"Theoretically, one positioning chip could be designed to incorporate all of these different systems, but that might run afoul of U.S. national security laws." - the author mentions this speculatively but doesn't provide any citations. Does anyone know what they might be referring to and also what level of technology it would require to use multiple satellite networks at once or switch been them.
NFI. My iPhone 6s (a few years old) includes "Assisted GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS" [0] and I suspect that most other modern mobile phones do as well.
Besides, I would consider relying totally on any one country's GNSS (especially when several are available at very little additional cost) to be a rather poor decision.
I suspect it has something to do with the potential for a chip to be classified as USML Cat XII(d) under ITAR, more specifically, "specially designed for use with a null steering antenna, an electronically steerable antenna, or including a nullsteering antenna designed to reduce or avoid jamming signal"[1].
Yes this seems strange, I can only assume that it means the devices will still function accurately despite any US GPS degradation (eg around military installations, sensitive events etc), ie they will no longer be under US control.
But that would apply whether they are multi-system capable, or just that they can read the other systems, and are not entirely dependent on GPS.
That is bullshit. ~7 yeras ago I worked at a company, which designed and manufactured GNSS receivers capable of receiving gps,glonass,gallileo,qzss and blend the signals to get more accurate solution. Receivers started at $5000 a pop though.
The company had no problems selling in the US abd Russia. And even had multiple competitors.
Hence, expert/import laws are not a problem. At least for professional equipment.
Nowadays, combined GNSS receivers like you mention are available from various electronic retailers for around 20-50$ a piece. The uBlox Neo M8 is a popular chip, there are a few others too. They are widely used in UAVs (where I know them from) and a variety of other applications, and routinely use anywhere between 22-28 active satellites from multiple constellations (compared to typical 7-11 visible for GPS alone).
The national security laws prevent chips from working if you're above a certain height and over a certain speed. Although most chips implement an "or" instead of an "and".
As for military receivers, apparently they are unclassified but plug into a separate system that works like a TPM and provides the decryption keys, which have to be refreshed at least once a year.
But seriously, "war"? Positioning has turned out to be such a vital economic factor that having multiple suppliers seems such an obvious Good Thing™ that it shouldn't need explaining, and the article doesn't really offer any support for its "war" rhetoric apart from showing that there are multiple suppliers.
Despite the assurances that were made, even I as a citizen of an "ally" of the US am not comfortable with sole dependence on GPS and find Galileo a good project. And as we can see, it only takes one unhinged administration to make such assurances next to worthless. If you're higher up on the shitlist (unclear at this point how that's ordered), the need become greater.
I wonder if having all these extra satellites will increase the accuracy of GPS positioning? Surely it would, as long as they could all be used at the same time.
The new Block III GPS sats have a new civilian signal that will improve the quality of a fix as the ionosphere can be directly measured. Jury is still out on how well the extra signal will improve accuracy as there isn’t a full set of sats that broadcast it yet.
Most of the upgrades to the civilian bands are for faster first fixes and making it so a fix is consistently more accurate. Also the ionosphere can be directly measured by your gps receiver, so fixes will be more accurate.
They are doing this because many civilian applications have emerged that need a more accurate signal (one is turn-by-turn navigation). When GPS was first developed, it was first envisioned as outputting coordinates and you looked up your location on a paper map, where 2m was better than most maps you could get.
The military is getting the ability to get a signal that is 100x more powerful in a small area.
It will be awhile before we see receivers using the new signal as the first of the new GPS sats launched today (some of the old ones are broadcasting the new signal, but not enough of them)
That requires a dual-frequency receiver, though, which I think is only found in high-end survey equipment and a handful of very recent and expensive smartphones.
My Mi 8 with the stable Android P build seems to be using both frequencies for satellites "in use" at the same time. The actual benefits of it, I don't know though.
What do you want to know? Basically it's just another set of GNSS satellites that devices can use for positioning, if their chipset supports it. Customers benefit greatly from this.
Do we benefit already? I have no idea which positioning system is in effect. E.g. I am in Russia - Have I just used GPS, Galilleo, Glonass or combination of all 3 of them (iPhone 8).
Some (many? all? I have no idea) consumer chipsets with multiple GNSS support can get position from multiple constellations, but cannot combine the signals into one mixed constellation result of better quality than the best single-constellation result they get. In most cases what you see is the GPS result, except when you are close to one of the poles, which are uniquely (afaik) served by Glonass.
You mean theoretically or with the current hardware they are using?
Given they are going for low cost mass produced, I doubt they have the necessary hardware, especially the highly accurate clocks.
If you're speaking theoretically, yes, again the hardest would probably be the clocks, but there's no reason a private company can't produce them if needed.
The bigger issue would be that they would have to compete against the free, government-subsidiesed networks, which seems really tough.
Maybe if they target the really high accuracy only available to the military, but even then codeless is already good enough for most applications.
>Maybe if they target the really high accuracy only available to the military, but even then codeless is already good enough for most applications.
