' Anexposéof

__ the surprisingly-simple principles —

behind today’s most advanced
positioning technology.

as] Trimble
Differential GPS Explained
An exposé
of the surprisingly simple principles
behind today’s most advanced
positioning technology.

by
Jeff Hurn
for
Trimble Navigation
© 1993 by Trimble Navigation Limited. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical or electronic,
without the written permission of the author.
 Contents

1 Foreword

2 Basic GPS review

3 What is Differential GPS?

4 Why do we need DGPS?

5 How does DGPS work?

6 Who’s using DGPS?

7 What's next?

8 Glossary of GPS terms

“Imagine, accurate positioning
dropping right out ofthe sky
at the touch ofa button.”
 Foreword
For navigators and surveyors accustomed to work-
ing with traditional methods, the Global
Positioning System (GPS) must seem like a gift
from the gods. Imagine, accurate positioning drop-
ping right out of the sky at the touch of a button.
Well, get ready for more magic, because now
there’s a more advanced form of GPS that’s pushing
the limits of accuracy even farther.
It’s called “Differential GPS” or “DGPS,” and
with it you can reliably measure a position to a
matter of meters anywhere on the planet. This
incredible accuracy is finding hundreds of new
applications in all walks oflife. ;
Fortunately for its new users, the principles
behind DGPS are relatively easy to understand. In
fact, we think this little book will give you a pretty
good start on the “Who, What, Why, and How” of
Differential GPS in just 55 pages. We've even
divided the book into Who, What, Why, and How
sections, so if you're only interested in part of the
story you can turn right to the appropriate section.
We want to alert any academic purists out
there that we’ve left out many of the technical
details that support the subject to help make the
book understandable to the widest possible audi-
ence. For those details you'll need to go to one of
the many textbooks on the subject.! This book is
1. Even though this isn’t a textbook, we may not be able to resist using foot-
notes like this one. We apologize in advance.
intendedas a layman’s introduction, designed to
give you the information you might need to buy or
use a DGPS receiver, not design one.
So with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s
get started.
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation |

https://archive.org/details/differentialgoseO0000unse
 “Basic GPS is quickly becoming
the international standard for navigation—a powerful system,
available to everyone, everywhere.”
 Basic GPS review
Its everywhere. It’s precise. And it’s free.

Before we dive into Differential GPS let’s take

a moment to review the basic principles behind
GPS itself.
If you're just learning about navigation, or if
you've been stranded on a desert island for the last
few years, (perhaps because you didn’t know much
about navigation) you may be surprised to learn
that there’s an amazing new navigation technology
called the Global Positioning System or “GPS.”
GPS was developed by the U.S. Department
of Defense as a worldwide navigation and position-
ing resource for both military and civilian use.
It’s based on a constellation of twenty-four
satellites orbiting the earth over twenty thousand
kilometers up. These satellites act as reference
points from which receivers on the ground “trian-
gulate” their position. In a sense, it’s like a high-
tech version of the old Boy Scout technique of tak-
ing compass bearings from nearby mountain peaks
to locate a point on a map.’
The satellites can act as reference points
because their orbits are very accurately monitored
by ground stations here on earth. By measuring
the travel time of signals transmitted from the
2. Purists will argue that GPS is nothing like this old Boy Scout technique
because it does not use bearings to the satellites, it uses distance measure-
ments. Purists wouldn't agree with the word “triangulate” either because it
really should be “trilaterate” or perhaps “resect” . . . but you get the idea.
 satellites, a GPS receiver on the ground can deter-
mine its distance from each satellite. And with dis-
tance measurements from four different satellites
and some high-powered math, the receiver can cal-
culate its latitude, longitude, altitude, course, and
speed. In fact, good receivers can figure their posi-
tion anywhere on earth to better than a hundred
meters, and do it faster than once a second.
What’s more, advances in signal processing
allow the faint satellite signals to be received with
amazingly small antennas, so receivers can be
made quite portable. In fact, some are small
enough to be held in one hand.
But best of all, GPS signals are free to all
b Lia st ,
Trimble’ hand-held Ensign
‘
users. There are no license or usage fees. With all
GPS receiver. these features, it’s easy to see why GPS is quickly
becoming the international standard for naviga-
tion, a powerful system, available to everyone,
everywhere.
If you’d like a more complete explanation of
GPS, call or write for our 80-page handbook called
GPS: A Guide to the Next Utility.
Those of you on desert islands, just stick your
request in a bottle and toss it out to sea. We'll get
back to you.

3. Accuracy specs for GPS depend on many factors so no single number real-
ly tells the story. Let’s use 100 meters as a conservative figure, but often GPS
accuracy is much better.
GPS in 3 Steps
To help you get a better feel for how distance measurements to satellites
can define a position, we've distilled GPS down to three basic steps:

Step 1 Satellites are reference points.

~ Satellite positions in space are precisely known.

When the system is finally completed there will be 24 GPS satellites

orbiting in space. Their orbital motion is constantly monitored by
ground stations so their instantaneous positions are always known with
great precision. Their positions are the basis of all GPS calculations.

Step 2 Signal travel time gives distance.

We measure our distance from each satellite

by looking at how long it takes for a signal to reach us.

By listening to a series of specially coded messages transmitted by each

satellite, a receiver on the ground can determine when a timing signal
[7]
left the satellite and when it arrived at its own antenna. The difference
is the travel time for that signal. To calculate its distance to the satel-
lite, the receiver multiplies that travel time by the speed of light:

Travel X 3 X 10!°cm/sec = Distance.

This is a very important point to remember when you're trying to

understand Differential GPS because it is errors in this travel time
measurement that DGPS corrects.

