At the end of every year, I devote this column to Directions 2010 in which I discuss significant developments, trends, technologies, and companies in the GNSS industry. Two years ago, I wrote about the Year of the Who. Not GNSS technology; rather, the people and companies they run.
Last year, I highlighted 2009 as being the Year of the Other GNSS. The little brother of GPS…GLONASS.
Few precise-positioning users have employed Loran in a professional sense, although maybe you have in your personal life if you’re a airplane pilot or a mariner. Then again, if you’ve flown as an airline passenger or cruised onboard a ship, you’ve benefited from the back-up to GPS that Loran provides. That back-up is about to go away. As attention and resources shift away from Loran, they focuses more intensely on GPS augmentations, specifically differential GPS (DGPS) and satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) such as WAAS and EGNOS.
I received some feedback on my last column entitled “What’s the Difference Between a Used Car Salesman and a GPS Salesman?” Most of the comments were positive in that the technical content was reasonably deep and thorough. However, I did receive a couple of e-mails from folks who were offended by the comparison.
I didn’t attend the Minnesota GIS/LIS Annual Conference last week, but I received a report from someone who attended a session in which the presenter seemed to fit the maxim quite well. One of the presenter’s messages was that people should stop using WAAS immediately as a GPS correction source due to the inability of data collection software to handle the ITRF00 > NAD83/CORS96 datum shift. Following is a statement from one of his slides…
In sports, there is a phenomenon that sometimes occurs when a team is leading towards the end of a game. It’s called “playing not to lose.” The reason you are seeing high HDOP warnings from the NAVCEN and GPS “brownouts” during the day when RTK (GPS-only) isn’t working is because the GPS satellite constellation is sub-optimal. The current design of the GPS constellation is not focused on “playing to win”, but rather “playing not to lose.”
As I’ve been accustomed to doing, this newsletter addresses the questions you submitted during the Sept. 15 webinar entitled “What Can GLONASS, GPS L2C, and GPS L5 Do for You?”.
There were some great questions during the webinar, and a lot of them. There were so many, in fact, that I’m going to break them up into a couple of different newsletter issues. Also, I need to update you on my trip to ION GNSS a couple of weeks ago. I might mix up the next newsletter with more Q&A as well as the ION GNSS update.
I realize the GIS world doesn’t revolve around GPS but I’m going to spend some space on it this month. Currently, I’m in Savannah, Georgia at the annual ION GNSS/CGSIC conference.
It’s been awhile since I covered new GPS/GNSS products on the market. Following are some recent introductions. Please note I’ve only included major features. Click on the links to view the datasheets of the products for detailed specifications and features.
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