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27 Feb 2010The magic behind the quick and instant response you get from the GPS system even if you are anywhere around the world is the main driving force quite funded. This fast response from the system is what makes the importance of GPS quite critical especially in most businesses. But when you get into the nitty-gritty, do you truly know how GPS works?
The story behind the GPS system is how the satellites measure the range or distance between one another and the receiver. In a way, it becomes a triangulation of some sorts, though because this is a spatial dimension; it looks more like an inverted pyramid. Satellites act like eyes in the sky. You may get lost in a forest because you couldn’t see anywhere in the horizon but trees, but if you had a vision of yourself from above the forest, you’d know where to navigate because there isn’t anything blocking your view. Using satellites to track your location is a novel idea in itself.
First off, let us understand that all satellites have an internal atomic clock that is set in sync with each other. This clock is so accurate that it can keep the same time over a century with only a few nanoseconds of discrepancy. Their system also contains data of their current location like which country are they flying above right now, what coordinates, the longitude, the latitude and the like for like. These data is essential for calculating the location of the receiver.
When the receiver sends a query for its current location, the signal is picked up by all satellites in orbit. Now that the data is being requested in your located, the satellite sends its location relative to the receiver’s location plus one more thing, the time signal. The time signal is like a time stamp that will tell you what time the signal was sent from the satellite.
This data about the satellite’s current location plus the time stamp is going to be given by the last three satellites to the receiver that requested it. Waves may travel at the speed of light, but distance no matter how short, is still distance. There will always be some sort of lag or delay from the request that was sent out, processed, and then retrieved. The signals that travel from the satellite to the receiver contain a time stamp, and this time stamp is calculated by the receiver to sort of make like a time map to ascertain from where the satellite sent out and where your location is relative to the satellite’s near-absolute location at that time.
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