At one time, to know where you were, you could only go to a road junction and be on the map otherwise it would have been impossible in the absence of other landmarks. Today, however, there is GPS and just turn on a mobile phone or smartphone that has the receiver to immediately know where you are, with the exact coordinates. To take nothing for granted, let's see, in this purely theoretical article, how GPS works and how it connects to satellites to detect the precise position in real time .
As happened for the internet, GPS technology was born for military reasons, to make the orientation of the army easier in a foreign field. GPS stands for Global Positioning System and represents a network of 27 artificial satellites that orbit the Earth. Of these 27 satellites, 24 are currently in use while the remaining three are in reserve, starting if one of the 24 fails. Based on the arrangement of these satellites, at least four of them are visible in the sky at the same time, at any given time, anywhere in the world.
Along with the satellites in orbit, there are also five monitoring stations on Earth: the master station (in Colorado) and four other stations located in more distant places that are close to the equator. These stations collect data from satellites and transmit it to the mother station that interprets it, adjust it and transmit it back to GPS satellites. Although this system was originally intended for military use, the United States opened the system in 1983 for civilian use and it is thanks to this concession that we can use those satellites today to find the right way and travel peacefully around the world.
So how do mobile devices, satellite navigators like TomTom or Garmin, GPS antennas and cell phones use the GPS system to recognize exactly where we are "> wikipedia in English) but, roughly speaking, this is the reasoning. To get accurate GPS data, most GPS devices try to connect to at least four satellites.
This is the main reason why it sometimes takes a long time to detect our position on the map or navigator.
The numerous calculations to compensate for the signal delay between satellites and receivers is the cause of high energy consumption which causes, in mobile phones and smartphones, a rapid discharge of the battery.
The companies that designed the world maps and maps and that produce GPS navigators, through databases, combine the detection of GPS coordinates with the position of the streets, houses, shops and places of interest allowing us to search a geographic point by writing the street or the location and not the coordinates such as longitude and latitude. GPS always takes, whenever you have visibility on the sky, not therefore in the tunnels. Even if electricity goes out all over the world, GPS would still work, at least as long as those satellites are active above them, turning in orbit.
To improve reception from GPS satellites it is possible, on Android smartphones, to enable eGPS or a detection system based on internet connection that downloads data from satellites even in closed places.
In addition, you can download a program like GPS Fix to correct GPS reception on Android Smartphones .