I had autonomous vehicles in mind, which would certainly benefit from a highly accurate, ubiquitous and reliable positioning system (esp. if companies like Tesla can be supplied directly by SpaceX).
In my view the perspective of the author is needlessly antagonistic. China is only demanding inclusion of their own Beidou system, with no mention of banning other systems. As others here have pointed out: That Beidou receivers could be banned in the U.S. seems to be baseless speculation on part of the author.
The good news: There will be four competing global positioning systems available to consumers. They're motivated to operate their systems out of strategic military and economic reasons.
To call this a war is uncalled for. It's an arms-race with civilian benefits. It would be a war if they jammed or destroyed each other's satellites.
"To those accustomed to privilege, equality seems like an attack."
This isn't exactly privilege, but same principle. The US has been used to defining the category. Now they don't. To the insecure that seems like a threat, not a move toward the federated kind of system it should always have been.
How does the UK estimate it would cost them so much less than everyone else to provide their own equivalent system? Or is this just a really bad attempt at negotiating down passive use of Galileo in the future?
Have to agree with others that the title of this article is misleading. Positioning satelites have been deployed by different countries for many years and the truth is the US "birds" are in various stages of disrepair. Yes they have launched some new updated SV's (space vehicles) but not enough to offset the advantages provided by a full constelation of high end, new tech, units. The true "war" revolves around selective availability which is controlled by each individual entity. It is important to note that positioning quality does not improve based strictly on the number of satelites a receiver can see but more so the configuration of the satelites that are available at any given time. In some cases less is actually more and the difference would never be noticible to the average consumer.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadBesides, I would consider relying totally on any one country's GNSS (especially when several are available at very little additional cost) to be a rather poor decision.
[0]: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP726?locale=en_US
The actual USML[2] is a bit...verbose.
[1] http://insidegnss.com/u-s-eases-export-regulations-for-gps-r...
[2] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?node=pt22.1.121#se22.1...
But that would apply whether they are multi-system capable, or just that they can read the other systems, and are not entirely dependent on GPS.
The company had no problems selling in the US abd Russia. And even had multiple competitors.
Hence, expert/import laws are not a problem. At least for professional equipment.
As for military receivers, apparently they are unclassified but plug into a separate system that works like a TPM and provides the decryption keys, which have to be refreshed at least once a year.
But seriously, "war"? Positioning has turned out to be such a vital economic factor that having multiple suppliers seems such an obvious Good Thing™ that it shouldn't need explaining, and the article doesn't really offer any support for its "war" rhetoric apart from showing that there are multiple suppliers.
Despite the assurances that were made, even I as a citizen of an "ally" of the US am not comfortable with sole dependence on GPS and find Galileo a good project. And as we can see, it only takes one unhinged administration to make such assurances next to worthless. If you're higher up on the shitlist (unclear at this point how that's ordered), the need become greater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation
They are doing this because many civilian applications have emerged that need a more accurate signal (one is turn-by-turn navigation). When GPS was first developed, it was first envisioned as outputting coordinates and you looked up your location on a paper map, where 2m was better than most maps you could get.
The military is getting the ability to get a signal that is 100x more powerful in a small area.
It will be awhile before we see receivers using the new signal as the first of the new GPS sats launched today (some of the old ones are broadcasting the new signal, but not enough of them)
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss
see this article for details https://medium.com/@sjbarbeau/dual-frequency-gnss-on-android...
https://i.imgur.com/dIlh5Mj.png
Even 100 USD android phones use GPS and glonass and have done so for a while.
It decreases the time needed for a fix for example.
This is in a $250 unit so clearly neither cost nor geopolitics seem to be obstacles.
Given they are going for low cost mass produced, I doubt they have the necessary hardware, especially the highly accurate clocks.
If you're speaking theoretically, yes, again the hardest would probably be the clocks, but there's no reason a private company can't produce them if needed. The bigger issue would be that they would have to compete against the free, government-subsidiesed networks, which seems really tough. Maybe if they target the really high accuracy only available to the military, but even then codeless is already good enough for most applications.
I had autonomous vehicles in mind, which would certainly benefit from a highly accurate, ubiquitous and reliable positioning system (esp. if companies like Tesla can be supplied directly by SpaceX).
The good news: There will be four competing global positioning systems available to consumers. They're motivated to operate their systems out of strategic military and economic reasons.
To call this a war is uncalled for. It's an arms-race with civilian benefits. It would be a war if they jammed or destroyed each other's satellites.
Agreed. It reminds me of a saying:
"To those accustomed to privilege, equality seems like an attack."
This isn't exactly privilege, but same principle. The US has been used to defining the category. Now they don't. To the insecure that seems like a threat, not a move toward the federated kind of system it should always have been.
A good read from 1998, Taking a “War of Words” Too Literally:
https://paradite.com/2014/01/23/good-articletaking-a-war-of-...
you can see some characteristics of devices here: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss
Its relatively simple to jam GNSS signals since they are so weak.
QZSS is a interesting formation since it is designed for urban environment (skyscrapers and canyons)
The USA has no solution for shipping positioning outside of GPS...