New Technique Makes GPS Accurate Down To The Centimeter

Megalith

Megalith

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This should prove useful for particular applications, such as autonomous vehicles.

Achieving centimeter accuracy requires "GPS carrier phase integer ambiguity resolution." Until now, combining GPS and IMU data to solve for the integers has been computationally expensive, limiting its use in real-world applications. The UCR team has changed that, developing a new approach that results in highly accurate positioning information with several orders of magnitude fewer computations.
 
The newer Galileo and GPS satellites also broadcast the L5 signal (not just L1 and L2). Once they've launched enough new satellites up there to complete a constellation, centimeter accuracy will be much easier / cheaper to get than it is now. Currently you need to use the carrier wave on L2 (military band), combined with L1, in order to get centimeter accuracy. That computation is hard and only a couple of companies own all the patents to get it done. Once the L5 is available, civilians won't need L2 anymore and centimeter accuracy will be a lot cheaper to get. I suspect it will still be outside the reach of most consumers (over $1000) to get centimeter accuracy. But it will be a lot cheaper than the 'over $10,000' it is now. Everything tends to get easier and cheaper over time though... So who knows????
 
Old_Way said:
The newer Galileo and GPS satellites also broadcast the L5 signal (not just L1 and L2). Once they've launched enough new satellites up there to complete a constellation, centimeter accuracy will be much easier / cheaper to get than it is now. Currently you need to use the carrier wave on L2 (military band), combined with L1, in order to get centimeter accuracy. That computation is hard and only a couple of companies own all the patents to get it done. Once the L5 is available, civilians won't need L2 anymore and centimeter accuracy will be a lot cheaper to get. I suspect it will still be outside the reach of most consumers (over $1000) to get centimeter accuracy. But it will be a lot cheaper than the 'over $10,000' it is now. Everything tends to get easier and cheaper over time though... So who knows????
Click to expand...

The last GPS 2F satellite was launched earlier this month so their should be enough now. if not, GPS 3 wont' start until next year.
 
I thought TACC, Trapped Atom Clock on Chips, were supposed to give everyone accuracy to a centimeter on their cellphones in another couple of years.
 
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