Is National Differential GPS Lost?

Nealix writes, "This article at GPSWorld reports that National Differential GPS (NDGPS) is endangered in the 2007 budget. This has ramifications for a variety of government programs such as the Intelligent Transportation System and Positive Train Control by the Department of Transportation. Blind people and robots also benefit from highly accurate GPS navigational capability provided by NDGPS, which appears to work better in the urban canyons. If NDGPS loses, the winner would appear to be the FAA-backed Wide Area Augmentation Service (WAAS). Of course, what would be really cool is to see more GPS sites around the country make DGPS data (RTCM) available over the Internet."

Comments

DGPS sites on internet

[ronanbear]

Would not actually be hard. Technically you could do it yourself. Really at it takes is a fixed location GPS (calibrated) hooked up to a server which processes the NMEA data and uploads the correction dynamically.

Um, why should it be saved?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an outsider, I see two technologies that do more or less the same thing. One is better in every way. Its only downside that it's not usable in certain situations where the other might possibly be used.

And this is a reason to spend a couple hundred million plus $10 mil/year in operating expenses?

I know it's not a large amount of money compared to the national budget, but it's still a lot of money.

Re:Not wishing to flame

[Stormwatch]

Please, when using terms like "national", make it clear which nation you're talking about.

The USA flag next to the story's title kind of gives that away.

Article Unclear

[uab21]

Obviously I have missed something in TFA. It states that there are areas where NDGPD is available that WAAS is not, but that also WAAS is available where NDGPS is not. NDGPS requires additional hardware which is A) expensive, and B) bulky, whereas WAAS is available on pretty much all currently available receivers. Both systems (NDGPS and WAAS) have comparable accuracy (~1 meter).

Why, again, should we be sorry that NDGPS is going away? It sounds like market forces at work here. The only specific instance that TFA mentions where NDGPS has an advantage is *some* in-building penetration. Why should we build out a *national* network for only some in-building penetration? It sounds to me that WAAS is getting funding because it is technically and economically the better solution. Why is this a problem?

It's called progress

[NoRefill]

WAAS is the next step in this technology. Let the dinosaur die and let's move on.

Budget Cuts

[dch24]

DGPS does the correction on a satellite-by-satellite basis. The GPS receiver must support DGPS corrections, which are uploaded to the receiver to include in its internal calculations before the separate satellites are combined to form the final result.

Remember when GPS itself was thought to be in danger back in 2000? Remember when there was talk of balancing the budget? Read this article all the way from 1996 about the military importance of GPS technology. It's worth the read.

About the NDGPS vs. WAAS debate: I work for a group that relies heavily on GPS for aviation purposes. As the number of uses for GPS expand, as they inevitably will, new technologies will spring up. NDGPS vs. WAAS is like 802.11g vs 802.11a. I think they both have a place. If the government won't support NDGPS, perhaps there is a commercial application? What are the FCC regulations on the 300KHz spectrum? If no one will pay for it, let it die, I think.

Okay, <rant>
I laughed when I read, "Therefore, when it comes to cutting the budget during tight times, programs like NDGPS are prime targets." How are we cutting costs when we just ran up a record high deficit in the last two years? I like it that we're cutting costs. Let's cut some of the really big ones, like military spending!
</rant> Couldn't resist.