Step 3 Three distances give position.

With Steps 1 and 2 accomplished, we’ve got distance measurements to
some satellites whose positions we know exactly. Let’s see how that
translates into fixing our position.
Suppose a receiver determines that it is 23,000 kilometers from a
particular satellite. That one measurement really narrows down where
in the universe that receiver could possibly be. It tells us it is some-
where on the surface of an imaginary sphere that’s centered on that
satellite and that has a radius of 23,000 kilometers.

23,000 kilometers

—— Receiver knows it’s somewhere on this sphere.

If it measures its distance to a second satellite and finds that it’s

26,000 kilometers from that one, that further narrows down where it
could be in space. The only places that are both 23,000 km from the
first satellite and 26,000 km from the second satellite are where those
two spheres intersect. That intersection is a circle of points.
A third measurement adds a third sphere which will intersect the
circle formed by the other two. The intersection occurs at two points,
8
 Two measurements put us somewhere
on this circle.

and so with three measurements, the receiver has narrowed down its
position to just two points in all of the universe.
Three measurements puts us
at one of two points.

A fourth distance measurement would go through one of those

two points but in actual practice you may not need that fourth mea-
surement because one of the two points will be unreasonable (i.e.,
thousands of kilometers away from earth).
There is another reason for that fourth measurement, however.
The fourth measurement gives us a way to make sure our receivet’s
clock is truly synchronized with universal time. But that’s a long story
and for that we recommend that you read our book: GPS—A Guide to
the Next Utility.
“Differential GPS is a way to make
basic GPS even move accurate.”
 What is Differential GPS?
A way to make GPS more accurate.

Why would anyone want to tinker with a system as

elegant as GPS? After all, it’s one of the most accu-
rate radio navigation techniques ever developed.
The reason is that Differential GPS is a way
to make GPS even more accurate. It can yield
measurements good to a couple of meters in mov-
ing applications, and even better in stationary sit-
uations. That improved accuracy has a very pro-
found effect on the importance of GPS as a
resource. With it, GPS becomes more than a sys-
tem for navigating boats and planes around the
world. It becomes a universal measurement sys-
tem, capable of positioning things on a very pre-
cise scale.
Differential GPS works by cancelling out
most of the natural and man-made errors that
creep into normal GPS measurements. Now,
admittedly these errors are small (we'll talk more
about them in the next chapter), but to get the
kind of accuracies some critical positioning jobs
require, all errors, no matter how minor, have to
be minimized.
And the secret to doing that involves two
receivers. Here's the basic idea:
Inaccuracies in GPS signals come from a vari-
ety of sources, like the satellite clocks, imperfect
orbits and especially from the signal’s trip through
the earth’s atmosphere.‘ Since these inaccuracies
are variable it’s hard to predict what they'll be in
order to correct for them. What we need is a way
to measure the actual errors as they happen.
That’s where the second receiver comes 1n.
You park it on a spot whose position you know
exactly and you leave it there. It calculates its
position from the satellite data and then compares
the answer with its known position. The difference
(hence the word “differential”) is the error in the
GPS signal.’
Unfortunately, you can’t just figure out the
error once and use it to correct all the measure-
ments you make for the rest of the day because the
satellite errors are continuously changing. You've
got to have two receivers working simultaneously
to do the job. The “reference” receiver stays put
and continuously monitors the errors and then
transmits or records corrections for those errors so
that the second receiver (the one that’s out roving
around doing positioning work) can apply these
corrections to its measurements, either as it’s mak-
ing them or some time later.
That's the BIG IDEA. We'll look at how this
works in a little more detail in the “How” section,
but the take-home lesson here is that by having a
reference receiver at a fixed location you can tune
up the accuracy of a roving receiver, or for that
matter, a whole fleet of roving receivers.

4. For the sake of simplicity we're using the word “atmosphere” to include
both the earth’s troposphere and its ionosphere.
5. This second or “reference” receiver doesn’t actually go to the trouble of
figuring a position because all it has to do is measure the s#iming errors in the
GPS signals, but we'll talk about this later.
 Reference receiver generates and then
transmits corrections.

Differential GPS is not just some technical

pipe dream. The concept has been around for quite
awhile and has been used extensively in scientific
and industrial applications around the world.
There is an international standard for sending and
receiving corrections called the RTCM SC-104°
protocol and another international body, the
LALA, is creating its own version of RTCM SC-104
for use with existing European maritime radio
beacons to transmit DGPS corrections. We'll talk
more about these later.
Now that there are standards, and GPS
receivers are becoming more and more common,
e—Special Committee 104
6. Radio Technical Commission for Maritim
ies
7. International Association of Lighthouse Authorit
differential GPS applications are springing up
everywhere (as you'll see in the “Who” section).
But before we talk about those, let’s take a look at
why we need DGPS in the first place.
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“There are plenty of opportunities

for a radio-based system that spans the entire planet
to get fouled up.”
 Why do we need DGPS?
Those little errors do add up.

If the world was like a laboratory with perfect lab-

oratory conditions, basic GPS would be a lot more
accurate. Unfortunately, it’s a jungle out there,
with plenty of opportunities for a radio-based sys-
tem that spans the entire planet to get fouled up.
The designers of GPS did a great job of pro-
tecting it from potential problems, but even so,
some small errors can't be entirely eliminated by
the basic system. DGPS gives us a way to get rid
of almost all of those nagging little errors.
Before we see how DGPS does it, let’s take a
look at what it’s up against.

