Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
August 1994, early morning. Spain’s Central Pyrenees Mountains still in darkness.
At the outset of an ascent to a 3,000-meter peak along the international border, one of the co-authors encounters a group of tourist hikers who have begun searching for a colleague who had left the camp the previous evening. In the pre-sunrise gloom, helicopters cannot yet operate.
A week later, the body of the hiker is found. The rescue efforts came, unfortunately, too late.
By Inside GNSS
Return to main article: "Demystifying GLONASS Inter-Frequency Carrier Phase Biases"
By Inside GNSS
1. GROWTH SPURT
California/Nevada, USA
√ The age of the Sierra Nevada mountains — home of Yosemite Valley and Lake Tahoe — is puzzling to geodesists. Integrating GPS and inSAR, Universities of Nevada and Glasgow teams studied the area’s uplift and found that it is growing by 1 to 2 millimeters per year. The verdict? The entire range could have arisen in less than 3 million years.
The diversity and redundancy provided by multiple, independent, compatible, and in some respects, interoperable GNSS systems must be a good thing, right?
Well, almost certainly. But as with many things in life and technology, the devil’s in the details. And, as the varied characteristics and design specifications of new GNSSes and regional systems become clearer, it may not be too early to sort out those details.
By Inside GNSS
As Desi Arnaz often said to Lucille Ball during an “I Love Lucy” episode on TV, “You’ve got some ’splaining to do.”
I refer, of course, to the untoward and unexpected initiative by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) to patent the technical innovations that underlie the planned next generation of civil GNSS signals.
By Dee Ann Divis
Return to main Washington View article: "USPTO Nears Approval of Troubling British Patent on New GPS Civil Signal"
By Dee Ann Divis
