The GPS
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a worldwide radio-navigation system formed from a constellation of 24 satellites, each in its own orbit 11,000 nautical miles above the Earth, and five ground stations that make sure the satellites are working properly. The GPS satellites each take 12 hours to orbit the Earth.
GPS uses these satellites as reference points to calculate positions accurate
to just a few meters. In fact, with advanced forms of GPS you can make
measurements to better than a centimeter! Each satellite is equipped with an
accurate clock to let it broadcast signals coupled with a precise time
message. The ground unit receives the satellite signal, which travels at the
speed of light. Even at this speed, the signal takes a measurable amount of
time to reach the receiver. The difference between the time the signal is
sent and the time it is received, multiplied by the speed of light, enables
the receiver to calculate the distance to the satellite. Here's a graphic to
illustrate the complete
functionality.
GPS receivers have been miniaturized to just a few integrated circuits and so are becoming very economical. And that makes the technology accessible to virtually everyone. These days GPS is finding its way into cars, boats, planes, construction equipment, movie making gear, farm machinery, even laptop computers. Soon GPS will become almost as basic as the telephone.
Here's how GPS works in five steps:
The basis of GPS is "triangulation" from satellites.
To "triangulate," a GPS receiver measures distance using the travel time of radio signals.
To measure travel time, GPS needs very accurate timing.
Along with distance, you need to know exactly where the satellites are in space.
Finally you must correct for any delays the signal experiences as it travels through the atmosphere. You must also correct for the clock differences between the GPS receiver and the satellites.
The triangulation step is something like this. You have at hand your trusty
GPS receiver. What the GPS can do is precisely measure your
distance from any one of a number of satellites. From Satellite 1
your device (GPS unit) measures your distance from the satellite to be 11,000
miles away, then you can only localize yourself on a circle on the earth that
is the locus of all points 11,000 miles from
Now from From Satellite 2
(
your GPS unit measures your distance from the satellite to be 12,000 miles
away. Now you are localized to be on the intersection of the spheres centered
at the satellites and of the respective radii. The intersection of the
spheres is a circle. Next, obtaining the distance from a third satellite
(
)
allows us to locate in the intersection of the three spheres and this
intersection is two points (A circle intersected by a sphere is two points, in
general.) One of the points is where you are
. The other point is rarely on the
planet's surface and so by a little reckoning, you can eliminate this
possibility and select your location. This is broad strokes is how its done.
But there are fine details and they lie in computing those distances.
Another
view of the same situation shows the spheres centered at the satellites. In
the picture below, The planet earth is the small circle toward the middle of
the intersection of the spheres.
Here's
the easy way to see that observations from four satellites can give the exact
position.
*In each event, your position is on the locus of result points.
Now
most GPS units search for and determine measurements from as many as six
satellites. This can only improve the accuracy using least squares methods.
Here is a link to further information on
least squares.
We now know that if we have the locations of the satellites and distances from us, we can accurately determine our position. But we need to know how the distance is computed. In fact there are a couple of ways. Here are some methods to compute distance.
Direct measurement with a "ruler."
Inferred distances by measuring angles in triangles.
Distance measurement using the speed of light (light propagation time).
As mentioned above GPS methods are related to measuring light propagation time
but not directly. How to measure distance by light? There are a couple of
methods. First, distance can be measured directly by sending a pulse and
measuring how it takes to travel between two points. This most common method
is to reflect the signal and the time between when the pulse was transmitted
and when the reflected signal returns. Such systems, called bi-directional,
are used in radar and satellite laser ranging that require single millimeter
accuracy. They require a clock capable of timing accuracy of
seconds
(3 picoseconds). The clock stability need is
.
A clock with this longtime stability would gain or lose 0.03 seconds in a
year. Such equipment is expensive, costing for satellites about $1m. More on
this later.
If we know the transit time of a signal and the speed of propagation of the signal, then we can determine the distance or range. Since the GPS receiver clock is not perfectly sychronized with the satellite clock, the ranges are in error. For that reason they are called pseudoranges. We must determine the time offset between the clocks to accurately measure the distances.
Assuming we have the distances from four satellites and we know
,
are the exact postions of the satellites, we must then solve the following
system equations where the
.
where
is the speed of light and
is the receiver clock offset time. The receiver clock offset is the
difference between GPS time and internal receiver time. Obviously, a key
portion of all this is that there is just one clock offset time. This means
the all the satellites must have perfectly synchronized clocks, and this is
just one of the tasks of the control sites. The unknowns above are
and
.
