Chapter 6

Fundamentals of GPS
 GNSS
• Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is a system of
navigating/identifying a position of an object on the surface of
earth (no matter whether at the rest or in motion) with the help of
earth orbiting satellite.
• It was introduced to support a Global positioning and navigation
system as it was difficult by the traditional Geodetic/ Astronomic
systems
• It is very crucial break through in this field as it provides
– A global coverage
– Fast and reliable positioning and navigation data
– Without relying on weather/ meteorological condition
– Real time transmission
• Some examples of GNSS are
– NAVSTAR GPS (USA)
– GLONAS (Russia)
– Galileo (EU)
 GNSS
• A process used to establish
a position at any point on
the globe the following two
values can be determined
any where on the Earth
1. One’s exact location
(longitude, latitude and
height co-ordinates)
accurate to within a range
of 20m to approx.1mm.
2. The precise time (Universal
Time Coordinated, UTC)
accurate to within a range
of 60 ns to approx. 5 ns.
 GNSS
• During the development of the GNSS system,
particular emphasis was placed on the following
three aspects:
1. It had to provide users with the capability of
determining position, speed and time, whether in
motion or at rest.
2. It had to have a continuous, global, 3D
positioning capability with a high degree of
accuracy, irrespective of the weather.
3. It had to offer potential for civilian use.
 Main Principle
• The working principle of GNSS is:
– Position of a unknown object can be identified by
measuring range/distance of the object from at least
three known position, a well known principle of
trilateration in traditional surveying
– The distance from satellite to earth is calculated by
using the relationship of velocity of light signal and
time taken to reach the earth
– In GNSS, at least three (actually, 4) known positions of
satellite are used to identify the unknown position on
(or above) the earth surface
 Main Application
• GPS receivers are used for positioning, locating,
navigating, surveying and determining the time
and are
• Employed both by
– Militaries (e.g. for strategic planning, route finding,
navigation, positioning etc)
– Civilian companies (surveying, determining the time,
navigation, vehicle monitoring etc.)
– Private individuals (e.g. for leisure activities, such as
trekking, balloon flights and cross-country skiing etc.)
• GPS provides answer to the question ‘where am I on
the earth?’
 GPS:basics
• The NAVSTAR GPS (NAVigation System with Time And Ranging
Global Positioning System) is a satellite-based radio navigation
system providing precise three dimensional position, navigation, and
time information to suitably equipped users.
• The system is continuously available on a world-wide basis
• It is independent of meteorological conditions.
• GPS has been under development in the U.S.A. under the
Department of Defence (DOD) since 1973
• The first satellite was placed in orbit on 22nd February 1978
• It has been used for the solution of geodetic problems since about
1983.
• In its final configuration, available since 1995, the system nominally
consists of 24 satellites placed in orbits of about 20 180 km altitude
above the Earth’s surface.
 GPS: basics
• Each satellite is built to last about 10 years.
Replacements are constantly being built and
launched into orbit.
• A GPS satellite weighs approximately 2,000
pounds and is about 17 feet across with the
solar panels extended.
• Transmitter power is only 50 watts or less.
 GPS: basics
• The arrangement of satellites has been planned
in such a way that at least four satellites are
simultaneously visible above the horizon,
anywhere on Earth, 24 hours a day.
• There are currently 28 operational satellites
orbiting the Earth
• These satellites are at a height of 20,180 km on 6
different orbital planes.
• Their orbits are inclined at 55° to the equator,
• Each satellite orbits the Earth in approximately 12
(11h 58m) hours.
 GPS: basics
• It was primarily a military system, with limited
access to civil users.
• Now, it can be used both by civilians and military
personnel.
• The civil signal SPS (Standard Positioning Service)
can be used freely by the general public
• The military signal PPS (Precise Positioning
Service) can only be used by authorized
government agencies.
 GPS: basics
• Each one of these satellites has up to four
atomic clocks on board.
• Atomic clocks are currently the most precise
instruments known,
• They lose a maximum of one second every
30,000 to 1,000,000 years.
• In order to make them even more accurate,
they are regularly adjusted or synchronized
from Various control points on the Earth.
Satellite Constellation
 GLONASS
GLONASS is formed by 24 satellites
located on three orbital planes.
Each satellite is identified by its slot number, which defines the orbital plane
(1-8, 9-16,17-24) and the location within the plane.
The three orbital planes are separated by 120 degrees.
Within an 3 orbital plane, the 8 satellites are separated by 45 degrees.
The GLONASS orbits are circular orbits
Orbiting 19,140 Km, above the earth
with an inclination of 64.8 degrees
Orbiting period is 11 hours 15 minutes 44 seconds.
– Frequency L1: 1605 MHz
– Frequency L2: 1248 MHz
 Galileo
• The fully deployed Galileo system consists of 30
satellites (27 operational + 3 active spares),
• positioned in three circular Medium Earth Orbit (MEO)
planes
• in 23616 km altitude above the Earth,
• and at an inclination of the orbital planes of 56 degrees
with reference to the equatorial plane.
 Working principle
• GPS is primarily a navigation system.
• Based on principle of Trilateration
• The fundamental navigation principle is based on the
measurement of so-called pseudoranges between the
user and satellites.
• GPS uses the one-way ranging technique
• Starting from the known satellite coordinates in a
suitable reference frame the coordinates of the user
antenna can be determined.
• From the geometrical point of view three range
measurements are sufficient.
 Working principle

