GPS Guide

With concern to military applications, GPS allows accurate targeting of various military weapons including ICBMs, cruise missiles, and precision-guided munitions.  It is used to navigate and coordinate the movement of troops and supplies.  The GPS satellites also carry nuclear detonation detectors which form a major portion of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System.

Accurate and to-date information on the location of the enemy as well as our own forces is one of the most critical information a military commander seeks. In today’s fast paced electronic battlefield such information, if disseminated timely, can act as a major force multiplier. The dawn of the space age has led to the development of several dual use technologies, which find extensive application both in military and civilian fields.

Global Positioning System (GPS) is one such technology. Military forces the world over are using GPS for diverse applications both during wartime and peacetime. These include navigation, targeting, rescue, guidance and facility management. With war clouds looming all over the world, the US led forces are likely to showcase weapon systems, which rely heavily upon GPS for their accuracy and lethality.

Human beings have always looked towards the skies for navigation. Till today celestial bodies like sun and stars are used for finding out the directions. This assumes more importance if you are a soldier moving in unknown enemy territory. The significance of locating one’s position in the world cannot be more important than for a soldier, as this could mean the difference between life and death, defeat and victory.

With the coming in of the space age, mankind has tried to replace these celestial bodies with artificial satellites so that navigation is possible both during day and night. Global Positioning System (GPS) is one such dual use technology, which has found extensive application both for military and civilian purposes in area of navigation and others.

GPS has given military forces the lethal combination of precision strike with adverse weather performance, standoff range, and operational flexibility - all at a low marginal cost.

There are really four things that are extremely important in a GPS system that the military needs it to be:  accuracy, all-weather, easy-to-use, and portable.  The GPS system currently in service meets these requirements fully except for the fact that ultimately it is a system run for the US military and if you happen to be their adversary then you may be in some problem as the power to introduce intentional error in the signal rests with them.

Although the US Department of Defense’s policy of “Selective Availability” (under which intentional noise was added to GPS signals to make them less accurate) has been removed last year, its reintroduction is still in their hands.

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Born of the best minds from a concept so simple is an exceptional complex system, the GPS tracking system.  It is made up of three components satellites that orbit the earth, control and monitoring stations and the GPS receivers.  It is a radio navigation system providing reliable positioning, navigating, and timing services not just for the military but also to civilian users as well in any part of the world.  The GPS tracking system has drastically changed the world of navigation through land, sea and air, in all weather, 24/7.


The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a U.S. space-based radio navigation system that provides reliable positioning, navigation, and timing services to civilian users on a continuous worldwide basis -- freely available to all. For anyone with a GPS receiver, the system will provide location and time. GPS provides accurate location and time information for an unlimited number of people in all weather, day and night, anywhere in the world.


In the 1960s the U.S. Navy and Air Force worked together on a number of systems that would be able to provide a variety of navigation applications.  In 1973 the Department of Defense aimed to direct the services in unifying their systems.  The concept of the tracking system would be atomic clocks onboard satellites was tested successfully by an earlier Navy program called TIMATION.  The Air Force would operate the new system called the Navstar Global Positioning System.  From then on, it has since been known as simply GPS or Global Positioning System.


The GPS tracking System Satellites

Today's GPS Operational Constellation is funded and controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense and being operated by the U.S. Military.  It is comprised of three major components:  a "constellation" of satellites in Earth orbit, ground stations that controlled the system and receivers hand carried by the users.  It was so designed so that these receivers could be made small and inexpensive and would not require atomic clocks.


The GPS tracking system is an aerospace technology comprising of at least 24 operational satellites at all times.  Each satellite is on a circular orbit 20,000 kilometers above the Earth on a 12-hour period.  In order to make sure that these satellites are detected from anywhere on the surface of the Earth, the satellites are divided into six groups having four space vehicles each. The six orbital planes completely surround the Earth, equally spaced 60 degrees apart and at an angle of about 50 degrees with respect to the equatorial plane.  Each group is assigned a different path to follow.  The orbit altitude is such that the GPS satellites recapitulate the same ground track and configuration at approximately over any point each in 24 hours.


