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How GPS Works: Kristine M. Larson Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences University of Colorado
How GPS Works: Kristine M. Larson Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences University of Colorado
Kristine M. Larson
Professor of Aerospace
Engineering Sciences
University of Colorado
Outline
What is GPS
How GPS works
How GPS codes work
Why I use GPS for my research
Grand Junction
Transmitter
Radon in Boulder
So, a GPS signal tells you how far you are from
the transmitter.
If the distance from the GPS transmitter is 250 miles, that means
you are somewhere on a circle of radius 250 miles.
Intersecting Spheres
For example, here are the first 1000 numbers of the code
for satellite 1
00001000101001110000111001001000100001000101011000111101110010101101100111101011
00101100101001100111111011001111001001100110100011100010010001011000101101110000
00110110010001000101101000101001000000011111000110001011111011111100110111001011
01111000111111010100101000010101001110000110100111011000111101111100001111111111
01001001001001100111010101111100001000101101001111110000100110111100111000110110
10110110101000010110100101000101001000111001110001010010111010111010101000001011
01110011011001101000000000001110111011000110110101010110110001110001100110011111
01011111001110101010000011111100100101000000111010001111011010010110110000010010
01001100001101100001111011101110001101110110100111001000110101010000110110100101
11001011111111101100011100000011011100011000000100000000100000110101000101011110
11000111011010001100101011111001111010000000110111100110011101011110000011110110
01000100101011100000000100001010101001111101100111011011111100101111000100110101
Strategy
First we need to learn how GPS creates
these codes
Then we need to come up with a way to
quickly tell the codes apart.
Code
-
Resulting in
Register1 Register2 Register3
1
1
1
0
Code
1
Next 0+1=1
Register1 Register2 Register3
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
Code
1
1
Code
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
Real GPS
Uses 10 shift registers.
They add different registers to produce
the codes for different satellites.
Satellite 1 uses 2 and 6.
Satellite 2 uses 3 and 7, and so on.
A 10-shift register code repeats after
210-1, or 1023.
100111101110100010011011111111111
000010001010011100001110010010001
14 agree
11 disagree
Total score: 3
Perfect agreement would be 35
Plate tectonics
Southern California
Iceland operating all over the world.
We have GPS receivers
Holland
Australia
Hawaii
Antarctica
Churchill, Manitoba
Postglacial rebound