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GNSS
PRESENTED BY JUTHIKA DEY

CONCEPT OF GNSS
• LORAN, which is the abbreviation for Long Range Navigation is a
fruitful result of radio signal based navigation. The constraints of
LORAN like limited coverage and two dimensional information
have paved the way for the introduction of satellite based systems
which provides three dimensional position system, the generic
name of the system is Global Navigation Satellite System.
• It is an autonomous geospatial system providing global coverage.
The uninterrupted signal of coded information provides the
locational precision on the earth surface by measuring its distance
from the satellite on a global margin.
• GNSS development has an interesting aspect due to its sensitive
nature. Considerable events or developments are always subject to
a couple of differentiators : technological developments and
political decisions GNSS applications in all fields play a key role,
moving its use from the transportation domain to multimodal use,
outdoors and indoors.

The main application in the Global reference telecommunications (GSM,

GPRS, UMTS), the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Inertial
Navigation System (INS), has created numerous applications that needs
more time to be discussed in details.
GNSS Components
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The GNSS consist of three main satellite technologies : GPS, Glonass and
Galileo. Each of them consists mainly of three segments: (a) Space
Segment, (b) Control Segment and (c) User Segment. These segments are
almost similar in the three satellite technologies, which are all together
make up the GNSS. Thus the complete satellite technology is the GPS
technology and most of the existing worldwide applications are related
to the GPS technology.
Space Segment
• The space segment is composed of minimum 24 satellites of which
21 satellites are in active status and 3 are in passive status. The
satellites are oribiting at 20,000km./13,000 miles moving at a
speed of 3870m/s thus capable of rotating the earth on their
respective orbit two times a day (once in every 12 hours). Thus at
a given time there are 12 satellites on either side of the
hemisphere. The 24 satellites are placed in six different orbital
planes spaced 60° from one another and inclined at an angle of 55°
with respect to the equatorial plane. For this reason every time
around 5-8 satellites are visible in the receiver.
The main function of this segments are as follows.
• Receiving and storing data from the control segment.
• Maintaining time precision on board.
Control / Ground Segment
• This segment controls the GPS satellite by tracking their position
and providing corrected orbital and clock information. For the
proper functioning of the GPS satellites stations there are six
monitoring ground stations located around the world which are
called Operational Control Segment stations in addition to this
there are ten National Geospatial Agencies (NGA) stations for
monitoring since September 2005.
• Masteground control is located at Falcon Air Force Base in
Colorado Springs, Colorade (USA). The flight paths of the satellites
are tracked by dedicated U.S. Space Force monitoring in Hawaii,
Kwajalein Atoll, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, Colorado Springs,
Colorado and Cape Canaveral, along with shared NGA England,
Argentina, Ecuador, Bahrain, Australia.
Functions performed in this segment are Satellite monitoring
• Estimating the on-board clock constitution
• Data transaction between GPS satellite and GPS receiver
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USER SEGMENT
• From the very name of the segment it is cleared that this segment
comprises of the user him/herself and the GPS receiver which can
either be handheld or be mounted on aerial, terrestrial,
hydrological manoeuvres. Generally a GPS receiver is composed of
an antenna (internal or external), a receiver processor, and a stable
clock.
• The receiver GPS records the time, position, velocity from the
signals sent by the satellite, thus it is capable of measuring the
distance between the receiver GPS and satellite. Often a receiver
is characterised by the number of channels it can process
simultaneously. Normally limited to a maximum number of four or
five channels, with the advancement in the technology now there
is the presence of GPS receivers which can attain 12-24 channels.
• There are special receivers which are capable of handling 48 or
more channels from more than one constallations. The data
achieved in the receiver of the user can be projected on the
computer with the help of Universal Serial Bus (USB) or Bluetooth.
The following tasks are executed in this segment.
• Satellite selection.
• Receiving the signals and judging its quality.
• Executing propagation and time measurement.
• Locating the terminals and estimating the errors generated.
• Speed calculation.
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• Determining accurate time.

