Some Facts about Global Positioning System of Tomorrow

June 20th, 2008 admin Posted in Science & Technology |

NAVSTAR GPS is a very popular navigation facilities that are applied by a great number of people nowadays. This system gives a possibility to define the position and velocity of the objects at any place on Earth, including polar territories, almost in all weather conditions, and in space to one hundred kilometers above Earth. GPS was developed and realized by the United States Department of Defense.

The principle of the position definition is in measuring the distance from the spot with the fixed coordinates to an object. The distance is counted by the delay time of the signal diffusing from the sending satellite to the reception of it by a GPS antenna. 3-dimensional coordinates can be defined when GPS receiver will recognize the distance to 3 satellites and the time of the NAVSTAR GPS system. And when we want to detect coordinates and altitude of GPS receiver we are to apply minimum 4 signals from 4 satellites. The direction of the satellites from Earth is realized in the control station that is located in Schriever base, Colorado.

A great amount of usual persons as well as the police, sailors and rescuers use GPS systems for different purposes, mostly for navigation, position and velocity detection. If you need GPS devices you may get it almost anywhere today. It is also built in the most personal computers, mobile phones and onboarders. With a GPS receiver a user can detect his geographical coordinates at the definite moment of time. The accuracy of the detection of the signal location is from three to five meters and it is greatly heightened with the correction radio signal from Earth and the calculating mistake is one millimeter.

Also a lot of web sites suggest GPS software to purchase. This arrangement helps user define his location that is shown on the electronic map.

2 kinds of electronic maps are differentiated in Global Positioning System. Raster maps are connected with the first type of maps that are the simplest and the most open. It is the picture of a country where the coordinates of a receiver are used. There are used various scales but it usually depends on the primary version of a map. It may be both a picture from satellite and scanned geographical map.

Vector maps, instead, are the maps with their own data system within. They have all the data about objects, their characteristics and situation. For example the country information includes the rivers, lakes, hills and other objects that are located in this area. The likeness of these two kinds of electronic maps is in the data about all the hotels, cafes and filling stations. They have all the info about the places you will need to relax in. Portable automotive GPS is you advantage over average navigation maps.

There are also some shortcomings that GPS has. The main shortcoming is that Global Positioning System is radio-navigation arrangement and owing to it radio signal may not be received in some conditions. So if you are located in a reinforced concrete construction it is practically impossible to identify your location. But nowadays it really is the best arrangement of the geographical position defining in the world.