An Introduction To Worldwide GPS Navigation

GPS stands for the term Global Positioning System. GPS is used to obtain an exact location of any point on the Earth's surface or above it. A GPS receiver, which is an electronic device, helps us perform worldwide GPS navigation. It receives high frequency microwave locational information carrying signals from a set of 32 medium Earth orbit Navstar-GPS GNSS (global navigation satellite system) satellites.

Twenty four of them were launched earlier by the US Department of Defense for purely military purposes. However, the late erstwhile US President Ronald Reagan later sanctioned their additional use for civilian use globally in 1983. The satellites are controlled by the US Air Force (USAF) through ground stations in Hawaii, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, Kwajalein, and Colorado Springs.

These satellites together serve to locate the coordinates of any point on the Earth or over it to an accuracy rating of up to 1cm. The actual accuracy depends on the characteristics of the specific GPS receiver used to perform navigation.

It has been found that clouds and buildings obstruct the microwaves originating from the satellites from reaching GPS receivers. This interference causes issues in location accuracy levels. To surmount this issue, a system known as WASS (wide area augmentation system) has been put in place.

WAAS involved setting up a slew of base stations on the Earth's surface that can receive the signals from satellites, augment them, and then distribute them to GPS receivers. Through WASS, the accuracy level of location can be maintained despite interference posed by cloud and buildings. However, to take advantage of WAAS, a GPS receiver needs to have WAAS support built-in into them. Not all GPS receivers have this capability as of now.

Unless you carry a GPS receiver with you all the time, you cannot hope to know your location. You may forget to carry your GPS receiver with you. The most commercially viable application of GPS is to know your location while you are traveling to destinations hitherto unknown to you. So, GPS receiver designers incorporated them into the dashboard of cars. This way you can never forget to carry your GPS receiver with you.

Some of these designers incorporated GPS receivers into cellphones, observing that people generally do not forget to carry their mobile phones with them. Yet others designed a low-priced version that could be simply integrated with existing pocket PCs.

So, all these versions of GPS receivers are used under five different application categories to provide worldwide GPS navigation. These categories include location (positioning objects in space), navigation (getting from one point to another), and tracking (monitoring movements). They also include mapping (creating maps based on known positions) and timing (precision global timing).

The implications, good or bad, of these uses are there for all to see. The good uses include finding the location of people faced with emergencies. Location related uses during travel to relatively unknown destinations and all other related uses are of course very obvious. Bad uses of worldwide GPS navigation include monitoring which is an infringement of privacy.

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