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for example a receiver sees four satellites and Although dGPS-based systems provide high
all are arranged in the north-west, this leads accuracies, they add extra complexity and also
to a bad geometry and the accuracy is increase the cost of the basic navigation
reduced. If on the other hand the four system.
satellites are well distributed over the Earth, Another technique used to improve the
the position accuracy will be much higher. accuracy of the GPS system is to transmit
Most GPS receivers do not only indicate the correction signals from “correction” GPS
number of received satellites, but also their satellites. The correction satellite is a
relative positions above Earth. This enables geostationary satellite above the Equator. This
the user to judge if a relevant satellite is technique was first developed in the US and
clear view of the sky. In general, the accuracy obscured by an obstacle and if changing the is known as WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation
is increased as more satellites are used in the position of the receiver might improve the System). A similar and compatible system is in
position and altitude calculations. accuracy. operation in Europe under the name EGNOS
The multipath effect is caused by reflection and in the Far East under the name MSAS.
The GPS Accuracy of satellite signals from objects on Earth’s Standard compatible GPS receivers can
Table 1 shows the typical GPS error surface. The multipath error in GPS systems receive the WAAS/EGNOS correction signals
sources (www.kowoma.de/en/gps/errors.htm). appear when there are large buildings near a and calculate their positions to an accuracy of
The major source of GPS error was the GPS receiver and the signal reflects from around 3-5 metres.
Selective Availability. Selective Availability was these buildings. The reflected signal takes The advantage of this technique over the
first introduced during the Gulf War in 1991 more time to reach the receiver than the dGPS is that there is no additional cost to the
to prevent the Iraqi forces from benefiting direct signal and this results in accuracy user since the required hardware and
from the accurate GPS service. What the US errors. The multipath errors can be avoided software are built into the GPS receiver at a
military chiefs did was not to prevent all non- by moving the receiver away from nearby very small extra cost. One disadvantage of
military use of the GPS, but to degrade the large buildings or trees. this technique is that it may be difficult to
accuracy of the GPS to commercial users. By receive correction signals at higher latitudes,
the introduction of a deliberate error, the Improving the GPS Accuracy away from the Equator.
accuracy of a commercial GPS was reduced to The position accuracy of a GPS signal can
around 100 meters and accurate receivers be improved significantly using a technique Parts of a GPS System
were only made selectively available to only known as Differential GPS (dGPS). Using the The GPS system consists of three major parts:
the US and Allied military and to certain US dGPS techniques accuracies in the region of ● Space segment
Government agencies. Fortunately, the several meters can easily be achieved. ● Control segment
Selective Availability has been removed by the dGPS works by placing a high performance ● User segment
US since the 1st May 2000 and, hence, the GPS receiver at a precisely known location on Space segment: The space segment
navigational accuracy of a GPS improved Earth (reference station). Since this reference consists of the orbiting satellites. The number
significantly. receiver knows its exact location, it can of satellites is increasing all the time. As of
The tropospheric and ionospheric effects determine the errors in the received GPS March 2008, there were 31 actively
cause electromagnetic waves to refract. The satellite signals. This error signal for each broadcasting satellites in the GPS
reasons for the refraction are different tracked satellite is formed into a correction constellation. With the increased number of
concentrations of water vapour in the message and is transmitted to ordinary GPS satellites, the reliability and availability of the
troposphere, caused by different weather receivers. Users with the correct hardware can overall system has been improved.
conditions. The ionospheric errors are larger receive these correction signals and improve Control segment: The control segment
than the tropospheric errors. The errors their accuracies. The level of accuracy consists of the monitoring stations located
introduced by these effects can not be obtainable with dGPS depends upon many on Earth. These stations constantly monitor
eliminated, but their effects can usually be factors, such as the quality of the reference the operational status of all the GPS
reduced in calculations. station and user GPS receivers, and the satellites and also synchronize the atomic
Orbital errors are the other major sources atmospheric conditions. Figure 1 shows the clocks on board the satellites to within a
of error, caused by the satellite geometry. If layout of a typical dGPS implementation. few nanoseconds of each other and adjust
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GPS
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GPS
starts and stops the data collection. During remove the chip from its socket. This feature with the GPS Visualizer conversion program,
the data collection the LED flashes at a rate is extremely useful during program where:
of about once a second. If the SD card is development.
