, which is used to measure angles, not distances. To calculate location, a GPS device must be able to read the signal from at least four satellites.
Each satellite in the network circles the earth twice a day, and each satellite sends a unique signal, orbital parameters and time. At any given moment, a GPS device can read the signals from six or more satellites. A single satellite broadcasts a microwave signal which is picked up by a GPS device and used to calculate the distance from the GPS device to the satellite.
Since a GPS device only gives information about the distance from a satellite, a single satellite cannot provide much location information. When a satellite sends a signal, it creates a circle with a radius measured from the GPS device to the satellite.
When we add a second satellite, it creates a second circle, and the location is narrowed down to one of two points where the circles intersect. That said, we live in a three-dimensional world, which means that each satellite produces a sphere, not a circle. The intersection of three spheres produces two points of intersection, so the point nearest Earth is chosen. As a device moves, the radius distance to the satellite changes. When the radius changes, new spheres are produced, giving us a new position.
We can use that data, combined with the time from the satellite, to determine velocity, calculate the distance to our destination and the ETA. GPS is a powerful and dependable tool for businesses and organizations in many different industries. Surveyors, scientists, pilots, boat captains, first responders, and workers in mining and agriculture, are just some of the people who use GPS on a daily basis for work.
They use GPS information for preparing accurate surveys and maps, taking precise time measurements, tracking position or location, and for navigation. GPS works at all times and in almost all weather conditions.
Other industries where GPS is used include: agriculture, autonomous vehicles, sales and services, the military, mobile communications, security, and fishing. We are passionate about gis, maps, location-based apps, geomarketing, drones and remote sensing.
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This signal contains data about the health and position of the satellite. The second part of the GPS system is the ground station, comprised of a receiver and antenna, as well as communication tools to transmit data to the data center. The omni-directional antenna at each site, acting much like a car radio antenna, picks up the satellite signals and transmits them to the site receiver as electric currents.
The receiver then separates the signals into different channels designated for a particular satellite and frequency at a particular time. Once the signals have been isolated, the receiver can decode them and split them into individual frequencies.
With this information the receiver produces a general position latitude, longitude, and height for the antenna. Later, scientists to determine different things, including another set of position coordinates for the same antenna, this time with millimeter accuracy, can process the data collected by the receiver again.
The third part of the system is the data center. The role of the data center is two fold. It both monitors and controls the global GPS stations, and it uses automated computer systems to retrieve and analyze data from the receivers at those stations.
Once processed, the data, along with the original raw data, is made available to scientists around the world for use in a variety of applications. Since global GPS sites are constructed and monitored by different institutions all over the world, there are many different data center locations.
Who uses GPS? GPS has a variety of applications on land, at sea and in the air. Basically, GPS is usable everywhere except where it's impossible to receive the signal such as inside most buildings, in caves and other subterranean locations, and underwater.
The most common airborne applications are. Anyone who needs to keep track of where he or she is, to find his or her way to a specified location, or know what direction and how fast he or she is going can utilize the benefits of the global positioning system. The most common airborne applications are for navigation by general aviation and commercial aircraft.
At sea, GPS is also typically used for navigation by recreational boaters, commercial fishermen, and professional mariners. Land-based applications are more diverse.
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