The distance S to the satellite can be determined by using the known transit time τ:
distance = travel time • the speed of light
S = τ•c
 Working principle
In principle, three satellites are enough to fix a position on the earth surface
 Working principle
• We have been assuming up until now that it has been possible to
measure signal transit time precisely.
• But the clocks may have errors, especially the clocks at the receivers
end are not exactly synchronised with the satellite clocks.
• This synchronization error is the reason for the term “pseudorange”
• For the receiver to measure time precisely a highly accurate,
synchronised clock is needed.
• If the transit time is out by just 1 μs this produces a positional error
of 300m.
• As the clocks onboard all three satellites are synchronised, the
transit time in the case of all three measurements is inaccurate by
the same amount.
 Working principle
• To solve the problem, we can use a well known
mathematical solution of equations
• If N variables are unknown, we need N independent
equations.
• If the time measurement is accompanied by a constant
unknown error, we will have four unknown variables in 3-
Dspace:
– longitude(X)
– latitude(Y)
– height(Z)
– time error (Δt)
• It therefore follows that in three-dimensional space four
satellites are needed to determine a position.
 Working principle
• In order to determine these four unknown
variables, four independent equations are
needed.
• The four transit times required, are supplied by
the four different satellites
• The 28 GPS satellites are distributed around the
globe in such a way that at least 4 of them are
always “visible” from any point on Earth
• Despite receiver time errors, a position on a
plane can be calculated very accurately
Working principle
 Components of GPS
• The Global Positioning System (GPS) comprises
three segments
– The space segment (all functional satellites)
– The control segment (all ground stations involved in
the monitoring of the system: master control
station, monitor stations, and ground control
stations)
– The user segment (all civil and military GPS users)
 Space Segments
• The space segment currently consists of 28 operational
satellites orbiting the Earth
• 6 different Orbital planes (four to five satellites per
plane).
• They orbit at a height of 20,180 km above the Earth’s
surface
• They are inclined at 55° to the equator.
• Any one satellite completes its orbit in around 12
hours.
• Due to the rotation of the Earth, a satellite will be at its
initial starting position after approx. 24 hours (23 hours
56 minutes to be precise).
Ground track of a satellite
 Space Segment
• The arrangement of satellites in the full constellation is
called as the baseline constellation
• The orbital position of each satellite in one of the six orbital
planes A to F is indicated by its plane position number, also
named slot.
• Four slots are assigned to each plane.
• Six additional slots, A5 through F5, are provided on the
basis of need for active spares.
• The separation in right ascension between two orbital
planes is 60◦.
• The position of a satellite within the particular orbital plane
can be identified by the argument of the latitude, u = ω + ν,
or the mean anomaly, M, for a given epoch.
 Space Segments
• Although the baseline constellation includes 24
satellites, the number of active satellites on orbit may
vary due to failures, launches, or maintenance
requirements,
• Since 1995 no. of satellites in the constellation has
already exceeded 24.
• On January 1, 2003, the constellation comprised 28
satellites.
• With the augmented constellation, most users will
have six to eight, or at times even more, satellites in
view instead of the minimum of four satellites.
Space Segment
 Control Segment
• The tasks of the Control Segment are to
– continuously monitor and control the satellite
system,
– determine the GPS system time,
– predict the satellite ephemerides and the
behavior of the satellite clocks,
– periodically update the navigation message for
each particular satellite, and
– command small maneuvers to maintain orbit, or
relocate to substitute an unhealthy satellite.
 Control Segment
• Within the Control Segment are the Master Control
Station (MCS), several unmanned monitor stations
(MS) located around the world, and ground antennas
(GA) for uploading data to the satellites.
• The Operational Control Segment (OCS) for GPS
consists of the MCS near Colorado Springs (U.S.A.), four
monitor stations and co-located ground antennas in
Ascension Island, Cape Canaveral, Diego Garcia and
Kwajalein, and two more monitor stations in Colorado
Springs and Hawaii.
• The monitor stations and ground antennas are
operated remotely from the Master Control Station.
Control Segment
 Control Segment
• The monitor stations receive all satellite signals, from which
they determine the pseudoranges to all visible satellites,
and transmit the range data along with local meteorological
data via data link to the Master Control Station.
• From these data the MCS precomputes satellite
ephemerides and the behavior of the satellite clocks and
formulates the navigation data (message).
• The message data are transmitted to the ground antennas
and uplinked to the satellites in view.
• Because of the global distribution of the upload antennas
at least three contacts per day can be realized between the
control segment and each particular satellite.
Control Segment
 User Segment
• Receivers on ground stations,
• navigation systems in aero plane, car, ships, cycle
 User Segment
• The signals transmitted by the satellites take approx. 67
milliseconds to reach a receiver. As the signals travel at
the speed of light, their exact transit time depends on
the distance between the satellites and the user.
• Four different signals are generated in the receiver
having the same structure as those received from the 4
satellites.
• By synchronising the signals generated in the receiver
with those from the satellites, the four satellite signal
time shifts Δt are measured.
• The measured time shifts Δt of all 4 satellite signals are
used to determine signal transit time.
 Application
• Science and technology/Engineering
• Commerce and industry
• Forestry
• Agriculture
• Communication Technology
• Navigation
• Tourism/ Sport
• Military
• Time measurement
• Research
 GPS signal
• Mainly three different types of signals are
used in GPS observation/measurement:
– Carrier
• Link 1 (L1)
• Link 2 (L2)
– Code
• Coarse (or Clear) Acquisition (C/A)
• Precision (or Protected) (P)
– Data signal
Structure of satellite Signal
Synchronization of signal
 Errors in GPS Observation
• Orbital errors
• Ionospheric refraction
• Tropospheric Refraction
• Selective Availability
• Anti spoofing
• Clocks
• Multipath
• GPS Receiver Noise
Errors in GPS

