DIFFERENTIAL GPS
The accuracy of GPS measurements can be increased considerably by using differential GPS
(DGPS) techniques. There are several forms of DGPS,all of which are intended to increase
the accuracy of basis GPS position measurement, and to remove the effects of selective
availability. A second,fixed GPS receiver at a reference station is always required in a
differential GPS system. In the simplest forms of DGPS, a second GPS receiver at a known
position continuously calculates its position using the GPS C/A code. The calcualated
location is compared to the known location of the station and the differences in
and
are
sent by a radio telemetry link to the first GPS receiver. The accuracy of the C/A code position
measurement can be increased from 100 m to about 10m,with SA in effect, but this technique
works well only if the two stations are close together and use the same four satellites for the
position calculation.
In a more sophisticated from of differential GPS, the monitoring station at a known
location measures the error in pseudo range to each satellite that is visible at its location, and
telemeters the error values to users in that area. This allows other GPS users to select which
satellites they want to observe, and extends the area over which the DGPS system can
operate. The accuracy of a C/A code measurement can be increased to 5m for receivers
within 10km of the reference station and to 10m for receivers within 500km of the reference
station.
The most accurate forms of differential GPS use the relative phase of the many signals
in the GPS transmissions to increase the accuracy of the timing measurements. Suppose that
you could the number of cycles of the 1575MHz L1 carrier wave between a satellite and a
GPS receiver, and that the GPS satellites are stationary for the length of time it takes to make
the count at two separate locations. The wavelength of the L1 carrier is 0.19043m, so
movement of the receiver by 0.01 m directly, away from the satellite would change the phase
angle of the received wave by 18.9 0.If the total number of cycles between the satellites and
the receiver is known, and fractional cycles are measured with a phase resolution of 20, the
true distance to the satellite can be found to 0.01m accuracy. In principles, measurements
which compare the phase angle of the received L1 carriers from several GPS satellites could
therefore be used to detect receiver movements at the centimeter level. This is called
differential phase or kinematic DGPS.
The obvious difficulty is that we cannot count the number of cycles of the L1 carrier
between the satellite and the receiver. However, we can make phase measurements and time
of arrival comparisons for various GPS signals at two different locations and resolve motion
between the two locations. If one of the receivers is a fixed reference station, it is then
possible to locate the second GPS receiver very accurately with respect to that fixed location.
This technique is valuable in land surveying, for example, where a reference station
can be set up at a known location, such as the corner of a plot of land, and the position of the
plot boundary relative to that point can be measured. The same technique can be used to find
the position of an aircraft relative to an airport runway so that a precision approach path can
be established.
The difficulty with DGPS phase comparison measurements is that the L1 carrier has
cycles which repeat every 0.19043 m, and the one cycle is identical to the next. This creates
range ambiguity which must be resolved by reference to the wavelengths of other signals.
The 10.23MHz P code transmission of the L1 carrier has a P code chip length in space of
29.326 m, which is 154 cycles of the L1 carrier. The ambiguity of the carrier waveform can
be resolved within the 29.326m length of a P code chip by comparison of the time of arrival
of a particular cycle of the L1 carrier with the time since the start of the P code chip. Similar
ambiguity resolution for the 29-m P codechips is possible using the length of the C/A code
chip and the C/A code sequence is 293.255km. When ambiguity resolution is applied using
all of these waveforms, very small movements of the receiver can be detected and ambiguity
out to 293 km can be removed. Aircraft flight paths have been tracked to an accuracy of 2cm
over distance of tens of kilometers using phase comparison DGPS techniques.
