Wednesday, March 3, 2010

GPS Recievers

By Byron Ash

The awesome processes that happen behind your back whenever a GPS receiver makes a query is what makes this technology well funded. This fast response is very beneficial to businesses, thus time and accuracy is of major importance. GPS as a tool is invaluable. But when asked, can anyone easily explain what GPS is and how does it work?

How a GPS system points your location out depends on how the satellites measure the distance between each other and from their location downwards. GPS needs a minimum of three satellites for it to work. The result ends up something like an inverted pyramid. This is called triangulation. Three satellites pointing out your location would work just fine. If you know where you are, you can easily get out of any deep forest without any worries. Using this information and satellites in this way is indeed a novel idea.

Firstly, let us understand that satellites have an internal atomic clock that makes sure everyone is in sync with one another. The clock is accurate to a few nanoseconds even after a century has flown by. The system also processes data like where the satellite is over right now, the latitude, the longitude, and like for like. Data like this is essential for calculating your location.

When the receiver sends a request for its current location, the signal is transmitted immediately to any three satellites that are in the area. Now that the data is being requested in the location, the satellite sends its own location relative to where the signal was sent and one more item, the time signal. The time signal tells the receiver was sent from the satellite.

This data about the satellite's current location plus the time stamp being beamed by the satellite is processed by the receiver. The time it takes for the signal to return over the time stamp on the data is calculated. The signals that travel from the satellite has a unique time stamp to make it easier for the receiver to calculate the location of the satellite/s that sent it. These signals are then used to create a time map that will help the receiver identify where the satellite that sent the signal came from.

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