What is GPS

Owned and funded by the US Department of Defence, GPS or Global Positioning Systems is a global precise worldwide positioning system. The resulting navigational system was developed for use by the military is now used in thousands of civil applications throughout the world, including cars, planes, boats, farming machinery, construction equipment, movie making machinery and even lap top computers.


GPS makes use of specially provided satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver, enabling the receiver to compute position, velocity and time. A minimum of four GPS satellite signals are used to compute positions in three dimensions and the time offset in the receiver clock. Using these reference points, GPS is able to calculate positions accurate to within half a metre, and with some advanced forms of GPS accurate measurements can be made to within one centimeter.

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