Satellite Errors
Timing is critical to GPS and so GPS satellites are
equipped with very accurate atomic clocks. But as
good as these clocks are, they aren’t perfect. Slight
inaccuracies in their timekeeping can ultimately
lead to inaccuracies in our position measurements.
The satellite’s position in space is important
too because it’s the starting point for all of our cal-
culations. GPS satellites are injected into very high
orbits and so are relatively free from the perturb-
ing effects of the earth’s upper atmosphere, but
even so they still drift slightly from their predict-
ed orbits and that contributes to our errors.
The Atmosphere
GPS satellites transmit their timing information
by radio, and that’s another source of error because
radio signals in the earth’s atmosphere® don't
behave as predictably as we’d like.
High school physics might lead one to
believe that radio signals travel at the speed of
light, which is presumably a constant. But the bad
news is that the speed oflight is zor constant. It’s
only constant in a vacuum. In the real world, light
(or radio) slows down depending on what it’s trav-
elling through.

20,000 km

—_—
—_— —
_— aa =

a 200 k lonosphere

So as a GPS signal comes down through the

charged particles in the ionosphere and then
through the water vapor in the troposphere, it gets
delayed a little. Since our calculation of distance
assumes a constant speed of light, this delay trans-
lates into a miscalculation of the satellite’s distance,

8. Remember we really mean the troposphere and the ionosphere.

which in turn translates into an error in position.
Good receivers add in a correction factor for a
typical trip through the earth’s atmosphere, which
helps, but since the atmosphere varies from point
to point and moment to moment, no correction
factor or atmospheric model can accurately com-
pensate for the delays that actually occur.

Multipath Error
As the GPS signal finally arrives at the surface of
the earth it may reflect off local obstructions
before it gets to our receiver's antenna. This form
of error is called “multipath error” because, in a
sense, the signal is getting to our antenna by
multiple paths. First the antenna receives the
direct signal because the direct route is always
fastest and then the reflected signals arrive a little
later. These delayed signals can interfere with the
direct signal giving you noisy results.
An example of multipath error in everyday
life is “ghosting” on TV. We see a multiple image
on the screen because the signal from the TV sta-
tion has taken more than one path to our TV
antenna and so appears as several overlapping
images.

Receiver Error
Then, of course, our receivers aren't perfect either.
They can introduce their own errors which usually
stem from their clocks or internal noise.

Selective Availability
But far worse than any of these “natural” error
sources is the zvtentional error thrown in by the
U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). That's right,
intentional error. The policy falls under the name
“Selective Availability” or “SA.” and the idea behind
it is to make sure no hostile force turns the accuracy
of GPS against the U.S. or its allies.
Under SA, the DoD introduces some “noise”
into the GPS satellite clocks, which reduces their
accuracy. The DoD has said they may also give the
satellites slightly erroneous orbital data, which will
be transmitted back to us as part of each satellite's
status message. Those two factors can add up toa
significant reduction in the accuracy of measure-
ments made using the civilian GPS channel.
If you were to plot the output of a stationary
receiver while SA was in effect you would see its
position solutions wander around within about a
100 meter circle.

A plot of position measurements over time

__________| with selective availability in effect.

Military receivers have a decrypting key that

tells them what errors have been introduced so
they can remove them. So for military users basic
GPS is a much more accurate system, probably
capable of accuracies on the order of 15 meters.
Fortunately, the DoD says it’s OK to use dif-
ferential GPS, and DGPS counteracts almost all of
these errors.’ It tightens up the working accuracy of
GPS to just a few meters, which is even better than
the military encrypted signal. It also gives us a way
of verifying the reliability of our measurements
moment by moment. If some transient glitch in the
system Causes a satellite to send an erroneous signal,
a differential GPS system will detect the problem
and tell all the receivers using its corrections not to
use that satellite's data. This is extremely important
in fast moving applications like aviation where a
single measurement at a crucial time, like during a
landing, can be very important.
So now that you know why we need DGPS,
let’s see how it works...

Summary of Error Sources

Satellite Clocks
Selective Availability

Ephemeris

Atmospheric Delays

Multipath

Receiver Clocks, etc.

9. DGPS can’t help us much with multipath and receiver errors because
those are strictly local phenomena. DGPS only counteracts errors that are
common to both the reference and the roving receivers.
Summary of GPS Error Sources

Typical Error Budget (in meters)

Per Satellite Accuracy Standard GPS Differential GPS
Satellite Clocks ibe. 0
Orbit Errors 2 0
Ionosphere 520 0.4
Troposphere 0.5 O:2
Receiver Noise Oy) 0.3
Multipath (reflections) 0.6 0.6
SA 30.0 0
Typical Position Accuracy
Horizontal 50 Vor
Vertical 78 2.0
3-D 93 2.8

*Trimble’s new high-precision receivers can produce sub-meter accuracies.

22
“Differential GPS involves cooperation between two recetvers—
one that wanders around
and another that’s stationary.”
 How does DGPS work?
The secret 15 in the reference station.

Basic GPS is “autonomous.” By that we mean a

single receiver can wander around out in the mid-
dle of nowhere and make pretty good measure-
ments by itself, using only the GPS satellites as its
reference. Differential GPS, on the other hand,
involves cooperation between two receivers, one
that wanders around and another that’s stationary.
That stationary receiver is the key to the
accuracy of DGPS. It ties all the satellite measure-
ments into a solid local reference.
To see how it works, let’s first quickly review
the problem:

The Problem
Remember that GPS receivers use timing signals
from at least three satellites to establish a position,
and each of those timing signals is going to have
its own unique set of errors depending on what sort
of perils have befallen it on its trip down to us.
As we discussed in the last chapter, the sig-
nals might be a little off even before they start
their trip because the satellite clocks may be off
and the satellites might be slightly out of place in
their orbits. To that, Selective Availability adds a
healthy dose of artificial clock and ephemeris
(orbit) errors. Then as the signals travel down to
earth they’re refracted around in the atmosphere,
which causes more delays. And then finally those
bent and delayed signals might bounce around in
our local environment to give us “multipath”
errors. So by the time our receiver gets the signal
it’s had a pretty rough trip.

