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FCC Paves the Way For Improved GPS Accuracy (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) paved the way for improved GPS and location accuracy today, approving an order that will allow U.S. phones to access a European satellite system. The order allows non-federal consumer devices to access the European Union's version of GPS, which is also known as Galileo. The system is available globally, and it officially went live in 2016. By opening up access, devices that can retrieve a signal from both Galileo and the U.S. GPS system will see improved timing estimates and location reliability. The iPhone 8 was the first Apple product to support it. Other phone models from Huawei and Samsung support the system, too. "Since the debut of the first consumer handheld GPS device in 1989, consumers and industry in the United States have relied on the U.S. GPS to support satellite-based positioning, navigation, and timing services that are integral to everyday applications ranging from driving directions to precision farming," the FCC said in a release. Now, the U.S. system will be able to commingle with the European one, making the way for better reliability, range, and accuracy.
Why do you need permission to listen to radio signals? I thought the FCC were only concerned with sending radio signals? Why would they care?
GNSS satellites orbit at 23,222km, so I would assume the signals were more or less globally available in any case.
"Allow" access to broadcast signals? What authority does the FCC have to prevent reception in the first place? Also, the summary is notably lacking any mention of the Russian GLONASS system, which many smartphones support in addition to GPS.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's late, but I initially interpreted this to be precision and thought how much more precise do I need it? Isn't it precise to within a few feet already?
But accuracy is different.
I actually did think it was fairly accurate, but if sometimes it shows you being miles off even then I haven't heard many stories about it.
Or maybe this just gives us more data and only slightly moves the needle from very accurate to slightly more very accurate.
I'm too tired to RTFA to see what they're talking about.
Odd that this is still even a thing as all of my old MN8 GPS modules have done for at least 2 years now.
A FCC Fact Sheet and Draft Order is at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354772A1.pdf .
I for one would like to know when I'm higher than 59,000 feet, or going faster than 1200 mph.
FCC tries to look like a hero by saying 'you can receive Galileo signals that are already there' - signals that have long been allocated globally for the EU use of the system. At least that's my interpretation.
Apparently uBlox NEO-M8N (what it's actually called) has indeed had Galileo and not bothered to disable it in the USA. Found this while websearching. I guess I should order one up for my homebrew tracker. I got a M6 instead, which does glonass but not galileo, just because it was cheaper.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Owning the receiver is not illegal in itself (a transmitter may be illegal to own). It is only a crime to USE it. Therefore it the customer responsibility to configure that ublox module correctly (which I'm sure everyone does...).
It's not really clear that it is a crime to use it, has that actually ever gone to court? I'm pretty sure that it hasn't, and that if it did, the outcome would be the opposite of what the FCC wants.
uBlox modules are not only famously unconfigured when you get them, but they are also commonly counterfeit. Which is another problem with a M6 that, AFAICT, crops up less with the M8N. Lots of M6s are fake, and don't have as much flash as they are supposed to. Therefore, you can't upgrade their software. The counterfeits still work for most purposes, though. I've got one in a quad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have a Nexus 6P... rooted, running LineageOS. It shows only GPS and Glonass in ChartCross GPStest+. I'm dying to know which subsystem is responsible for enforcing the "this user is in the US, hide Galileo" rule.
The only thing I can think of is that it's part of the Qualcomm radio modem driver... the one opaque binary in the N6P's software stack. I can't see how it could be enforced by Android itself... the moment anyone at XDA saw a brazen difference in kernel code like "boolean galileoAvailable &= !inUS;", it would have been loudly & proudly ripped out and proclaimed as the ultimate l33t hack as a badge of honor within hours.
Insofar as legal authority goes, my guess is that the FCC implied Galileo-disablement as part of its phone certification requirements, and no mfr. wanted to risk delaying a phone by a month or more by failing certification over it by challenging the FCC's authority to enforce it (the industry is largely self-regulating... vendors pay accredited labs to certify compliance, and those labs generally take the view that "anything that MIGHT be forbidden IS considered to be forbidden." because they don't want to jeopardize THEIR OWN accreditation status.
They have been GREAT receivers for my multirotors for a long time. My old m6n's would normally get from 6 to 8 sats with a hdop of around 1.8 to 3 and my m8n's get about 18-20 sats with a hdop of around .8 plus they work a lot better indoors. I also like how they allow me to load sat data for 2 or 3 weeks onto them which is a lot better then the 3 days to a week on my old modules. The ublox software "u-center" really allows you to pretty much configure everything on the m6n/m7n/m8n modules and is not a bad piece of kit.
Odd, every phone I've had over the last several years has had no problem receiving GLONASS telemetry data.
If I remember correctly, it's required to sell phones in Russia without paying an exhorbitant tax.
Want to see for yourself? -- go download "GPS Status" on the android app store and see how many non US-GPS satellites it hears.
Open up your GPS information page .. you'll see that your phone's receiver is able to "see" a dozen or more satellites at once with a clear view of the sky.
Dedicated receivers can outperform a phone of course, but that's not the point of your post.
Pai Man at the FCC could quit lying and everything related to the FCC would be more reliable.
GPS + GLONASS has been around for a long time now.
No one used anything but GPS because it was free and it worked well enough. But that made having GLONASS as an non-US-controlled alternative to GPS useless. It's there, but nothing uses it. So the Russians required cell phones to have it to be sold in Russia, which was the lacking motivation for GNSS vendors to support GLONASS and now everyone does.
And is the result more accurate GNSS from the extra system? Not really. If you're in a location where GLONASS works better, then there's an improvement. But GPS is better most of the time. Adding the GLONASS position solution doesn't improve it. It just adds more error. Assuming you have good GPS reception, GPS alone is more accurate than GPS + GLONASS.
It'll probably be the same with Galileo.
It's also the case that the commodity GNSS chipsets didn't care about GLONASS support before they had to add it. They don't care about more accuracy. It's not something that sells phones.
If they did care about accuracy, then GPS has new signals called L1c, L2 and L5. They are better than the old C/A signal everything uses. Been around for years. Using a dual band receiver to get L1+L2 or L1+L5 would allow cancelling out the ionospheric delay. That would provide the biggest increase in accuracy to GNSS that remains to be had (besides post-processing). Survey level GNSS systems do this. But commodity GNSS doesn't care. Won't sell more phones.
The iPhone 8 was the first Apple product to support it. Other phone models from Huawei and Samsung support the system, too.
Ha. I see what you're doing there. Trying to word it to sound like Apple had it first, while sticking to the truth. Well done.