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New GPS Standard Published
jeffy124 writes: "The Dept of Defense has released a new standard for GPS. The new standard will go into become available for use starting in 2003 when the first satellites are launched. Full completion is estimated to 2014. The new standard allows for greater horizontal accuracy of 36 meters instead of 100 meters, and also sets a new baseline for transmission protocols that circumvent ionic interference."
NOW, obviously for military usages. "The new standard allows for greater horizontal accuracy of 36 meters instead of 100 meters, and also sets a new baseline for transmission protocols that circumvent ionic interference" -- now this all wrong, SlashDot editors READ YOUR STORY, it clearly says - "DoD, as operator of the GPS, now provides civil users a horizontal positioning accuracy of 36 meters, compared to 100-meter accuracy in the previous edition of the standard, which was published in 1995. ". NOW, not in the NEW standard.
Actually, it does line up.
In greenwich they have museum about longitude measurment, and they have there a GPS device (turned on) and it shows almost 000 latitude (almost because it's a few meters away from the line itself).
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Yes, but now they are decreasing the accuracy just in the Afganistan area with what they call Selective Availability.
Clinton issued the order to discontinue this obfuscation of the signal because of the SA capability and because he realized the benefits to businesses and ordinary people of doing it.
As a side note, during Desert Storm the GPS system became more accurate because most of the troops had off the shelf GPS units, not the military grade units.
I read over a few of the links but not the full spec. Will this be backwards compatiable or will the current generation of GPS devices just use the old satellite constellation until it dies?
I can just see it now...All the new GPS applications being developed needing to be tossed.
Anyone have some details on this?
Also, as GPS becomes more and more important to the world in general, who is paying the bill? And what price do other countries "pay" if they rely heavily on GPS that is US controlled?
I don't mind the US being "humanitarian" but it's troubling to think that we will basically be custodians of what could eventually be the primary method of navigation for lots of things.
Suddenly sanctions against country X means that planes there can't fly, lost puppies can't be found, and GPS tied 911 type services fail.
On this side of the ocean, we are working on our very own satellite positioning system, Galileo, which will be accurate down to 3 meters (last time I looked). It will be all civilian, with several QoS levels - so hikers can get one level of reliability and airplanes another. Unlike GPS, the Galileo consortium will guarantee a certain level of accuracy, which should help in critical areas of operation such as airplane navigation. If there is an accident due to Galileo malfunction, the consortium will accept liability.
Also, since it's civilian, the military will not have a "Selective Availability" feature.
Score:-1, Wrong
All I can say for the military GPS signal is that it's already pretty damn accurate, and I think the civilian signal is fairly accurate as well.
When I was in the Army, we had a Magellan GPS receiver, a PLGR (military GPS), and the system our surveyors use for position and azimuth, (not sure if it's classified, so won't say much about it,) and all three of them were giving the same grid location. Of course, the Magellan GPS had to be put in Average mode with a couple minutes of sampling, but it got the same grid location.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
For those who work in the GPS community the DoD statement has a faulty reference. It links to ICD-GPS-200 revision B when in fact the last release of the ICD was revision C. Hopefully this will be corrected shortly.
For those who are wondering why the DoD removed the "degredation" from the civilian GPS signal it is because they now have a more effective means of preventing enemies of the US from using GPS - selective deniability. This link talks of its use in Afghanistan. By improving the signal to friendly nations it improves GPS as a product which means that US companies who make GPS equipment (and dominate the market) can improve their sales figures.
scott.