The GPS or Global Positioning System is a globalnavigation system used for military and civilian applications alike.
As a positioning system, GPS allows users to map waypoints, tracking their position on a map to within a few meters of their exact location. Civilian use GPS systems are made by companies such as Magellan, Garmin and Trimble.
The US military has developed the ability to locally deny GPS (and other navigation services) to hostile forces in a specific area of crisis without affecting the rest of the world or its own military systems. Such Navigation Warfare uses techniques such as local jamming to replace the blunt, world-wide degradation of civilian GPS service that SA represented.
GPS has become a vital global utility, indispensable for modern navigation on land, sea, and air around the world, as well as an important tool for map-making, and land surveying. GPS also provides an extremely precise time reference, required for telecommunications and some scientific research, including the study of earthquakes.
Because GPS is as much an accurate time keeper as a locator, one of the most common applications for GPS units is as a reference clock for time code generators or NTP clocks. For instance, when monitoring earthquakes, each seismic sensor can be synched with the GPS system to provide a synchronized, precise time source for measurements.
One of biggest problems for GPS accuracy is that changing atmospheric conditions change the speed of the GPS signals unpredictably as they pass through the ionosphere. The effect is minimized when the satellite is directly overhead and becomes greater toward the horizon, as the satellite signals must travel through the greater "thickness" of the ionosphere as the angle increases. Once the receiver's rough location is known, an internal mathematical model can be used to estimate and correct for the error.
Hand-held GPS units are often used by hikers and mountain climbers to plot their courses and to accurately reflect exactly where they are. The author once used GPS to organize a helicopter evacuation of an injured motorcycle rider in a remote region of the La Sal mountains in Utah. A reading was taken, coordinates given, and the pilot was able to find us with ease.
GPS receivers come in a variety of consumer formats, and today can be found in cars, watches, phones boats and planes. Major manufacturers include Trimble, Garmin and Leica, low-end, hand-held consumer units are often available at less than $100 per unit.
In late 2005, the US government introduced the first in a series of new generation GPS staellites offering new capabilities. Chief among these is a second civilian GPS signal called L2C for greater accuracy and reliability.
GPS is short for (the) Global Positioning System, a satellite navigation system developed by the US Department of Defense. A fleet of more than two dozen GPS satellites broadcasts precise timing signals to GPS receivers, allowing them to accurately determine location anywhere on Earth. In practice, this means that using a GPS device, you can find out where you are in terms of longitude, latitude and altitude.
During the Gulf War, the shortage of military GPS units and the wide availability of civilian ones among personnel resulted in disabling the Selective Availability. In the 1990s the FAA started pressuring the military to turn off SA permanently. This would save the FAA millions of dollars every year in maintenance of their own, less accurate, radio navigation systems. The military resisted for most of the 1990s, but SA was eventually turned off in 2000 following an announcement by then US President Bill Clinton, allowing all users to enjoy nearly the same level of access.
Atomic clocks on the GPS satellites are set to "GPS time", which is the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC, January 6, 1980. UTC is short for Coordinated Universal Time. Today, GPS time is 14 seconds ahead of UTC, because it does not follow leap seconds. That's why new GPS units initially show the incorrect time after achieving a GPS lock for the first time. However, this is usually corrected on the display within 15 minutes once the UTC offset message is received for the first time.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton issued a policy directive declaring GPS to be a dual-use system, meaning that it could be made avilable for a wide range of civilian and military purposes.
More accurate GPS receivers are used these days in surveying to accurately locate boundaries, structures and so on.
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