Understanding GPS internals
a project by awh
Updated almost 5 years ago. 3 hacker ♥️.

My car has it, nowadays every smartphone has it. But what's actually the math behind GPS (GLONASS) technique?

I vaguely know that there is some nonlinear system of equations that needs to be solved to get the 3 coordinates of your location. But what are the details and how is the computation efficiently done (in hard or software)?

Not sure what the result of this project will be. It could be some kind of paper or wiki page to summarize what I've found, a program illustrating different computational approaches to solve the underlying problem or even an Android app to make use of some hardware for GPS.

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  • over 8 years ago: wawiv74 joined this project.
  • about 9 years ago: dwaas liked this project.
  • about 9 years ago: okurz liked this project.
  • about 9 years ago: mkoutny disliked this project.
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  • about 9 years ago: abergmann liked this project.
  • about 9 years ago: awh started this project.
  • about 9 years ago: awh originated this project.


    • Comments

    • abergmann
      about 9 years ago by abergmann | Reply

      There are also projects using a cheap DVB-T USB stick as a SDR to receive GPS data with GNU Radio. Maybe it's worth a look. ;-)

    • mfeilner
      about 9 years ago by mfeilner | Reply

      I once wrote a basic article for Linux-Magazin on exactly that topic...

    • mkoutny
      about 9 years ago by mkoutny | Reply

      I really enjoyed this course on Coursera. The assessment tests are unfortunately very easy/little covering, however, the course itself tries to explain it quite well -- for instance you get to know how to linearize those equations and it's also good portion of signal processing.

    • okurz
      about 9 years ago by okurz | Reply

      In my previous job I actually worked on developing and building GNSS receiver hardware and software. You are welcome to ask me about more in-depth stuff I might provide :-) A nice overview page and good documentation covering the topic how GPS and GNSS works is available on http://www.navipedia.net

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