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GLONASS
GLObalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (Russian name)
Global Orbiting, Navigation Satellite System (English name) developed
by the Russian Military was orbited in 1982 but was declared operational
in 1996. Comprising of 24 satellites of which 21 satellites are in three
orbital plane 120° apart while the rest three are on orbit spares.
Operating at an altitude of 19,100km at an inclination of 64.8°, thus
requiring 11hrs 15mins to complete one cycle. The spacing of the
satellites are such that maximum of 5 satellites are in view to the users
of the world.
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GALILEO
In the year 1999 the European-designed and funded satellite based
navigation system Galileo was projected as an independent identity from
GLONASS and NAVSTAR GPS. As a result of this the first tested satellite
programme GIOVE-A, was successfully launched from Kazakhstan on
28th December 2005 by the European Space Agency in ventureship with
European Union in a Russian Soyuz rocket with a payload of 600kg
british-built satellite. The success of GIOVE-A was descended with the
launch of GIOVEB programme in 2008. In 2011 first two operational
satellites were launched and in 2012 the next two satellites were
launched. The Galileo system comprises of 30 satellites of which 27 are
active and 3 are passive as spares.
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COMPASS NAVIGATION SATELLITE SYSTEM (CNSS) OR BEIDOU

In the GNSS family the Chinese contribution was marked with the
successful launch of the Compass Navigation Satellite System (CNSS) or
BeiDou, the Chinese name of the Big Dipper constellation program. The
system comprises of total 35 satellites of which 5 are of geostationary
orbit and 30 are of medium earth orbit.

INDIAN REGIONAL NAVIGATION SATELLITE SYSTEM (IRNSS):

• NavIC IRNSS NavIC (acronym for Navigation with Indian
Constellation) also, 'navik' 'sailor or 'navigator' in Sanskrit is an
independent regional navigation satellite system being developed
by India.
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• It is designed to provide accurate position information service to

users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from
its boundary, which is its primary service area. An Extended
Service Area lies between primary service area and area enclosed
by the rectangle from Latitude 30 deg South to 50 deg North,
Longitude 30 deg East to 130 deg East.
• IRNSS will provide two types of services, namely, Standard
Positioning Service (SPS) which is provided to all the users and
Restricted Service (RS), which is an encrypted service provided
only to the authorised users.
• The IRNSS System is expected to provide a position accuracy of
better than 20 m in the primary service area. The space segment
consists of the IRNSS constellation of eight satellites, NavIC. Three
satellites are located in suitable orbital slots in the geostationary
orbit and the remaining four are located in geosynchronous orbits
with the required inclination and equatorial crossings in two
different planes.
APPLICATIONS OF IRNSS
• Terrestrial, Aerial and Marine Navigation
• Disaster Management
• Vehicle tracking and fleet management
• Integration with mobile phones
• Precise Timing
• Mapping and Geodetic data capture
• Terrestrial navigation aid for hikers
• Visual and voice navigation for drivers and travellers
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GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN)

• The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Airports
Authority of India (AAI) have implemented the GPS Aided Geo
Augmented Navigation-GAGAN project as a Regional Satellite
Based Augmentation System (SBAS) for the Indian Airspace.
• The objective of GAGAN to establish, deploy and certify satellite
based augmentation system for safety-of-life civil aviation
applications in India has been successfully completed.
ADVANTAGES OF GPS TECHNOLOGY
The following are the advantages of GPS technology which are as follows:
• Three Dimensional Data : The Global Positioning System is
capable of providing three dimensional data (x,y,z) thus it provides
precise location.
• Data Accuracy: Data accuracy can be maintained upto 100 metres
for navigational purpose, 1 metre for mapping purpose, and few
millimetres for geodetic positioning purpose.
• Detection of Position: GPS is capable of determining the position
of both Static and Kinematic objects. Thus the use of it has become
more powerfull in present times.
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• Cost Benefits: The use of GPS is very much cost effective as there
is no subscription charge after purchase and the hardware
maintenance is also very low.
• Operational Condition: GPS can be used extensively in any
weather condition with same level of precision thus it is widely
favoured by the end-users.
GPS OBSERVATIONS
• GPS provides two services, Standard Positioning Service & Precise
positioning service (PPS). PPS is intended for military and selected
government agencies whereas SPS is available to all civilians
worldwide with no restriction on its use. The SPS can provide
predictable accuracy of 100m in horizontal and 156m in vertical
whereas PPS can provide 22m in horizontal and 28m in vertical
planes. Access to the PPS position services is controlled through
two cryptographic features denoted as Anti-Spoofing (AS) and
Selective Availability (SA). AS is a mechanism to defeat deception
jamming (Kaplan, 1996). Deception jamming is a technique
whereby ranging codes, navigation data, carrier frequencies from
one or more satellites are replicated with the intention to deceive
the user's receiver. SA is implemented to deny full system accuracy
to the users by intentionally dithering the satellite's clock. It also
induces errors into the broadcast navigation data. Nevertheless,
there are two basic GPS observables for both users.
• These include : Pseudorange and Carrier phase.
• Pseudorange : Pseudorange is a measure of the distance between
satellite and the receiver's antenna and is computed from travel
time of the codes. The travel time is measured by correlating
identical PRN codes generated by the satellite with those generated
internally by the receiver. The satellite and receiver clock offset,
atmospheric delay, reflection (multipath) delay etc. tend to corrupt
the true range (also referred to as geometric range) measurement.
The corrupted range measured by GPS receiver is called
Pseudorange. It includes the total time offset due to various error
sources such as atmospheric effect, receiver noise, multipath,
hardware delay
• Carrier phase : The carrier phase is the difference between the
receiving satellite phase (as sensed by the receiver's antenna) and
the phase of the internal receiver oscillator at the epoch of
measurement (Leick, 1995). These measurements also carry with
them various errors such as atmospheric error, multipath error,
clock offset etc.
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HOW DOES GPS SYSTEM WORK?

