How is gps helpful

What are the three elements of GPS? The three segments of GPS are: Space Satellites — The satellites circling the Earth, transmitting signals to users on geographical position and time of day. Ground control — The Control Segment is made up of Earth-based monitor stations, master control stations and ground antenna.

Control activities include tracking and operating the satellites in space and monitoring transmissions. There are monitoring stations on almost every continent in the world, including North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia.

User equipment — GPS receivers and transmitters including items like watches, smartphones and telematic devices. How does GPS technology work? Here is an illustration of satellite ranging: As a device moves, the radius distance to the satellite changes.

What are the uses of GPS? Navigation — Getting from one location to another. Tracking — Monitoring object or personal movement. Mapping — Creating maps of the world. Timing — Making it possible to take precise time measurements. Some specific examples of GPS use cases include: Emergency Response: During an emergency or natural disaster , first responders use GPS for mapping, following and predicting weather, and keeping track of emergency personnel.

Read more about GPS tracking for first responders. Health and fitness: Smartwatches and wearable technology can track fitness activity such as running distance and benchmark it against a similar demographic. Construction, mining and off-road trucking: From locating equipment, to measuring and improving asset allocation, GPS enables companies to increase return on their assets.

Check out our posts on construction vehicle tracking and off-road equipment tracking. Transportation: Logistics companies implement telematics systems to improve driver productivity and safety. A truck tracker can be used to support route optimization, fuel efficiency, driver safety and compliance.

How accurate is GPS? Some factors that can hinder GPS accuracy include: Physical obstructions: Arrival time measurements can be skewed by large masses like mountains, buildings, trees and more. Atmospheric effects: Ionospheric delays, heavy storm cover and solar storms can all affect GPS devices. Ephemeris: The orbital model within a satellite could be incorrect or out-of-date, although this is becoming increasingly rare. Numerical miscalculations: This might be a factor when the device hardware is not designed to specifications.

Artificial interference: These include GPS jamming devices or spoofs. A brief history of GPS Humans have been practicing navigation for thousands of years using the sun, moon, stars, and later, the sextant. This means standard GPS radio frequency components, such as antennas, filters and amplifiers, cannot be used for GNSS receivers, resulting in a greater cost impact. Power consumption would be slightly higher than with GPS receivers as it connects to more satellites and runs the calculations to determine location.

Researchers along the US West Coast have even been incorporating GPS into their fledgling earthquake early warning system, which detects ground shaking and notifies people in distant cities whether shaking is likely to hit them soon. And Chile has been building out its GPS network in order to have more accurate information more quickly, which can help calculate whether a quake near the coast is likely to generate a tsunami or not.

Beyond earthquakes, the speed of GPS is helping officials respond more quickly to other natural disasters as they unfold. Many volcano observatories, for example, have GPS receivers arrayed around the mountains they monitor, because when magma begins shifting underground that often causes the surface to shift as well.

By monitoring how GPS stations around a volcano rise or sink over time, researchers can get a better idea about where molten rock is flowing.

Officials used that information to help decide which areas to evacuate residents from. GPS data can also be useful even after a volcano has erupted. Because the signals travel from satellites to the ground, they have to pass through whatever material the volcano is ejecting into the air. In , several research groups studied GPS data from an eruption of the Redoubt volcano in Alaska four years earlier and found that the signals became distorted soon after the eruption began. By studying the distortions, the scientists could estimate how much ash had spewed out and how fast it was traveling.

She and her colleagues have been working on ways to do this with smartphone-variety GPS receivers rather than expensive scientific receivers. That could enable volcanologists to set up a relatively inexpensive GPS network and monitor ash plumes as they rise. Some of the most unexpected uses of GPS come from the messiest parts of its signal—the parts that bounce off the ground. A typical GPS receiver, like the one in your smartphone, mostly picks up signals that are coming directly from GPS satellites overhead.

For many years scientists had thought these reflected signals were nothing but noise, a sort of echo that muddied the data and made it hard to figure out what was going on. But about 15 years ago Larson and others began wondering if they could take advantage of the echoes in scientific GPS receivers.

She started looking at the frequencies of the signals that reflected off the ground and how those combined with the signals that had arrived directly at the receiver. From that she could deduce qualities of the surface that the echoes had bounced off. This approach allows scientists to learn about the ground beneath the GPS receiver—for instance how much moisture the soil contains or how much snow has accumulated on the surface. The more snow falls on the ground, the shorter the distance between the echo and the receiver.

It has changed the way people communicate and live. GPS has made our environment a more safer and easier place to live. GPS is being used to help parents find and keep track of their children and is being installed as a location device in cars and in cell phones to assist people in mapping and directions.

Share to:. Please fill out the form below and click the "Submit" button. Vhf Marine Radio Frequencies. Virtual Tour Of University. Wet And Wild Cosmetics. What Do Kids Need. Windows Mobile Gps Applications. Women And Small Business. What is GPS and how can it be used? GPS or Global Positioning Systems is a term that most commonly conjures up images of vehicle navigation systems, space-age satellite technology, and interactive maps for outdoors-types and sportsmen. But the reality is that there are far more applications of Global Positioning Systems beyond GPS vehicle tracking or map navigation that everyday people like us can benefit from.

All it takes is a bit of creativity, and some trial and error. Here are a few of the many possibilities that can benefit you right now in your busy and hectic life. Related Articles Author Most Popular. Dipak Patra has sinced written about articles on various topics from Web Development , Stress Management and Gardening.