The Solution
Here’s where the sheer scale of the system comes to
our rescue. The satellites are so far out in space
that the little distances we travel here on earth are
insignificant. That means that if two receivers are
fairly close together, say within a few hundred
kilometers or so, the signals that reach both of
them will have travelled through virtually the
same slice of atmosphere and will have virtually
the same delays. In fact, most of the errors we've
talked about, excluding multipath and receiver
errors, will be common to both receivers.
So, since both receivers will have virtually the
same errors, we can have one receiver measure those
errors and provide that error information to the
other receiver.

Reference Receiver Measures Errors

All we have to do is put that “reference receiver”
on a point that’s been very accurately surveyed and
keep it there. This reference station receives the
same GPS signals as the roving receiver but
instead of working like a normal GPS receiver, it
attacks the calculations backwards. Instead of using
timing signals to calculate a position, it uses its
known position to calculate timing.
 Monitors all Ny |
va ;

Reference receiver sits over

precisely surveyed point.

It really is a pretty simple notion. Here’s the

logic: Since the reference station knows where the
satellites are supposed to be in space, and it knows
exactly where it is, it can compute a theoretical
distance between itself and each satellite. It
divides that distance by the speed of light and gets
a time. That’s how long the signals should have
taken to reach it. It compares that theoretical time
with the time they actually took. Any difference is
the error (or delay) in the satellite's signal.

Error Corrections Sent to Roving Receivers

Now all the reference receiver has to do is give this
error information to any roving receivers in the
area so they can use it to correct their measure-
ments. Since the reference receiver has no way of
knowing which of the many available satellites a
roving receiver is using to calculate its position, it
must go through all the visible satellites and com-
pute their instantaneous errors. Then it encodes
this information into a standard format and trans-
mits! it to the roving receivers.
10. GPS reference receivers can’t actually transmit the corrections by them-
selves since they don’t contain radio transmitters. The reference receiver out-
puts correction data to a separate radio which really does the transmitting.
We'll talk more about this later.
 |

|
It’s as if the reference receiver is saying “OK |
everybody, right now the signal from satellite #4 is.
ten nanoseconds delayed, satellite #5 is three |
nanoseconds delayed, satellite #8 is sixteen
nanoseconds advanced,” and so on.!! The roving
receivers receive the complete list of errors and
apply the corrections for the particular satellites
they're using.

Signals from all satellites

List sent to
roving receivers

Transmitting Correction Factors

You may be wondering how the correction factors
get transmitted from the reference receiver to the
roving receivers. There are a number of techniques
but the basic answer is a radio link. In the case of
the Coast Guard’s new system of reference stations,
they'll be using the radio beacons they already have
in service for radio direction finding. Ships that
want to use the service will add a small inexpensive
receiver which can decode the corrections and pass
them on to their GPS receiver.
One interesting wrinkle in the system has to
do with the speed of the data transfer. The refer-
ence receiver can’t take its time waiting to send
the corrections, because if it waits too long the
11. Reference receivers not only transmit the timing error for each satellite,
they transmit the rate of change of that error as well. That way the roving
receiver can interpolate its position until the next time the reference receiver
gives it an update.
_ corrections will no longer be accurate. Remember
that GPS signal errors are constantly changing:
with the changing condition of the atmosphere
and the effects of SA, so the longer it waits the less
applicable the corrections will be.
Of course, all differential reference receivers
are going to take some time to calculate the cor-
rection data. This period is called the receiver's
“latency.” Latency also includes the time it takes to
transmit the data, which can be significant.
Some differential receiver links operate at
transmission rates as low as 50 baud (bits per sec-
ond), which means they could take over ten seconds
to transmit the corrections for all the visible satel-
lites. Experience has shown that an update rate of
once every 5 seconds is much better, especially if
NavBeacon XL
SA is in effect. Most official agencies who deal with
DGPS corrections are exploring higher transmis-
sion rates and some manufacturers like Trimble
offer receivers with programmable baud rates.

Post-processed DGPS
But not all DGPS applications need this radio link
because some jobs don’t require “real time” correc-
tions. It’s one thing if you're trying to position a
drill bit over a particular spot on the ocean floor
from a pitching ship, and quite another if you just
want to record the track of a new road for inclu-
sion on a map. For applications like the latter, the
roving GPS receiver only needs to record all its
measured positions and the exact time it made
each measurement. Then later, this data can be
merged with the corrections recorded at the refer-
ence receiver for a final “clean-up” of the data. This
®)
 is known as “post-processed” differential GPS.
There's also a little variation on this theme
called “inverted DGPS” which may become impor-
tant in fleet management situations. Say you've got
a fleet of trucks who report their positions periodi-
cally to a base station. Instead of sending differen-
tial corrections back to the trucks, you just correct
them at the base station. The trucks would only
know their positions to “raw” GPS accuracy, but
the dispatcher would be able to pinpoint every
truck right down to the side of the street it’s on.

StarFinder GPS Fp

e-—'e _e

Differential Corrections Raw GPS

a
Corrected Data

Speaking of fleets, let’s take a look at some of

the new ways DGPS is being put to work...
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 Who's using DGPS?
...Scentists, sailors, wildcatters, and
even Hurricane Bob!

Differential GPS is becoming a powerful new tool

for a wide variety of industries. The key to under-
standing its broad new appeal is to remember that
with the accuracies DGPS can achieve, it’s no longer
just a navigation technique, it’s a way to accurately
measure position and movement of any kind.

