The Applications of GPS(Global Positioning System)

 

Created by

• Gajendra Jangid

 INTRODUCTION

Like the Internet, GPS is an essential element of the global information infrastructure. The free, open, and dependable nature of GPS has led to the development of hundreds of applications affecting every aspect of modern life. GPS technology is now in everything from cell phones and wristwatches to bulldozers, shipping containers, and ATM’s.

GPS boosts productivity across a wide swath of the economy, to include farming, construction, mining, surveying, package delivery, and logistical supply chain management. Major communications networks, banking systems, financial markets, and power grids depend heavily on GPS for precise time synchronization. Some wireless services cannot operate without it.GPS saves lives by preventing transportation accidents, aiding search and rescue efforts, and speeding the delivery of emergency services and disaster relief. GPS is vital to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) that will enhance flight safety while increasing airspace capacity. GPS also advances scientific aims such as weather forecasting, earthquake monitoring, and environmental protection.

Finally, GPS remains critical to U.S. national security, and its applications are integrated into virtually every facet of U.S. military operations. Nearly all new military assets — from vehicles to munitions — come equipped with GPS.This website describes just a tiny sample of existing GPS applications. New uses of GPS are invented every day and are limited only by the human imagination.

Now we’ll see applications of GPS in various departments such as

1)Aviation

aviators throughout the world use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to increase the safety and efficiency of flight. With its accurate, continuous, and global capabilities, GPS offers seamless satellite navigation services that satisfy many of the requirements for aviation users. Space-based position and navigation enables three-dimensional position determination for all phases of flight from departure, en route, and arrival, to airport surface navigation.

The trend toward an Area Navigation concept means a greater role for GPS. Area Navigation allows aircraft to fly user-preferred routes from waypoint to waypoint, where waypoints do not depend on ground infrastructure. Procedures have been expanded to use GPS and augmented services for all phases of flight. This has been especially true in areas that lack suitable ground based navigation aids or surveillance equipment.

New and more efficient air routes made possible by GPS are continuing to expand. Vast savings in time and money are being realized. In many cases, aircraft flying over data-sparse areas such as oceans have been able to safely reduce their separation between one another, allowing more aircraft to fly more favorable and efficient routes, saving time, fuel, and increasing cargo revenue.

2)Agriculture

development and implementation of precision agriculture or site-specific farming has been made possible by combining the Global Positioning System (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS). These technologies enable the coupling of real-time data collection with accurate position information, leading to the efficient manipulation and analysis of large amounts of geospatial data. GPS-based applications in precision farming are being used for farm planning, field mapping, soil sampling, tractor guidance, crop scouting, variable rate applications, and yield mapping. GPS allows farmers to work during low visibility field conditions such as rain, dust, fog, and darkness.

GPS equipment manufacturers have developed several tools to help farmers and agribusinesses become more productive and efficient in their precision farming activities. Today, many farmers use GPS-derived products to enhance operations in their farming businesses. Location information is collected by GPS receivers for mapping field boundaries, roads, irrigation systems, and problem areas in crops such as weeds or disease. The accuracy of GPS allows farmers to create farm maps with precise acreage for field areas, road locations and distances between points of interest. GPS allows farmers to accurately navigate to specific locations in the field, year after year, to collect soil samples or monitor crop conditions.

3)Marine

Global Positioning System (GPS) has changed the way the world operates. This is especially true for marine operations, including search and rescue. GPS provides the fastest and most accurate method for mariners to navigate, measure speed, and determine location. This enables increased levels of safety and efficiency for mariners worldwide.

It is important in marine navigation for the ship’s officer to know the vessel’s position while in open sea and also in congested harbors and waterways. While at sea, accurate position, speed, and heading are needed to ensure the vessel reaches its destination in the safest, most economical and timely fashion that conditions will permit. The need for accurate position information becomes even more critical as the vessel departs from or arrives in port. Vessel traffic and other waterway hazards make maneuvering more difficult, and the risk of accidents becomes greater

4)Rail systems

throughout the world use GPS to track the movement of locomotives, rail cars, maintenance vehicles, and wayside equipment in real time. When combined with other sensors, computers, and communications systems, GPS improves rail safety, security, and operational effectiveness. The technology helps reduce accidents, delays, and operating costs, while increasing track capacity, customer satisfaction, and cost effectiveness.
PTC systems vary widely in complexity and sophistication based on the level of automation and functionality being implemented, the system architecture used including wayside systems (e.g., non-signaled, block signal, cab signal, etc.), and the degree of train control. This advanced safety technology, required by federal law, will be operational on over 60,000 miles of the national rail system in the 2018 to 2020 timeframe.
Beyond PTC, GPS-based technology gives dispatchers and passengers accurate information on train location and station arrival times. It enables the automation of track surveying, mapping and inspection systems that work much faster and more accurately than non-GPS based systems, saving time and money while improving safety.

5)Roads and Transportations

it is estimated that delays from congestion on highways, streets, and transit systems throughout the world result in productivity losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Other negative effects of congestion include property damage, personal injuries, increased air pollution, and inefficient fuel consumption.
The availability and accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS) offers increased efficiencies and safety for vehicles using highways, streets, and mass transit systems. Many of the problems associated with the routing and dispatch of commercial vehicles is significantly reduced or eliminated with the help of GPS. This is also true for the management of mass transit systems, road maintenance crews, and emergency vehicles.

