milan101

Never heard of GPS? Think again! If you have ever used your Google Maps while driving or used an app to track your bus or checked weather app to see if you need to carry an umbrella, then chances are your phone is using GPS to pin point/ estimate your location to give you personalized information.

GPS, or Global Positioning System, is a satellite-based radio navigation system. Also called Navstar GPS, it is owned by the US government and operated by United States Air Force.

Military developed GPS for security and warfare purposes so it was initially not available to the civilians. But the US government decided to let civilians use GPS after there was a mishap with Korean plane flying over Russian air space.

The working principle of GPS is pretty simple. The GPS satellites hovering over the earth  constantly emit radio waves that are picked up by the GPS sensors on earth. The time the signal takes to reach the device is used to calculate the distance between satellite and sensor using simple mathematical formula distance=time X speed (c). For accuracy four satellite connections are preferred even though three satellites can accurately pin point the sensor in 3D.

The distance is calculated based on how fast an electromagnetic wave takes to reach our device, which is pretty fast. So the time has to be accurate. And because the satellites are moving with incredible speed in the space we need to adjust their atomic clocks all the time to get better accuracy.

 

GPS is now used in all sorts of fields- emergency rescue missions, wildlife tracking, social researches like refugee movement, spread of diseases etc. It is extensively used for navigation in airplanes and cars and GPS will be indispensable part of autonomous vehicles.

As IoT devices get cheaper and easy to use there will be more application of GPS data. There are tractor manufacturers that track the tractor’s location and measure the crop yield and based on that information inform the fertilizer dispensing vehicle where they should target for next round of plantation.

This also brings us to the question of security. The phones we carry are tracking our routes everyday. I remember my phone suggesting that I set a certain location as my home and another location as my office based on how much time I spend in those locations at what time of the day. I was quite surprised that it correctly suggested that I should set a second office because I was spending few hours every week there.