The Coast Guard

One of the earliest pioneers of DGPS was the U.S.
Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is responsible for
providing all the navigation aids for the United
States. Every two years the Department of
Transportation and the Department of Defense
jointly issue a report that details the national plan
for navigation. The last few issues of this “Federal
Radio-navigation Plan” have called for “8 to 20
meter predictable accuracy” for harbors and harbor
approaches. Unfortunately, the government offers no
navigation system that can meet this requirement.
The Coast Guard realized that Differential
GPS was probably the only existing technology
that could ever hope to economically meet that
standard. So they set up a test station and applied
for funding as part of the 1992 Federal Budget.
In 1991, Hurricane Bob provided an unex-
pected test of DGPS. Big Bob smashed into the
East Coast of the U.S. ripping up or moving scores
of buoys in its path. You can imagine what a dan-
gerous situation that created. Ships were steaming
into port relying on buoys that weren’t where they
should be. Hazards were unmarked. It was the
kind of mess that would normally take weeks or
months to clean up.
Fortunately, the Coast Guard's differential test
station was already working at Montauk Point on
Long Island, so they outfitted one of their buoy
maintenance vessels with a DGPS receiver and set
out to reposition the moved buoys. In just a few
days, not weeks, they had most of the important
markers back in position, and DGPS was a big hero.
Now there's a plan for a complete system of
differential reference stations serving the entire
coast of the United States and its major inland
waterways. Reference stations are already in service
at Montauk Point, New York, White Fish Point,
Michigan, Galveston and Corpus Christi, Texas,
Port Henry, Virginia, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
and Cape Henlopen, Delaware, with more on the
way (see map). In fact, the Coast Guard plans to
have the entire system in place by 1996.

Map of proposed differential reference

Stations.
 At the same time the International
Association of Lighthouse Authorites (IALA) has
established a protocol for using the RTCM SC-104
standard for transmitting DGPS signals over exist-
ing marine radio beacons. A number of countries
including the USA, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and
the Netherlands are already implementing the sys-
tem, and many other countries are planning to add
this service soon.
That means that soon differential corrections
will be available for free in many parts of the world.
So you won't have to be part of some big industrial
complex to use this amazing new technology. And
you won't even need to have two receivers—the
nearest Coast Guard reference station or marine
beacon will work as your reference receiver.!?

Aviation
Experiments by NASA and later by the FAA fur-
ther helped to push DGPS into the spotlight. They
tried landing helicopters and passenger jets with
DGPS as their only guidance system, without the
traditional tracking beams that Instrument
Landing Systems (ILS) normally use. The system
put the nosewheel right in the center of the run-
way every time.
The significance of these experiments would
be hard to overestimate. Right now, low-visibility
landing systems are so expensive that only the
biggest airports can afford them. DGPS systems Landing System
would be so much cheaper almost every airport
could install one. These systems can even handle

12. Don’t worry if you're not near the water. Private enterprises are spring-
ing up that will provide DGPS corrections in many inland areas, too.
 curved approaches. The gear necessary on board
each aircraft is much cheaper too, so virtually
every plane could be equipped with it. The
improvement in flight safety would be stagger-
ing. The impact would be especially dramatic in
developing countries where few, if any, navigation
aids exist. DGPS would instantly put them in the
same league as the developed countries.
The FAA has declared that GPS will be the
next navigation standard for aviation. Along with
the improvements in safety come better fuel econ-
omy and better use of crowded air corridors.
TNL 3100 DZUS GPS
Navigator Differential GPS can also give controllers an accu-
rate way to guide planes and service vehicles as
they move along taxiways and ramps.

Natural Resource Management

Managing the use and protection of forests is a big
job. The vast distances over which the forests
extend and the ruggedness ofthe terrain make
Pathfinder Basic Plus
them especially difficult to survey. Yet parcels of
timber must constantly be measured for sale to
logging interests, and for conservation programs.
That’s why the U.S. Forest Service was another
early pioneer of DGPS. They discovered that they
could use helicopters equipped with DGPS gear to
fly over stands of trees and make measurements that
were within 1% of the accuracy of land surveys but
took just a fraction of the time. Many other chores
like maintaining accurate maps and surveying new
roads could also be automated.
With DGPS, other resource management
tasks like the mapping of mining tracts, reservoir
acreages, and fishing zones are easier and more
accurate than ever before. Handheld GPS receivers
could allow virtually every ranger in the field to be
equipped with high-accuracy position data-gather-
ing gear.
Forest fire management is a good example of
the power of DGPS. A helicopter equipped with
DGPS gear can quickly fly along the perimeter of a
fire and almost instantly download an accurate map
of the fire’s size. This information is crucial to get-
ting the right manpower to the right places to
quell the blaze.

Offshore Exploration
Oil companies spend fantastic sums searching the
ocean floor for likely-looking places to drill. The
problem is, once an oil exploration ship finds a pos-
sible drill site, they need to be able to get a drilling
rig back to the spot with incredible accuracy. That’s
not easy out in the middle of the trackless ocean.
There are no landmarks to use for reference and yet
being off by just a few meters can mean spending
millions more on drilling. So oil companies were
some of the most active pioneers of DGPS. They’ve
put together elaborate systems that not only help
position the drilling rigs but also precisely map the
seismic surveys that precede the drilling.
As aside benefit, GPS can also be used as an
accurate navigation source to keep the ship on course.
Differential systems are also being used to
map the depth of ports and harbors. The accuracy
of DGPS helps make sure that specified channels
conform to published maps, makes dredging more
efficient, and makes it possible for port authorities
to monitor the rate of sediment build-up.
 Transportation and Fleet Management
GPS is the perfect technology for this era of “just-in-
time” delivery. With it, a dispatcher can keep tabs on
every vehicle in his fleet whether they're across town
Starfinder GPS 700
or across the county. The result is tighter schedule
adherence and better accountability.
Delivery companies, service fleets and public
safety services like to know the position of their
vehicles right down to the street address. DGPS
can give them that accuracy.
For railroads, the accuracy of Differential GPS
gives controllers the resolution they need to accu-
rately route cars down specific tracks in crowded
switching yards.

