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Is National Differential GPS Lost?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-where-are-we-again? dept.

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."

3 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Of Course! by duerra · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah yes, of course GPS making use of DGPS data (RTCM) would be better than FAA-backed WAAS if NDGPS loses - everybody knows that. Now, BRB while I RTFA.

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  2. Doom and gllom for punchcards! by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Informative
    Everything has its natural life, and WAAS is now a good replacement for beacon. So what if beacon differential goes away? WAAS is better: it is easier to add to a system (it uses L1 and typically needs no extra hardware vs beacon needs a special receiver etc), is cheaper, and is easier for customers to use.

    I didn't mind punch cards being phased out either....

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    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  3. Article Unclear by uab21 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?