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satellite navigation or satnav system is a system that uses satellites to provide autonomous geopositioning. A satellite navigation system with global coverage is termed global navigation satellite system (GNSS). As of 2024, four global systems are operational: the United States's Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), and the European Union's Galileo. Two regional systems are operational: India's NavIC and Japan's QZSS.
Satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS), designed to enhance the accuracy of GNSS, include Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), India's GAGAN and the European EGNOS, all of them based on GPS. Previous iterations of the BeiDou navigation system and the present Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), operationally known as NavIC, are examples of stand-alone operating regional navigation satellite systems (RNSS).
Satellite navigation devices determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude/elevation) to high precision (within a few centimeters to meters) using time signals transmitted along a line of sight by radio from satellites. The system can be used for providing position, navigation or for tracking the position of something fitted with a receiver (satellite tracking). The signals also allow the electronic receiver to calculate the current local time to a high precision, which allows time synchronisation. These uses are collectively known as Positioning,
Navigation and Timing (PNT). Satnav systems operate independently of any telephonic or internet reception, though these technologies can enhance the usefulness of the positioning information generated.
Global coverage for each system is generally achieved by a satellite constellation of 18–30 medium
Earth orbit (MEO) satellites spread between several orbital planes. The actual systems vary, but all use orbital inclinations of >50° and orbital periods of roughly twelve hours (at an altitude of about 20,000 kilometres or 12,000 miles).
GPS
The Global Positioning System
(GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global
navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It does not require the user to transmit any data, and operates independently of any telephone or Internet reception, though these technologies can enhance the usefulness of the GPS positioning information. It provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. Although the United States government created, controls, and maintains the GPS system, it is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.
The GPS project was started by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1973. The first prototype spacecraft was launched in 1978 and the full constellation of 24 satellites became operational in 1993. After
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down when it mistakenly entered Soviet airspace,
President Ronald Reagan determined that the GPS system would be made available for civilian use as of 1988; however, initially this civilian use was limited to an average accuracy of 100 meters (330 ft) by use of Selective Availability (SA), a deliberate error introduced into the GPS data that military receivers could correct for.
As civilian GPS usage grew, there was increasing pressure to remove this error. The SA system was temporarily disabled during the Gulf War, as a shortage of military GPS units meant that many US soldiers were using civilian GPS units sent from home. In the 1990s, Differential GPS systems from the US Coast Guard, Federal Aviation Administration, and similar agencies in other countries began to broadcast local GPS corrections, reducing the effect of both SA degradation and atmospheric effects (that military receivers also corrected for). The U.S. military had also developed methods to perform local GPS jamming, meaning that the ability to globally degrade the system was no longer necessary. As a result,
United States
President Bill Clinton signed a bill ordering that Selective Availability be disabled on May 1, 2000; and, in 2007, the US government announced that the next generation of GPS satellites would not include the feature at all.
Advances in technology and new demands on the existing system have now led to efforts to modernize the GPS and implement the next generation of GPS Block III satellites and Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX)[10] which was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 2000. When Selective Availability was discontinued, GPS was accurate to about 5 meters (16 ft). GPS receivers that use the L5 band have much higher accuracy of 30 centimeters (12 in), while those for high-end applications such as engineering and land surveying are accurate to within 2 cm (3⁄4 in) and can even provide sub-millimeter accuracy with long-term measurements. Consumer devices such as smartphones can be accurate to 4.9 m (16 ft) or better when used with assistive services like Wi-Fi positioning.
As of July 2023, 18 GPS satellites broadcast L5 signals, which are considered pre-operational prior to being broadcast by a full complement of 24 satellites in 2027.
GNSS
GNSS systems that provide enhanced accuracy and integrity monitoring usable for civil navigation are classified as follows:
GNSS-1 is the first generation system and is the combination of existing satellite navigation systems (GPS and GLONASS), with Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) or Ground Based Augmentation Systems (GBAS). In the United States, the satellite-based component is the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS); in
Europe, it is the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS); in
Japan, it is the Multi-Functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS); and in
India, it is the GPS-aided GEO augmented navigation (GAGAN). Ground-based augmentation is provided by systems like the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS).
GNSS-2 is the second generation of systems that independently provide a full civilian satellite navigation system, exemplified by the European Galileo positioning system. These systems will provide the accuracy and integrity monitoring necessary for civil navigation; including aircraft. Initially, this system consisted of only Upper L Band frequency sets (L1 for GPS, E1 for Galileo, and G1 for GLONASS). In recent years, GNSS systems have begun activating Lower L Band frequency sets (L2 and L5 for GPS, E5a and E5b for Galileo, and G3 for GLONASS) for civilian use; they feature higher aggregate accuracy and fewer problems with signal reflection. As of late 2018, a few consumer-grade GNSS devices are being sold that leverage both. They are typically called "Dual band GNSS" or "Dual band GPS" devices.
By their roles in the navigation system, systems can be classified as:
- There are four global satellite navigation systems, currently GPS (United States), GLONASS (Russian Federation), Beidou
(China) and Galileo (European Union).
- Global Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) such as OmniSTAR and StarFire.
- Regional SBAS including WAAS (US), EGNOS (EU), MSAS (Japan), GAGAN (India) and SDCM
(Russia).
- Regional Satellite Navigation Systems such as India's NAVIC, and Japan's QZSS.
- Continental scale Ground Based Augmentation Systems (GBAS) for example the Australian GRAS and the joint US Coast Guard,
- Canadian Coast Guard, US Army Corps of Engineers and US Department of Transportation National Differential GPS (DGPS) service.
- Regional scale GBAS such as CORS networks.
- Local GBAS typified by a single GPS reference station operating Real Time Kinematic (RTK) corrections.
