A Hypothetical Analysis on GPS Evolution, Error Sources, Accuracy Measures and Positioning Services

Abstract

People have invented different solutions to find out the location of a person or an object on the earth. In the beginning, mariners used angular measurements to calculate their location for celestial bodies such as the sun and stars. In the earlier 1920s, implemented a more sophisticated radio navigation scheme depends on radio waves that give access to the navigators to determine the direction of the transmitters. Soon after, the advancement of satellites made it achievable to transmit with high accuracy, line of sight radio navigation signals created a new era in the technology of navigation. To find the position of an object, a 2-dimensional navigation system called transit was used in olden days. This method was to set the basic building blocks to introduce the global positioning system. This new GPS concept provided outstanding innovative methods to find the position of an object to the public, scientists, military, etc. The predominantly GPS known as Global Positioning System is a range-based positioning system that yields an obscure object's 3D position on top of the earth. This system collects estimates or range data from realized emanating sources to determine the position of obscure objects and the system is also called as a positioning system based on satellites. The precision of the object location frequently relies on the error of the satellite clock, atmospheric delays, multipath, positioning of the satellite, noise and multiple parameters of the receiver. Mostly, none of the above parameters have consistent behavior worldwide and should be checked to provide an exact solution. This paper mainly focuses on the study of GPS evolution, error sources, popular accuracy measures and positioning services of GPS.