not inserted into its holder, the LED will Figure 7 shows the GPS data logger device Character T indicates that this is a track file
flash quickly to show an error condition. built on a PIC-Ready development board. The 22:05:16 is the time the data was received
The switch should be kept pressed for SD card module can be seen on the left, 5133.3627 is the latitude
about five seconds to terminate the data while the GPS module is on the right hand 00042.1240 is the longitude
logging and wait until the LED turns OFF side of the board.
before removing the SD card from its As explained later, the GPS Visualizer
holder. The Software program converts the file into a format
The hardware was constructed on a PIC- The software was developed using the compatible with the Google Earth mapping
Ready development board (see Figure 6) mikroC compiler developed by program.
manufactured by mikroElektronika. This is a mikroElektronika. This is a very powerful C Get_GPS_Data: This procedure reads the
low-cost ($24) powerful development board language compiler and supports both PIC16 NMEA sentence $GPRMC from the serial
with the following features: and PIC18 series. The compiler provides a port where the GPS module is connected.
● Socket for 40-pin PIC microcontrollers; very rich library of routines for developing The program first waits to receive the
● 8MHz crystal; applications for SD cards, Compact Flash starting character “$”. Then the string
● +5V regulator (an external 9-12V power cards, RS232/RS485 devices, USB, CAN bus, “GPRMC” is matched and its parameters
supply is required); I2C, 1-Wire bus and much more. are read and stored in array DataLogger.
● In-circuit debugger (ICD) and PIC Figure 8 shows operation of the software Initialize_SD: This procedure initializes
programmer interface; as a Program Development Language (PDL). the SD card library routines of the mikroC
● Reset button; The program is modular and consists of a compiler.
● Easy access to microcontroller port pins via number of functions and procedures for easy Hex_Byte: This function converts a
10-way IDC connectors; modification, update, or maintenance of the hexadecimal number into decimal. This
● Plug-in compatible with most code. The following functions and procedures function is used in the checksum
mikroElektronika development modules; are used: calculation.
● Small development solder area. Format_Data: This procedure reads the Conv_Hex: This function converts a two
One of the nice things about the PIC-Ready received $GPRMC data from array digit hexadecimal number into decimal. This
development board is the built-in ICD and the DataLogger and stores in array LogIt in the function is used in the checksum
programmer. This requires the use of a following comma delimited CSV text format. calculation.
PICFlash2 ICD device, manufactured by This data is then written to a file on the SD Checksum: This function checks the
mikroElektronika. During program card continuously every two seconds: checksum field of the received NMEA
development one can easily insert breakpoints sentence. The checksum field in an NMEA
or single step a program with the help of the T,22:05:16,5133.3627,00042.1240 sentence is the last two hexadecimal
ICD. The ICD can also program most of the characters after the “*” character. The
PIC chips on-board, without having to The data is stored in a format compatible checksum is calculated by Exclusive-OR’ing
Figure 9: Checksum
calculation function
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GPS
Figure 12 shows an example output of Select Yes, named with time stamps in the microcontroller software so that the
displaying the track data at street-level Draw as Waypoints list-box, under the Track created file is compatible with the
using the Google Earth. In this example, the Options). Google Map (i.e. in KML or KMZ format)
GPS data logger device was placed in a car and can be used directly without having
and a short trip was made is South East Further Improvements to re-format it first.
London to collect data and test the device. The device described in this article can be ● An LCD and a keypad can be attached to
As can be seen from Figure 11, the improved in several ways: the device to make it more user friendly,
collected data is very accurate and the data ● Other navigational parameters can be e.g. to display the date, time, speed, or
points are placed exactly on street co- added to the system, such as the speed, the geographical co-ordinates of the user
ordinates in the Google Earth map display. bearing and the altitude. as the device moves around.
In Figure 13, the same data is displayed ● The power consumption of the device ● The data collection interval and the
with time stamping where the time display can be lowered using low-power version collection algorithm can be modified such
is enabled in the GPS Visualizer conversion of the microcontroller, i.e. PIC18LF4520. that new data is stored only if the device
program before the file is converted (i.e. ● A file conversion utility can be added to is not stationary. ■
Figure 12: Displaying the data using Google Earth Figure 13: Displaying the data with time stamping