Fixing The Location Fix

[+sbur6]

From MIT's Technology Review

 

I N N O V A T I O N

Hikers and drivers who use satellite-derived

location information may not need to know their latitude and

longitude down to the decimeter. But phone company workers

digging near fiber-optic cables, drillers working on offshore oiland-

gas rigs, and farmers tracking crops row by row do need that

kind of accuracy. Right now, though, they depend on expensive,

localized ground-based reference-and-correction systems to get

high precision from the 24 satellites of the Global Positioning

System (GPS), run by the U.S. Department of Defense.

That’s about to change. Thales, the French aerospace giant,

says it has developed the first GPS-correction service that’s accurate

to within 10 centimeters virtually everywhere on the

planet—compared to the one-meter precision guaranteed by

similar existing services. “This makes something that was once

very difficult much easier, because you won’t need expensive

equipment,” says Andrew Barrows, president and founder of

Nav3D, a Palo Alto, CA-based company

that develops graphical location displays.

The Thales system will beam out signals

that subscribers can use to continuously

clean up coordinates on ordinary GPS

receivers. “They are saying, ‘throw out all

your GPS-correction infrastructure; we’ll

just send you the signal,’” Barrows says.

A GPS receiver fixes location on the

basis of the travel time of radio signals

from at least three of the 24 GPS satellites.

The Thales system is a “new milestone”

in sophisticated computer

algorithms that attack several sources of

error in the satellite coordinates, says

Angus Cooper, marketing director for

Thales GeoSolutions Group. By independently

tracking satellites’ locations,

Thales double-checks the coordinates reported by the satellites.

Then it corrects for atmospheric disturbances that might alter

signals’ travel time and for known errors within the clocks

aboard each satellite. Finally, the company maintains 85 groundbased

reference stations worldwide. The correct coordinates of

these fixed stations are known, and they are continually compared

against the coordinates reported by GPS. By this summer,

Thales expects to beam ultracorrected GPS signals from outposts

in Singapore and Aberdeen, Scotland, to paying customers.

The system will help farmers spread seed and fertilizer only

where needed and even track individual plants for research. The

technology should be a special boon for offshore oil-and-gas

drilling industries, which need precise information to map their

work locations and can’t install fixed-reference stations at sea.

And it could help utilities map existing rights of way and workers

dig without disturbing buried cables.—David Talbot

[Neo_Geo]

"throw out all your GPS-correction infrastructure [and give US your money]."

 

"...to paying customers."

 

I guess we'll just have to hobble along with WAAS. I'm happy with 3 meter accuracy

[geotrouvetout]

If I remember well the US is also working on improving the US GPS system for....2008. Europe is working on launching soon their own GPS system with 30 sats and let other countries use it like China and probably Russia (since their system does not work well) so the US is kind of trying to slow it down since as usual the US government wants to master the rest of the world . Hope this European system comes out soon so the US does not have the monopoly anymore and work on improving their GPS system. 10 cm is very cool for micro-micro caches (that's 4 inches!). But do we need it that precise? Not sure, except maybe for map manufacturer and the army (guided bombs, yeuk!). Setting up good caches will be a whole new challenge to make them hard to find.

[+Bozz]

Sounds cool... but, agree that it wouldn't be TOO HARD to find a cache if the GPS got you within 4 inches of it!

 

 

Bozz

[+Cornix]

Hope this European system comes out soon so the US does not have the monopoly anymore and work on improving their GPS system.

No chance for that.

 

Galileo test phase chief says more money needed

 

FRANKFURT, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system needs an urgent injection of cash if it is to successfully rival the U.S. GPS system, the chief of its testing and development phase told German newspaper Handelsblatt.

 

An extra 300 million euros ($374 million) which the European Space Agency will request from its members is only half as much as is needed, Guenter Stamerjohanns said in Tuesday's edition of the paper.

 

If the extra money was not raised, the already delayed project could not be carried out as planned, said Stamerjohanns, who reckons it will in any case start a year or two later than its planned date of 2008.

 

source

Cornix

[+Prime Suspect]

Hope this European system comes out soon so the US does not have the monopoly anymore and work on improving their GPS system.

Huh? The GPS system is not a business. Does the government lose money if someone decides to use a different system? No. From the gov's standpoint, GPS is a military system, with some ancillary civilian uses. If every civilian use of GPS switched to a different system overnight, why would the U.S. government care? The impact to the government would be zero.

[Neo_Geo]

You watch... users of the European system will have to pay a big subscription fee, a registration fee, or some sort of fee.

 

What is their incentive to build a better system than the free US gov't GPS (which is a pretty phenomenal system as it is)?

 

Why would anyone try to compete with someone who is giving away their service???

 

Is it because the Europeans are paying twice as much for GPSrs made for use in their own country? I mean, do they think IF Galileo comes to fruition, they will be able to buy cheaper receivers?

 

It sounds like somebody is just trying to keep up with the Joneses.

[+Renegade Knight]

... 10 cm is very cool for micro-micro caches (that's 4 inches!). ...Setting up good caches will be a whole new challenge to make them hard to find.

That's why when we get 10cm accuracy I'll stand 20' over when I mark my coordinates.

[+Alan2]

I can't get into the mind of our Defense Dept. But, giving GPS signal away for free to all comers slows down other countries from developing their own systems. Why bother? On the other hand, when the big "crunch" comes for us, we can shut down the system for accurate military use except for our own forces. Others will be able to just use it for, well, caching.

 

One reason I expect the future big players like China to develop their own systems.

Edited October 26, 2004 by Alan2

[+NightPilot]

The DOD has no choice about giving the signal away for free. They broadcast it, and any receiver can pick it up. Plus, GPS has become essential for civil aviation, and simply can't be shut down, or chaos would result in the US air traffic industry, not to mention the shipping and trucking industries. All those supertankers that deliver crude oil to the US, and there are hundreds each day, use GPS and now rely on it almost exclusively. All the traffic, both helicopter and boat, to offshore rigs depends on GPS. Without GPS, no more offshore drilling would happen. Non-commercial GPS use isn't of much concern to anyone, but the commercial use is. The cost of shutting it off would likely be so high as to insure the defeat of the administration that did it. Ain't gonna happen.