The GPS tracking system's navigation message consists of time-tagged data bits that mark the time of transmission of each subframe at the time they are being transmitted by the space vehicle.  A data bit frame consists of 1500 bits divided into five 300-bit subframes and a data frame is being transmitted at an interval of 30 seconds.  There are three six-second subframes containing orbital and clock data.  Precise clock corrections are sent in subframe one and orbital data sets or ephemeris data parameters for the transmitting space vehicle are sent in subframes two and three.  Various pages of the system data are being transmitted in subframes four and five.  So the GPS tracking system has an entire set of twenty-five frames or 125 subframes creating the complete navigation message sent over a 12.5-minute period.


The GPS Tracking System Equipment on the Ground

Ground stations are used so that each satellite orbit is accurately tracked.  The GPS tracking system has ground stations which is comprised of a receiver and antenna, as well as communication tools to transmit the data to the data center.  When the GPS satellites supply specially coded signals, the omni-directional antenna at each site picks up the signals and that is processed in a receiver.  The receiver then separates the signals in various channels for a particular satellite and frequency at a particular time.  Once the signals are isolated, the receiver now decodes them and splits them into individual frequencies to calculate position, velocity, direction and time anywhere on Earth.


At least four GPS satellite signals consisting of space segments are used in computing positions in three-dimensional locations - latitude, longitude and altitude - and the time offset in the receiver clock.  All GPS tracking system satellites have synchronized operations so that the signals are transmitted at the speed of light to the equipment on the ground. Each GPS satellite broadcasts data indicating its location and current time.


Since the GPS tracking system sites are constructed throughout the world and are being monitored by different institutions worldwide, there are many different data center locations.
The role of the data center is to both monitor and control the GPS tracking system stations. The data center uses an automated computer system in retrieving and analyzing data from the receivers.  Once processed, the data, including the original raw data, are sent to scientists around the glob for use in various applications.


From laboriously built landmarks by our ancestors to shooting the stars to chronometers to satellites, our technology has evolved faster than we could ever imagine.  The GPS tracking system is the most recent and significant advancement in navigation and positioning technology.  This new constellation of artificial stars serves this important need for both the military and civilian users and is now fast becoming important in everyday life.

GPS stands for World Positioning orbiters and is one of the most heady advancements in bailiwick for some distinct reasons.  GPS was developed by the Federate States Section of Denial for soldier like applications, but it has quickly grown to state misused personally by the mundane mortal.  GPS is a follower based pilotage system that utilizes the satellites we individual dispatched into area for various uses.  The corresponding satellites that furnish us with television assist, cavitied assist, and hold reports can cook rail of where a vehicle is at any given group use their GPS systems to get trusty that when they are on a bungle, they are dynamic in the paw directions as the GPS has been mature to be a piloting tool that mounts directly on your car's dashboard.  There are many distinct brands out today and can be an extraordinary plus when travelling.

A GPS system is also misused in new structure to path vehicles.  For information, a truckage consort may set GPS systems on all of their trucks so they can prepare cross of where their trucks are at any moment.  This can meliorate amend efficiency and locate deed times to within minutes.  It can also better them devise fitter motion routes that can save gas and meliorate on the traveling done by the truckers.

The conclusion of GPS systems to the pandemic exoteric has brought around many assorted uses.  Car dealers use GPS systems to reject thieving during try drives.  Plane unquiet parents of teenagers can use a GPS group to donjon itinerary of where their vulnerable wood is and flush where they get been.

One of the major things almost new consumer GPS systems is their ability to cell a log of where the object has been previously as healthy as where it is presently.  Several of these systems
can also line how the soul is swing that can be greatly salutary to those nervous parents when they are discussing invulnerable and judicious swing habits with their teens.

GPS systems are also beingness utilized in law enforcement to hold cover of habitual offenders that bonk eluded law in the late.  Semiprivate investigators are also using GPS systems to work extract downfield deceit spouses and acquire different fill they are work.

In unforesightful, a GPS method is a high tool that can ameliorate people in so more distance. Protection companies start to ask observance too as they are providing discounts to insurance holders who make vehicles transistorised with GPS systems.  It would be a moral melody for you to change out a GPS group and get one of your own!

The auto GPS system, or the vehicle global positioning system is a unique magnetic piece of advanced technology that makes use of a regional map fed into the electronic guide and fitted either on the dashboard of a car or under the carriage to act as a driver’s navigational aid when on the road. It gives directions to the destination point and how to best reach it safely, in time and with a choice of alternate routes, landmarks to cross and distances covered besides also acting as an anti-theft device and helping the owner locate the vehicle if he’s forgotten where he parked it! Now, life doesn’t get better than that, does it?


