GPS

When driving to an unfamiliar place, how will you get the direction? Asking somebody, taking a map, or taking a GPS with you? Now, more and more people prefer using GPS during driving, hiking, even fishing. As we all know, the Gloal Positioning System (GPS) involves lots of technical ingenuity, but the process of how GPS receivers work is not as complicate as you might thought.

The GPS receiver has a GPS chip that receives signals from satellites and uses those signals to get a precise fix on your current location. GPS is made up of a system of 27 satellites. 24 is working and the other 3 are back up. These satellites orbit the earth twice a day sending information to receivers on earth of exact time and place of the receiver. So no matter where you are, there should be at least four satellite signals that the GPS receiver can obtain. The GPS receiver uses the signals from minimum of three of the twenty-four satellites to find the longitude and latitude. To find the elevation as well, the GPS receiver will need at least four satellite transmissions.

GPS receiver can get your precise current location, but it needs to do more to be useful as a navigation system. There is a map inside the GPS receiver. It is used to plot your precise location. After input the destination, GPS receiver would use the map and the navigation software to plot a route based on the navigation preferences.

Today's GPS receivers are extremely accurate and very useful, but they still have some disadvantages. GPS receiver require an unobstructed view of the sky, so it is used only outdoors and it often does not perform well within forests, mountains and near tall buildings.

Even there are many improvements needed for the GPS receivers, there will always comes new technologies. With those new technologies, the future GPS receivers will make our lives more convenient.