Let us reiterate: if the clocks of the GPS receiver and the satellite were
perfectly synchronized, the time offset would be zero.
The
GPS receiver is not just a fine electronic mechanism, it can do a whole lot of
mathematics as well. Wow and they put it in such a small package!
Just how is that system solved? It is multivariate and nonlinear. There are
numerous methods that have been designed for just such systems. Most notably
is the famous Newton's method. We have provided a link to the basics of the
Newton's method for functions of one variable. In a nutshell... To solve the
equation
,
make an initial guess
,
compute
.
Then replace
in the expression
with
and compute
and continue in this manner. That is, we compute
and
continue to do so until the value of
is sufficiently close to zero.
In the general multivariate case the same equation works, but has a
slightly different look. Let
be
the sytem to be solved., where
and
are column vectors
and
Each function
is a function of each of the
variables. Define the
Jacobian matrix
If
is some starting vector, then the Newton iterations are
where
is the inverse matrix of
Convergence problems for Newton's method are legend. However, if we have a good starting value, then Newton's method often converges rapidly. You can see more about this in our one dimensional treatment.
There are many sources of error in GPS measurement. Among them are the atmosphere, ionosphere, satellite orbit errors, receiver noise, multipath ambiguities, and satellite clock errors.
A number of other corrections and tricks are required to obtain precise distances. Sometimes GPS units use dual frequency transmission, in part because ionospheric errors that are inherent in all observations can be modelled and significantly reduced by combining satellite observations made on two different frequencies and observations on two frequencies allow for faster ambiguity resolution times.
Until recently, another source of error was intentionally created. However, as
of August 2000, the Selective Availability of the signal, an intentional
degradation of the signal, was turned off. Therefore, accuracies of the
horizontal position is in the 5-7 meter range.
With optical systems, a flat reflector does not work because of the obvious
need that the light signal be exactly perpendicular to the ranging mirror.
So, what is commonly used is a corner cube reflector, as shown below.
An alternative method to measure distance is to measure the phase difference between the incoming and outgoing continuous wave. Such a device is called an interferometer.
The mathematics behind this is elementary trigonometry. Suppose the outgoing
signal is given by
and
also the
lagged signal
.
The incoming signal is of the same frequency but out of phase. Thus we receive
the signal
When
the signal returned it is multiplied (beating) by the outgoing signal to
obtain
We
apply the trig
identities
to
obtain
The
terms
and
oscillate at twice the frequency of the original signal. By averaging over
product over a period long compared to
we obtain zero. The remaining terms are the sine and cosine of the phase.
Do we have the distance now? Not quite. If the distance is less than 1 wavelength, then the answer is unique. If the distance is more than 1 wavelength, then we need to number of integer cycles. Surveying instruments use this and make phase difference measurements at multiple frequencies, then solve the resulting system of equations to determine the distance.
GPS technology: http://www.trimble.com/gps/ http://www-gpsg.mit.edu/~tah/12.540/12.540.Lec06.pdf
GPS basics http://www-gpsg.mit.edu/~tah/12.540/12.540.Lec06.pd
fGPS Land Navigation : A Complete Guidebook for Backcountry Users of the NAVSTAR Satellite System by Michael Ferguson, Randy Kalisek, Leah Tucker, Glassford Publishing; ISBN: 0965220257, 1997
GPS for Everyone : How the Global Positioning System Can Work for You by L. Casey Larijani ,Amer Interface Corp; ISBN: 0965966755 , 1998;
The Global Positioning System and GIS : An Introduction by Michael Kennedy Bk&CD ROM edition Ann Arbor Pr Inc; ISBN: 1575040174, 1996
The GPS Manual : Principles & Applications, Steve Dye, Frank Baylin, Baylin/Gale Productions; ISBN: 0917893298, 1997
GPS Instant Navigation : A Practical Guide from Basics to Advanced Techniques by Kevin Monahan, Don Douglass, Fine Edge Productions; ISBN: 0938665480, 1998
.
Show that the corner cube reflector reflects light by
radians when the corner is
radians. What is the angle of reflection when the angle of the corner is
radians?
Suppose you have the phase angle pertaining to exactly two different frequency reflections. How can this help you better obtain the distance between the GPS and the satellite?
Explain why solving the system
given
the positions of and distances from three satellites does not yield the
unique, exact GPS receiver position. There are after all, three equations and
three unknowns. Note there is no time offset in this situation.
One way to solve the system above is by squaring both sides and computing
differences of pairs of equations and solving the resulting system. Show that
with four satellite distances, we can convert the system to a linear system
for the three unknowns
and
What
is the linear system?