Or, so you thought! Well, it just did! We modern day global citizens now have access to the best, most advanced technology for GPS systems thanks to the initial experimentation by the US military services that used the first GPS systems for tracking vehicles for the purpose of national security and later developed a prototype suitable for the general public, which would act as a driver’s navigational aid  based on the information it received from the satellite orbiting space. A fast developing field of communication technology, the GPS system is based on the principle of reliable information provided in flexible communication channels that are accurate and up to date, thanks to constant navigation, surveillance and data capturing provided by GIS. Conventionally known as the GPS NAVSTAR (Navigation Satellite timing and Ranging Global Positioning System), the GPS system is a  satellite-based navigation, timing and positioning device that provides constant, multi-dimensional positioning round the clock to all parts of the world.


Not only is the data accurate within a range of 100 meters of navigating from the GPS system, but it also allows for exact meter level of mapping (right down to the millimeter level), which is essential for  knowing  geodetic positioning. This cutting-edge traveler’s best tool and mate affords immense scope for application of GPS technology through the compact and magnetic box that is the receiver  device for a large world community of GPS users: it works on the principle of sending a signal to space (to the satellite, which points the location of the vehicle back to the receiver) and thus providing directions to locating vehicle or destination point on a given radius/region. When a GPS system is mainly used for tracking automobiles, the purpose is limited and so is the scope of the device, which allows for the signal to be transmitted from the GPS device to a comp with a software program that  will show the exact location of the vehicle on its monitor.

Such is the craze for the convenience of a GPS system that many top auto manufacturers are offering their latest models of cars equipped with the device that has changed the way the world travels today; GPS is easy, efficient and accurate and gets one out of a blind spot sooner than a wink with a simple click of the button, especially useful in unknown terrains – or so find drivers with little time to lose and lots of ground to cover!

GPS design is based partly on ground-based radio navigation systems developed in the early

1940’s that were used in World War II.  These systems were named LORAN and Decca Navigator and were focused on knowing where the enemy was so they could either attack or retreat depending on the size of the forces.


Additional inspiration for modern day GPS systems came when Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957.  A team of scientists monitored Sputnik’s radio transmissions and discovered that because of the Doppler Effect, the frequency of the signal being transmitted was high as the satellite approached and lower as it moved away.  The Doppler Effect is the change in frequency and wave length of a wave as it is perceived by an observer moving relative to the source of the waves.


This team of scientists that was observing Sputnik’s radio transmissions soon realized that since they knew their exact location on the globe, they could pin point where the satellite was along its orbit by measuring the Doppler distortion.  This was groundbreaking and very exciting for the military at the time.


The United States Navy used the first satellite navigation system called Transit.  It was first successfully test in 1960 and was quite mind-boggling for everyone in the military.  When the Navy tested Transit, they did so hoping for some quite specific results.  Using a constellation of five satellites, they found that the system could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour.


In 1967, the Navy developed the Timation satellite which proved the ability to place accurate clocks in space.  This is a technology that the GPS system relies on.  In the 1970’s, the ground- based Omega Navigation System, based on signal phase comparison, became the first world- wide radio navigation system.


In February of 1978, the first experimental Block-I GPS satellite was launched into space and the  development of modern-day GPS systems began.   These original satellites were initially made by  Rockwell International.    Now, the satellites we use for GPS are manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

In 1983, Soviet interceptor aircraft shot down a civilian airliner flight KAL 007 as it flew in restricted Soviet airspace.  This heinous act killed all 269 people on board – all of whom were civilians.  Shortly thereafter, President Ronald Reagan announced that the GPS system would be made available for civilian use once it was completed.  Because of this horrible act on the part of the Soviets, developed of the GPS system was stepped up more than it ever had been before and experimentations began in earnest.


By 1985, ten more experimental Block-I satellites had been launched into space to validate the concept of GPS and in 1989; the first modern Block-II satellite was launched.  By December of
1993, the GPS system achieve initial operational capability and just a month later, a complete constellation of 24 satellites were in orbit with full operational capability declared by NAVSTAR in April of 1995.


A year after that, President Bill Clinton realized the importance of GPS to civilian users as well as military users which prompted him to issue a policy directive that declared GPS to be a dual- use system meaning civilian as well as military.  He established an Interagency GPS Executive Board that was responsible for managing GPS as an asset of the United States. the previous examples going off in all directions. So instead of a series of circles, you get a series of spheres.