A geographic information system (GIS) stores, analyzes, and displays geographically referenced information provided in large part by GPS. Today GIS is used to monitor vehicle location, making possible effective strategies that can keep transit vehicles on schedule and inform passengers of precise arrival times. Mass transit systems use this capability to track rail, bus, and other services to improve on-time performance.
Many new capabilities are made possible with the help of GPS. Instant car pools are feasible since people desiring a ride can be instantly matched with a vehicle in a nearby area.

6)Space and Exploration

the Global Positioning System (GPS) is revolutionizing and revitalizing the way nations operate in space, from guidance systems for crewed vehicles to the management, tracking, and control of communication satellite constellations, to monitoring the Earth from space. Benefits of using GPS include:

Navigation solutions — providing high precision orbit determination, and minimum ground control crews, with existing space-qualified GPS units.
Attitude solutions — replacing high cost on-board attitude sensors with low-cost multiple GPS antennae and specialized algorithms.

Timing solutions — replacing expensive spacecraft atomic clocks with low-cost, precise time GPS receivers.
Constellation control — providing single point-of-contact to control for the orbit maintenance of large numbers of space vehicles such as telecommunication satellites.

Formation flying — allowing precision satellite formations with minimal intervention from ground crews.
Virtual platforms — providing automatic “station-keeping” and relative position services for advanced science tracking maneuvers such as interferometry.
Launch vehicle tracking — replacing or augmenting tracking radars with higher precision, lower-cost GPS units for range safety and autonomous flight termination.

7)Survey and Mapping

The looking over and planning network was one of the first to exploit GPS since it drastically expanded profitability and brought about more exact and solid information. Today, GPS is an indispensable piece of studying and planning exercises the world over.

At the point when utilized by talented experts, GPS gives reviewing and planning information of the most noteworthy precision. GPS-based information assortment is a lot quicker than traditional looking over and planning strategies, lessening the measure of gear and work required. A solitary assessor would now be able to achieve in one day what once took a whole group a long time to do.

GPS underpins the exact planning and demonstrating of the actual world — from mountains and waterways to roads and structures to utility lines and different assets. Highlights estimated with GPS can be shown on guides and in geographic data situation (GIS) that store, control, and show geologically referred to information.

Governments, logical associations, and business tasks all through the world use GPS and GIS innovation to encourage opportune choices and insightful utilization of assets. Any association or organization that requires precise area data about its resources can profit by the proficiency and profitability gave by GPS situating.

In contrast to traditional procedures, GPS reviewing isn’t limited by requirements, for example, view perceivability between overview stations. The stations can be sent at more noteworthy good ways from one another and can work anyplace with a decent perspective on the sky, instead of being restricted to distant peaks as recently required.

GPS is particularly valuable in studying coasts and streams, where there are not many land-based reference focuses. Overview vessels join GPS positions with sonar profundity soundings to make the nautical diagrams that ready sailors to changing water profundities and submerged risks. Scaffold developers and seaward oil fixes likewise rely upon GPS for precise hydrographic overviews.

Land assessors and mappers can convey GPS frameworks in rucksacks or mount them on vehicles to permit fast, exact information assortment. A portion of these frameworks discuss remotely with reference recipients to convey persistent, constant, centimeter-level precision and phenomenal profitability gains.

To accomplish the most significant level of exactness, most review grade recipients utilize two GPS radio frequencies: L1 and L2. Presently, there is no completely practical regular citizen signal at L2, so these recipients influence a military L2 signal utilizing “codeless” procedures.

The continuous GPS modernization program is adding a devoted common sign at L2 that underpins high-precision situating without the utilization of military signs. The GPS program is additionally adding a third respectful sign at the L5 recurrence that will improve execution much further. After 2020, the public authority will not, at this point uphold codeless admittance to military GPS signals.

Static GPS Baseline. Static GPS is used for determining accurate coordinates for survey points by simultaneously recording GPS observations over a known and unknown survey point for at least 20 minutes. The data is then processed in the office to provide coordinates with an accuracy of better than 5mm depending on the duration of the observations and satellite availability at the time of the measurements.

Real Time Kinematic (RTK)Observations. This is where one receiver remains in one position over a known point – the Base Station – and another receiver moves between positions – the Rover Station. The position of the Rover can be computed and stored within a few seconds, using a radio link to provide a coordinate correction. This method gives similar accuracy to baseline measurements within 10km of the base station.

Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). This where a survey quality GPS receiver is permanently installed in a location as a starting point for any GPS measurements in the district. Common users of CORS are mining sites, major engineering projects and local governments. Surveyors’ GPS receivers can then collect field data and combine it with the CORS data to calculate positions. Many countries have a CORS network that are used by many industries. Australia’s CORS network is the Australian Regional GPS Network, and uses an online processing system to deliver data over the internet within 24 hours, and give positions within an accuracy of a few centimetres. Local CORS networks are also used to provide instant positions similar to the RTK method by using a mobile phone data link to provide a coordinate correction to the surveyor and their rover.

References:

1) What is GPS & How Do Surveyors Use It? | Jurovich Perth (jurovichsurveying.com.au)

2) GPS.gov: Survey & Mapping Applications

3) What is GPS Surveying? – The Guide to GPS Surveying Techniques (takeoffpros.com)

4) Surveying Using GPS and Conclusion | Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (icsm.gov.au)