Agriculture
GPS is opening a new era of “precision farming.”
A farmer can analyze the soil condition of every
region of his farm and compile a “fertilizer
demand” map. This map is digitized and stored in
the GPS system computer. As the chemical spread-
er moves through his fields, its GPS-measured
position is correlated with the stored demand map
to determine the exact amount of fertilizer or pes-
ticide to be applied at every point. The farmer
profits from higher yields and the environment
benefits from lower chemical usage.
This same accuracy is also being applied to
aerial fertilizer and pesticide delivery. With a
DGPS guidance system, pilots can design exact
flight paths such as a grid of application swaths and
then have the system guide them precisely through
it. These systems can also record the actual flight
path for reporting purposes.
Shipping
The Congressional Oil Pollution Act of 1990 man-
dates that all oil tankers.be equipped with GPS
navigation systems to improve safety. Differential
GPS delivers the accuracy required to guide ships
through tricky harbor entrances and crowded
waterways. With GPS tracking systems, whole NavGraphicXL
fleets of tankers can be monitored from central sta-
tions. Other offshore applications range from veri-
fying barge dumping to determining legal fishing
zones. The economic and environmental benefits of
the system are far-reaching.

Utilities
Utility companies are compiling maintenance
databases based on Differential GPS positioning
data. When a fixture, like a gas valve or a cable-
TV connector needs service, maintenance person-
nel can return right to the spot, even if the fixture
is below the street or obscured by ground cover.
Better service is a direct result.

Public Safety
For police and fire departments, response time 1s
everything. With DGPS, dispatchers can guide
vehicles with great accuracy to make sure help gets
where its needed as quickly as possible.
Placer GPS/DR
Centralized routing displays give managers a bet-
ter knowledge of how their resources are deployed
which can help make limited resources go farther.
DGPS can be especially valuable in serious
disasters like large fires. Firefighters have tradition-
ally relied on street addresses and landmarks to
report their positions but in a major disaster these
 landmarks may be destroyed or obscured by smoke.
DGPS gives them an unambiguous way to report
position and that can save lives.

Pathfinder Pro-lite
"i AV! w
“Soon DGPS may be able to resolve positions
that are closer together
than the width ofyour little finger.”
 What's next?
Closing in on the Holy Grail of GPS:
Centimeter accuracy in real time!!!

If you want to see where DGPS might be going,

take a look at your hand, because soon DGPS may
be able to resolve positions that are closer together
than the width of your little finger.
Imagine the possibilities. Automatic con-
struction equipment could translate a CAD draw-
ing into a finished road without any manual mea-
surements. Self-guided automobiles could take
you across town while you quietly read in the back
seat. Robotic cranes and forklifts could be pro-
grammed to unload freight at docks and train
yards. The applications are endless.
But to understand how this technological
miracle might come about, we need to spend a few
moments looking at how surveyors use GPS,
because the future of DGPS will come from a mar-
riage of survey techniques and standard GPS.

Surveyors Do It Differently
You might be aware that surveyors have been using
GPS to do extremely precise surveys for years.
These surveys can fix relative positions with accura-
cies on the order of millimeters. But this form of
measurement is really quite different from the kind
of GPS measurements we've been talking about in
this book. They do use multiple receivers like the
DGPS systems we've been discussing, but the tech-
nique is much more involved than standard GPS.
In fact, it’s really a form of “interferometry.”'°
Up to now, high-accuracy survey techniques
have been too complicated for everyday applica-
tions. For one thing they rely on complex post-
processing of the GPS data. Some techniques
require carefully planned networks of measure-
ments that can be cross-checked by the computer
to eliminate any systematic errors. Other survey
techniques are so delicate that if a receiver loses
lock on the satellites for even a moment, the sur-
veyor may have to return to his last measured
point to restart the survey. Survey-grade GPS
receivers are also more expensive than basic
receivers because they must track all visible satel-
lites simultaneously and often are outfitted to
receive both the L, and L, carrier frequencies.!4
So, survey techniques are accurate, yes, but much
less forgiving than normal GPS.
The reason surveying techniques are so tricky
has to do with the way they wring better resolu-
tion out of the GPS signal. To picture how this
works you'll need a little background on the struc-
ture of the GPS signal itself.