Satellite Clock Offsets

Satellite Position offsets
(may be deliberate)

Ionospheric Delay

Multipath Reflection

Receiver Noise and Lag

Receiver Cycle Slips
 Pros and cons
• GPS
– Pros
• High accuracy.
• Global coverage
• Works without inter visibility (In the dark, rain, fog etc).
• Long range. (But accuracy is proportional to the distance from your base station).
• Rapid results.
• 3 dimensions with one measurement.
• No much physical labour is needed
• No highly skilled HR is needed for field operation (for processing skill is required)
• Multipurpose use
• Becomes cheaper in long term use
– Cons
• Need to see the sky (can’t use it in-house, underground, narrow strip )
• Beware height conversions to geoids, operates in WGS 84, so conversions are must
• Training is essential for technical facts and their application, though not much for field
operation
• Not widely available in local areas
• Hi tech, sofisticated and expensive instruments and software
• Not much awareness among general people and users
Positioning Techniques
 Navigation with GPS

• GPS was primarily designed as a navigation

system with a worldwide real-time capability.
• The following modes are in use:
– absolute observations with code phases,
– absolute observations with code and carrier phases,
– relative observations with code phases,
– relative observations with carrier-smoothed code
phases,
– relative observations with code and carrier phases
(the carrier phases are the primary observables).
 Single point positioning/Absolute
positioning
• In single point positioning with GPS the
coordinates of a GPS receiver at an unknown
location are sought with respect to the center of
the earth by using the known positions of the
satellites being tracked by the GPS receiver and a
minimum of four distance (range) measurements
from the satellite to the unknown location.
• Single point positioning is also referred to as
point positioning and absolute positioning.
• Single point positioning can be determined in
both static and dynamic/kinematic modes.
Single point positioning/Absolute
positioning
 Differencing
• The errors in pseudo-ranges such as orbital,
atmospheric clock errors are eliminated or removed by
modelling or by differencing.
• Differencing the signals received by two (or more)
simultaneous receivers enables the relative positions
between locations to be more precisely determined
than the single-point positions
• Relative positioning eliminates common satellite clock
modelling errors and reduces biases introduced by
orbital and atmospheric errors.
• This is due to the fact that there errors are almost
identical at both locations, i.e. correlated.
 Differencing
• Differencing techniques can also be applied to the carrier phase
component of the GPS signals.
• Carrier phase measurements provide a precise measure of the
change in range over time, which can be converted to precise
ranging information if the integer number of wavelengths (the
ambiguity) at first signal acquisition can be determined.
• A sufficient change in geometry must exist or an increased number
of satellites to enable the ambiguity parameters to be separated
from estimated position co-ordinate parameters.
• In carrier phase, differencing of simultaneous data from two
receivers, two satellites, and two time epochs permits the
elimination of the ambiguity parameter from the equations.
 Differential correction
• Differential corrections may take the form of
measurement corrections or position corrections.
• The measurement method, the true range between a
satellite and a reference site is computed
• the range is computed from the known satellite
coordinates derived from the broadcast ephemeris and
the known receiver coordinates.
• The difference between the true range and the
pseudorange are computed and used to correct the
range measurements at the rover site.
• These differences are called differential corrections.
 Position correction
• For the position correction method, the true reference
site position is compared with the position computed
through the single point positioning.
• The resulting positional differences at the reference
site form the differential corrections, which are then
applied to the rover site(s).
• With this method, the exact same satellites must be
observed at both the reference and rover sites.
• This is a definite limitation since obstructions at one
site may prevent its successful application.
• The measurement method of differential corrections is
preferred.
 Differential GPS
• For some tasks, a high degree of positional accuracy is required. Eg.
Crustal deformation study
• In principle, a reference receiver is always used in addition to the user
receiver.
• This is located at an accurately measured reference point (i.e. the co-
ordinates are known).
• By continually comparing the user receiver with the reference receiver,
many errors (even SA ones, if it is switched on) can be eliminated.
• This is because a difference in measurement arises, which is known as
Differential GPS (DGPS).
• The process involves two different principles:
– DGPS based on the measurement of signal transit time/code
(achievable accuracy approx. 1m)
– DGPS based on the phase measurement of the carrier signal
(achievable accuracy approx. 1cm)
 Differential Positioning
Differential GPS carries the triangulation principle one step further, with a
second receiver at a known reference point. The reference station is
placed on the control point - a triangulated position or the control point
coordinate. This allows for a correction factor to be calculated and applied
to other roving GPS units used in the same area and in the same time
series.