The GPS consists of three segments:
• The space segment: the GPS satellites
• The control system, operated by the U.S. military,
• The user segment, which includes both military and civilian users
and their GPS equipment.
Space Segment
The space segment is the number of satellites in the constellation. It
comprises 29 satellites circling the earth every 12 hours at 12,000
miles in altitude. The function of the space segment is utilized to
route/navigation signals and to store and retransmit the
route/navigation message sent by the control segment. These
transmissions are controlled by highly stable atomic clocks on the
satellites. The GPS Space Segment is formed by a satellite
constellation with enough satellites to ensure that the users will have,
at least, 4 simultaneous satellites in view from any point at the
Earth’s surface at any time.
Control Segment
The control segment comprises a master control station and five
monitor stations outfitted with atomic clocks that are spread around
the globe. The five monitor stations monitor the GPS satellite signals
and then send that qualified information to the master control station
where abnormalities are revised and sent back to the GPS satellites
through ground antennas. The control segment also referred to as a
monitor station.
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User Segment
The user segment comprises the GPS receiver, which receives the
signals from the GPS satellites and determines how far away it is from
each satellite. Mainly this segment is used for the U.S military,
missile guidance systems, civilian applications for GPS in almost
every field. Most of the civilians use this from survey to
transportation to natural resources and from there to agriculture
purpose and mapping too.
SOURCES OF GPS SIGNAL ERRORS
GPS signal & its accuracy can be effected through the following
factors
Ionosphere & Troposphere Delays
Satellite signals get slow because they flow throughout the
atmosphere. So this system utilizes a fixed model to partially correct
the error.
Signal Multipath
The GPS signal may reflect off objects like big rock surfaces, tall
buildings before it arrives at the receiver to enhance the signal’s
travel time & cause mistakes.
Receiver CLK Errors
An in-built GPS clock in the receiver may include small timing
mistakes as it is low accurate as compared to atomic clocks over GPS
satellites.
Orbital Errors
The reported place of the satellite may not be correct.
Number of Satellites Noticeable
The accuracy mainly depends on when a GPS receiver notices a
number of satellites. Once a signal is blocked, then you may get
location errors. Usually, GPS units will not work underground,
however, new receivers with high-sensitivity are capable to follow
some signals once in buildings otherwise under tree-cover.
Satellite Geometry or Shading
Satellite signals are very effective once satellites are placed at broad
angles instead of in a tight grouping or line.
APPLICATION OF GNSS
The application of GNSS can be discussed under the following heads,
discussed below :
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• Positioning: The foremost use of GNSS is the determination of

location and position. It is the first postioning system that offers
precise location data for any point on the earth surface in any
weather condition at any point of time.
• Navigation: The GNSS help us not only to determine exactly where
we are but also it helps us to get to the unknown location.
Navigation in three dimensions i.e land, air, water is the primary
function of the receiver.
• Time Determination: Bringing precise timing to the world, though
GNSS is known for its navigation and locational attributes
disseminating precise timing is also an important feature of the
system, maintaining the accuracy margin in fraction of a
nanosecond. The time provided by the GNSS is used in
Astronomical Observatories, telecommunications and other
laboratories.
• Mapping : GNSS issued for creating maps by recording a series of
locations, also used for integrating remote sensing data with the
captured location data in GIS. ● Tracking: The GNSS can also be
used for the wireless communication for monitoring peoples
movement and vehicle. It is also used in tracking animals and
determining their course of migration.