GPS Measurements: a Simplified View

We mentioned earlier that the satellites transmit
a coded timing signal that helps the receiver
13. Interferometry is a measurement technique based on the fact that two
waveforms will constructively or destructively interfere with each other if
they arrive slightly out of phase. The large effect of the interference is easier
to measure than the signals themselves and so provides a very sensitive way
to compare two signals.
14. The GPS signal is a modulation of two carrier frequencies. We'll talk
more about this later.
 6

calculate exactly how long it took for the signal to

travel from the satellite to the receiver. And
remember, it’s this travel time that gives us our
distance to the satellite. Well, now it’s time to
look at the signal because it can place a serious
limitation on the accuracy of standard GPS.
The timing code that civilian receivers use is
called the C/A code.'? The C/A code is a string of
digital ones and zeros (bits) that has a very com-
plex pattern. The pattern is so complex it almost
looks random (in fact it’s called the “pseudo ran-
dom code”). The satellites continually transmit
this pattern, repeating it every millisecond:

_ Se ee es
Pseudo Random Code
ee
Our receivers here on the ground know what
that pseudo random pattern is and they know
when the satellite was supposed to have transmit-
ted it.!© So they compare the pattern of electrical
signals that they’re picking up from their antenna
with a copy of the C/A code pattern that they've
generated themselves.
Since most of what is being picked up at the
antenna is just electrical background noise, the
receiver's internally generated pattern won't match
unless it’s right in sync with the arriving satellite
pattern. So the receiver slides the pattern around
in time and when it happens to line up perfectly

15. Stands for “Coarse-Acquisition.” Coarse because it has relatively coarse

accuracy and acquisition because military receivers use it to get roughly
locked on to the GPS signal before they shift to the higher-accuracy P code.
P code is hard to sync up to all by itself.
16. Each satellite has its own unique C/A code—that’s how the receiver
knows which satellite it’s working with.
 with the satellite’s transmitted pattern, the receiver
will see a constructive addition or “correlation” of
the received pattern with the internally-generated
pattern.

Receiver slides signal back until patterns line up .

so
cca a fe ce em
The amount of time the receiver must slide
its pattern back from the known transmission time
is the delay due to the signal’s travel time. That's
how a GPS receiver measures travel time.
The problem for accuracy buffs is that the
bits in the pseudo random code are so wide that
even if you do get almost perfectly locked up to
the satellite's code, you can still end up with a few
meters of slop.
All decent C/A code receivers use a correla-
tion function to get within a few percent of perfect
sync (or perfectly “in phase”!’) with the C/A code.
Unfortunately, the C/A code bits are about a
microsecond wide, and at the speed of light a
microsecond translates into 300 meters.

1 usec
—_> <=

Satellite’s Pseudo Random Code :

Receiver’s Pseudo Random Pate ees

Match occurs as long as 1s and Os line up, which means edges can be anywhere within one cycle.

17. Getting the two codes in phase is so fundamental to GPS, the term
“code-phase GPS” is often used to describe normal GPS positioning.
 4

So even if you're within one percent of perfect

sync you've still got maybe three meters of error.
And that means that even if you could get rid of
all the other sources of error with differential tech-
niques, you'd still never get better than a couple of
meters of accuracy.!8

Higher Frequency Gives Higher Accuracy

Survey receivers beat the system by starting with
the C/A code and then using it to move on to mea-
surements based on GPS carrier signal which has a
much higher frequency.
The C/A code is really a modulation of this
higher carrier frequency. It’s like FM radio. When
you tune your dial to 94.7 MHz you're really lock-
ing on to a carrier frequency that’s 94.7 MHz.
Obviously, we could never hear a sound that was
94.7 million cycles per second. The music we hear
is a modulation (or change) in this carrier frequen-
cy. So when you hear someone on the radio sing an
A note which is around 440 cycles per second, you
know that the 94.7 MHz carrier frequency is being
varied at a 440 cycle rate.
GPS is similar. The C/A code has a bit rate of
about 1 MHz, while the L, carrier has a cycle rate
of over a gigahertz (that’s 1000 times faster!). At
the speed oflight, a one gigahertz signal has a
wavelength of roughly twenty centimeters, so the
carrier signal can act as a much more accurate ref-
erence than the C/A code.

18. Some new C/A code receivers are pushing the accuracy limits to the
meter range, but it’s a struggle.

47
C/A Code (Psuedo random code) pica boca ipl ia nd eisai Ag eel

Carrier (not to scale) ATAVAUAVAVAVAVAVAUAUAVAVATAVAUAUAVAUAVAUAUAUAUAN

'The trick is to find one particular
Carrier cycle and use it for timing.

The problem is that we need a way to mea-

sure our distance to the satellites in terms of carri-
er cycles and there is no easy way to tell exactly
how many cycles of carrier signal lie between the
receiver and the satellite.
It wasn’t so bad with the C/A code because it
has a very complicated structure, so it’s easy to deter-
mine where it starts and ends. But the GPS carrier
signal is just a continuous stream of sine waves with
no distinguishing features. That makes it difficult to
count cycles because they all look alike.
Surveyors have resolved this “carrier phase
ambiguity” using a variety of approaches. Until
recently,!? this required very careful field tech-
niques, often involving hours of static data gather-
ing, followed by lots of data processing. But the
results were worth it: baselines could be measured
to a few centimeters or better.
This form of GPS is called “carrier phase
GPS” and is what GPS surveying is all about.
Unfortunately, these techniques are rather special-
ized and so their appeal has been mostly limited to
the survey community.

Technology Marches Forward

But now our techniques for standard code-phase
19. Some recent developments in survey receivers have significantly simpli-
fied the process.
differential GPS are getting so good and our
receivers are so advanced and so noise-free that
some standard GPS receivers can get down to one
or two meters on code phase alone. This kind of
accuracy has opened the door to a combination of
code phase and carrier phase GPS that will have
the best attributes of both.
Since our new code phase techniques can get
us down into the meter range, they narrow down
the number of carrier cycles that have to be consid-
ered when trying to unambiguously determine the
number of carrier cycles between the receiver and
the satellite. With fewer possibilities, the job can be
completed much more quickly, so a measurement
can be made before things move again. And if the
receiver loses lock on the carrier signal, the code
phase part of the process can quickly get the pro-
cessing back in the ballpark to reacquire the signal.
This technology is not perfected yet. Several
equipment manufacturers, like Trimble
Navigation, are pursuing it and success looks tan-
talizingly close. When it is achieved, it will, ina
sense, be like carpeting the entire globe with cen-
tirneter graph paper, because suddenly our instru-
ments will be able to measure any point on earth
to that accuracy.