GPS Signal

GPS Signal

Error Correction Message

Field Receiver
Reference Receiver Station
& DGPS Transmitter
 Differential GPS
• In the case of differential processes in use
today, a general distinction is drawn between
the following:

– Local area differential GPS

– Regional area differential GPS
– Wide area differential GPS
 Why Differential GPS
• The absolute position determination with GPS is,
in general, much less accurate than relative
positioning between two stations.
• This is due to the fact that most of the acting
errors (biases) are highly correlated.
• Error sources can be grouped into three
categories
1. errors decorrelated with distance,
2. errors decorrelated with time, and
3. uncorrelated errors.
 Why Differential GPS
• Errors of type 1, mainly ephemeris and propagation
errors, are nearly the same for neighboring stations, as
long as they are sufficiently close, and hence disappear
in the differences.
• Errors of type 2 are coped with by synchronized or
nearly simultaneous observations.
• Errors of type 3 affect both participating stations and
need a calibration.
• To minimize the effect of errors of type 1, instead of
absolute coordinates, coordinate differences are
determined with respect to a known reference station.
 How? Strategies
• Several concepts are in use; the basic strategies
are
(a) use of the data of one or more reference
stations for post-processing,
(b) use of corrections in position or range from code
observations at the reference station in real-time,
(c) use of code-range and carrier phase data from
the reference station in real-time,
(d) use of reference data from a network of
reference stations in real-time.
 Error correction
• Differential GPS (DGPS) is a technique that is used to improve the
determined position of a roving station by applying corrections
provided by a GPS monitoring station, also called reference station.
Different procedures are in use for generating corrections:
i) Corrections in the position domain
– The GPS-derived position of the reference station is compared with its
a priori known position. Position corrections ,x, ,y, ,z or ,ϕ, ,λ, ,h, are
transmitted and used to correct the rover position.
ii) Corrections in the measurement domain
– The observed pseudoranges to all visible satellites are compared with
ranges derived from known satellite and station positions. The
differences are transmitted to the rover to correct its observed
pseudoranges.
iii) Corrections in the state space domain
– Observations from several reference stations are used to estimate the
state vector of the biases within the working area.
 Error correction
• Option i) and ii) are explained in earlier slide
(see differential correction)
• Option (iii) is the most flexible procedure, and
allows the use of DGPS over larger distances
(Wide Area Differential GPS (WADGPS)) and for
precise applications in surveying and geodesy
(networked reference stations).
• Option (ii) is based on observed pseudorange
corrections (scalar corrections), whereas option
(iii) is based on correction vectors.
 Accuracy
• As a rule of thumb the observation resolution
for classical receivers is about 1% of the signal
wavelength. For the GPS signals we obtain:
– C/A-code λ ≈ 300 m, noise ≈ 3 m,
– P-code λ ≈ 30 m, noise ≈ 30 cm, and
– carrier λ ≈ 20 cm, noise ≈ 2 mm.
• Remember, accuracy depends upon various
factors !
 Integration of GPS and GIS
•GPS is used in data capturing in the field of Remote-
sensing, Photogrammetry, Aerial scanning, Video technology,
navigation.

•The GIS user community benefits from the use of GPS for
locational data capture in various GIS applications.
•
•The GPS can easily be linked to a laptop computer in the
field, so that users can also have all their data on a common
base with very little distortion.

•Thus GPS can help in several aspects of construction of

accurate and timely GIS databases.