Surface modelling for GPS satellite visibility

Abstract

This paper describes an automated method for predicting the number of satellites visible to a GPS receiver, at any point on the earth's surface at any time. Intervisibility analysis between a GPS receiver and each potentially visible GPS satellite are performed using a number of different surface models and satellite orbit calculations. The developed software can work with various ephemeris data, and will compute satellite visibility in real-time. Real-time satellite availability prediction is very useful for mobile applications such as in-car navigation systems, personal navigations systems and LBS. The implementtation of the method is described and the results are reported. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.