[49]
 Glossary of GPS terms
Anywhere fix the ability ofa receiver to start position
calculations without being given an approxi-
mate location and approximate time.
Bandwidth the range of frequencies in a signal.
C/Acode the standard (Coarse/Acquisition) GPS
code—a sequence of 1023 pseudo-random,
binary, biphase modulations on the GPS carrier
at a chip rate of 1.023 MHz. Also known as
the “civilian code.”
Carrier a signal that can be varied from a known
reference by modulation.
Carrier-aided tracking a signal processing strategy that
uses the GPS carrier signal to achieve an exact
lock on the pseudo random code.
Carrier frequency the frequency of the unmodulated
fundamental output of a radio transmitter.
Carrier phase GPS GPS measurements based on the
L1 or L2 carrier signal.
Channel a channel of a GPS receiver consists of the
circuitry necessary to receive the signal from
a single GPS satellite.
Chip the transition time for individual bits in the
pseudo-random sequence. Also, an integrated
circuit. Also a snack food. Also a betting
marker.
Clock bias the difference between the clock’s indicat-
ed time and true universal time.
Code phase GPS GPS measurements based on the
C/A code.
51
Control segment a world-wide network of GPS moni-
tor and control stations that ensure the accu-
racy of satellite positions and their clocks.
Cycle slip a discontinuity in the measured carrier
beat phase resulting from a temporary loss-
of-lock in the carrier tracking loop of a
GPS receiver.
Data message a message included in the GPS signal
which reports the satellite’s location, clock
corrections and health. Included is rough
information on the other satellites in the
constellation.
Differential positioning accurate measurement of the
relative positions of two receivers tracking
the same GPS signals.
Dilution of Precision the multiplicative factor that
modifies ranging error. It is caused solely by
the geometry between the user and his set of
satellites. Known as DOP or GDOP
Dithering the introduction of digital noise. This is
the process the DoD uses to add inaccuracy
to GPS signals to induce Selective Availability
Doppler-aiding a signal processing strategy that uses a
measured doppler shift to help the receiver
smoothly track the GPS signal. Allows more
precise velocity and position measurement.
Doppler shift the apparent change in the frequency of
a signal caused by the relative motion of the
transmitter and receiver.
Ephemeris the predictions of current satellite position
that are transmitted to the user in the data
message.
Fast-switching channel a single channel which rapidly
samples a number of satellite ranges. “Fast”
 means that the switching time is sufficiently
fast (2 to 5 milliseconds) to recover the data
message.
Frequency band a particular range of frequencies.
Frequency spectrum the distribution of signal ampli-
tudes as a function of frequency
Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP) see Dilution of
Precision
Handover word the word in the GPS message that
contains synchronization information for the
transfer of tracking from the C/A to P code.
lonosphere the band of charged particles 80 to 120
miles above the earth’s surface.
lonospheric refraction the change in the propagation
speed of a signal as it passes through the
ionosphere.
L-band the group of radio frequencies extending
from 390 MHz to 1550 MHz. The GPS carrier
frequencies (1227.6 MHz and 1575.42 MHz)
are in the L-band.
Multipath error errors caused by the interference of a
signal that has reached the receiver antenna by
two or more different paths. Usually caused by
one path being bounced or reflected.
Multi-channel receiver a GPS receiver that can simulta-
neously track more than one satellite signal.
Multiplexing channel a channel of a GPS receiver that
can be sequenced through a number of satel-
lite signals.
P-code the Precise code. A very long sequence of
pseudo-random binary biphase modulations
on the GPS carrier at a chip rate of 10.23
MHz which repeats about every 267 days.
Each one week segment of this code is unique
 to one GPS satellite and is reset each week.
Precise Positioning Service (PPS) the most accurate
dynamic positioning possible with standard
GPS, based on the dual frequency P-code and
no SA.
Pseudolite a ground-based differential GPS receiver
which transmits a signal like that of an actual
GPS satellite, and can be used for ranging.
Pseudo random code a signal with random-noise like
properties. It is a very complicated but
repeated pattern of 1’s and 0's.
Pseudorange a distance measurement based on the
correlation of a satellite transmitted code and
the local receiver’s reference code, that has
not been corrected for errors in synchroniza-
tion between the transmitter’s clock and the
receiver's clock.
Satellite constellation the arrangement in space of a set
of satellites.
Slow switching channel a sequencing GPS receiver chan-
nel that switches too slowly to allow the con-
tinuous recovery of the data message.
Space segment the part of the whole GPS system that
is in space. i.e. the satellites.
Spread spectrum a system in which the transmitted .
signal is spread over a frequency band much
wider than the minimum bandwidth needed
to transmit the information being sent. This
is done by modulating with a pseudo-random
code, for GPS.
Standard Positioning Service (SPS) the normal civilian
positioning accuracy obtained by using the
single frequency C/A code.
Static positioning location determination when the
 receiver's antenna is presumed to be station-
ary in the earth. This allows the use of vari-
ous averaging techniques that improve accu-
racy by factors of over 1000.
User interface the way a receiver conveys information
to the person using it. The controls and
displays.
User segment the part of the whole GPS system that
includes the receivers of GPS signals.
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THE GPS: SOLUTION
645 North Mary Ave., P.O. Box 3642
Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3642 :
\ (800) 827-8000 in U.S. and Canada -
~
(408) 481-8000 outside U.S.
(408) 481-7781 Fax

9LL
Part Number 23036 (Rev. 3/95)
Lit. ID#0106A