As many of the global GNSS systems (and augmentation systems) use similar frequencies and signals around L1, many "Multi-GNSS" receivers capable of using multiple systems have been produced. While some systems strive to interoperate with GPS as well as possible by providing the same clock, others do not.
DGPS
Differential Global Positioning Systems (DGPSs) supplement and enhance the positional data available from global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs). A DGPS can increase accuracy of positional data by about a thousandfold, from approximately 15 metres (49 ft) to 1–3 centimetres (1⁄2–1+1⁄4 in).
DGPSs consist of networks of fixed position, ground-based reference stations. Each reference station calculates the difference between its highly accurate known position and its less accurate satellite-derived position. The stations broadcast this data locally—typically using ground-based transmitters of shorter range. Non-fixed (mobile) receivers use it to correct their position by the same amount, thereby improving their accuracy.
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) previously ran DGPS in the United States on longwave radio frequencies between 285 kHz and 325 kHz near major waterways and harbors. It was discontinued in March 2022. The USCG's DGPS was known as NDGPS (Nationwide DGPS) and was jointly administered by the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. It consisted of broadcast sites located throughout the inland and coastal portions of the United States including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) also ran a separate DGPS system, but discontinued its use on December 15, 2022. Other countries have their own DGPS.
A similar system which transmits corrections from orbiting satellites instead of ground-based transmitters is called a Wide-Area DGPS (WADGPS) satellite-based augmentation system.
DGPS can refer to any type of Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS). There are many operational systems in use throughout the world, according to the US Coast Guard, 47 countries operate systems similar to the US NDGPS (Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System).
EUROPEAN DGPS
European DGPS network has been developed mainly by the Finnish and Swedish maritime administrations in order to improve safety in the archipelago between the two countries.
In the UK and Ireland, the system was implemented as a maritime navigation aid to fill the gap left by the demise of the Decca
Navigator System in 2000. With a network of 12 transmitters sited around the coastline and three control stations, it was set up in 1998 by the countries' respective General Lighthouse Authorities (GLA) — Trinity House covering England, Wales and the Channel Islands, the Northern Lighthouse Board covering Scotland and the Isle of Man and the Commissioners of Irish Lights, covering the whole of
Ireland. Transmitting on the 300-kHz band, the system underwent testing and two additional transmitters were added before the system was declared operational in 2002. The system was decommissioned in March 2022.
Effective Solutions provides details and a map of European Differential Beacon Transmitters.
US NDGPS
The United States Department of Transportation, in conjunction with the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration and the National Geodetic Survey appointed the United States Coast Guard as the maintaining agency for the U.S. Nationwide DGPS network (NDGPS). The system is an expansion of the previous Maritime Differential GPS (MDGPS), which the Coast Guard began in the late 1980s and completed in March 1999. MDGPS covered only coastal
waters, the Great Lakes, and the
Mississippi
River
inland
waterways, while NDGPS expands this to include complete coverage of the continental United States. The centralized Command and Control unit is the USCG Navigation Center, based in Alexandria, VA. There are currently 85 NDGPS sites in the US network, administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Navigation Center.
In 2015, the USCG and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) sought comments on a planned phasing-out of the U.S. DGPS. In response to the comments received, a subsequent 2016 Federal Register notice announced that 46 stations would remain in service and "available to users in the maritime and coastal regions". In spite of this decision, USACE decommissioned its remaining 7 sites and, in March 2018, the USCG announced that it would decommission its remaining stations by 2020. As of June 2020, all NDGPS service has been discontinued as it is no longer deemed a necessity owing to the removal of selective availability in 2000 and also the introduction of newer generation of GPS satellites.
CANADIAN DGPS
The Canadian system was similar to the US system and was primarily for maritime usage covering the
Atlantic and
Pacific coast as well as the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway. It was discontinued as a service December 15, 2022.
AUSTRALIAN DGPS
Australia runs three DGPSes: one is mainly for marine navigation, broadcasting its signal on the long-wave band; another is used for land surveys and land navigation, and has corrections broadcast on the Commercial FM radio band. The third at Sydney airport is currently undergoing testing for precision landing of aircraft (2011), as a backup to the Instrument Landing System at least until 2015. It is called the Ground Based Augmentation System. Corrections to aircraft position are broadcast via the aviation VHF band.
The marine DGPS service of 16 ground stations covering the Australian coast was discontinued effective July 1, 2020. Improved multichannel GPS capabilities, and signal sources from multiple providers (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou) was cited as providing better navigational accuracy than could be obtained from GPS + DGPS. An Australian Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS), the Southern Positioning Augmentation Network (SouthPAN) offers higher accuracy positioning for GNSS users.
POST-PROCESSING
Post-processing is used in Differential GPS to obtain precise positions of unknown points by relating them to known points such as survey markers.
The GPS measurements are usually stored in computer memory in the GPS receivers, and are subsequently transferred to a computer running the GPS post-processing software. The software computes baselines using simultaneous measurement data from two or more GPS receivers.
The baselines represent a three-dimensional line drawn between the two points occupied by each pair of GPS antennas. The post-processed measurements allow more precise positioning, because most GPS errors affect each receiver nearly equally, and therefore can be cancelled out in the calculations.
Differential GPS measurements can also be computed in real time by some GPS receivers if they receive a correction signal using a separate radio receiver, for example in Real Time Kinematic (RTK) surveying or navigation.
The improvement of GPS positioning doesn't require simultaneous measurements of two or more receivers in any case, but can also be done by special use of a single device. In the 1990s when even handheld receivers were quite expensive, some methods of quasi-differential GPS were developed, using the receiver in quick turns of positions or loops of 3-10 survey points.
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