>will give the next generation of smartphones 30-centimeter accuracy instead of today’s 5-meters Didn't the US scramble the civilian signals specifically so it wouldn't be too accurate? And they're just okay with civilians having access to ultra accurate GPS receivers?
You can get a form of super accurate GPS on the farm right now which gives you an accuracy to 2.5cm's. It's called RTK so if you have a portable one, you can now plant your cannabis plants right in the middle of other crops like sweetcorn safe in the knowledge it wont be discovered until you need to pop back and harvest it!
It's almost as though using a phone whose operating system is created and maintained by an advertising company isn't the best idea if you want to keep things like your location private.
Apple is also an advertising company - they have unique IDs with your personal information pinned to them, and they sell ads based on your location, too.
Applene never sold ads based on granular locations. Only the same location information that you'd get from an IP address.
15cm GPS accuracy has been available commercially since about 2002. Trimble and Novatel both sold units. But you had to get a subscription to a service which had a network of ground stations measuring propagation errors through the atmosphere. The correction signals came in from a geosync satellite. You also had to be able to see about five satellites.
That's more or less how this works. When you can see both the C/A and L5 signals, you can do some magic to help compensate for anything going on in the ionosphere
Things have changed since the 90s. > In May 2000, at the direction of President Bill Clinton, the U.S. government ended its use of Selective Availability in order to make GPS more responsive to civil and commercial users worldwide. > The United States has no intent to ever use Selective Availability again. The military has better precision, only because they buy better hardware. Similar hardware is used in commercial…
>The military has better precision, only because they buy better hardware. That's not true. Military receivers can use the Y Code which is encrypted for military use only. There are some really fancy civilian receivers out there that can leverage Y code to a limited extent without knowing the encryption key but full accuracy is only possible on a military receiver that can decrypt and use the Y code.
is there any reason to be even more accurate than a 5 meter radius? I mean, if you are targeting a person in a building, i can't see why it has to be more accurate than that. Navigation of a drone that is less than 5 meters in size may require higher accuracy, i suppose...
It's almost as though using a phone whose operating system is created and maintained by an advertising company isn't the best idea if you want to keep things like your location private.
For what it's worth, all operators have a legal obligation to gather these data (at least in the U.S. and Canada) officially for emergency services purposes.
>The military has better precision, only because they buy better hardware. That's not true. Military receivers can use the Y Code which is encrypted for military use only. There are some really fancy civilian receivers out there that can leverage Y code to a limited extent without knowing the encryption key but full accuracy is only possible on a military receiver that can decrypt and use the Y code.
is there any reason to be even more accurate than a 5 meter radius? I mean, if you are targeting a person in a building, i can't see why it has to be more accurate than that. Navigation of a drone that is less than 5 meters in size may require higher accuracy, i suppose...
The chip doesn't just improve maximum accuracy, it also vastly reduces the deviation when in poor conditions such as inside a building. The technique to do so just happens to also make peak operating conditions more accurate.
Why was "oil and gas exploration" an early adopter here? Can anyone connect the dots for me? I wouldn't expect interesting oil/gas pockets to have <5m lateral diameter, but then again I know very little about that industry.
Geological mapping (actually all mapping) is easier and more accurate with high precision high accuracy position data. The more accurate your map the better your geological model etc.
Also drilling is done to extremely high precision these days.
Edit: Bare in mind the industry uses differtial GPS for some tasks - this can give mm/cm precision.
Why was "oil and gas exploration" an early adopter here? Can anyone connect the dots for me? I wouldn't expect interesting oil/gas pockets to have <5m lateral diameter, but then again I know very little about that industry.
I'm not in the oil industry. But I imagine this is a great improvement for un-anchored / thrusters positioned platforms.