Harrison Hayward Period 7 The Mathematics Behind GPS We all see commercials involving someone being lost and

a GPS system getting them out of trouble, or more commonly these days ploys about the GPS voice system. But one thing that the buying public does not get to hear about is how does it work? How is it that a couple of satellites (actually an array of 24 satellites altogether, but no more than six usually) determine your position anywhere in the world? That will be the focus of this paper, or the mathematics behind GPS. I will begin by addressing the history of GPS in brief, then I will get into the math involved, and I will end with an example of the math behind GPS. Since this is a math paper, and not a history paper I will keep this section rather short. GPS was originally developed by the military for use in military operations, such as determining position of troops or enemy fortifications, etc. In 1993 the satellite array that does all the work for GPS systems was put in place, and by 1995 had reached full operational capacity. To ensure continuous worldwide coverage, GPS satellites are arranged so that four satellites are placed in each of six orbital planes. With this constellation geometry, four to ten GPS satellites will be visible anywhere in the world, if an elevation angle of 10 is considered (El-Rabbany 1-2). Though since the elevation at any given time can not always be 10 in the end all that is needed for an accurate calculation of ones position is four satellites, which is the minimum number of satellites used for all GPS calculation. The accuracy obtained with the method described earlier [the method used later in this paper] was until recently limited to 100m for the horizontal

component, 156m for the vertical component, and 340 ns for the time component, all at the 95% probability level. This low accuracy level was used to the effect of the so-called selective availability, a technique used to intentionally degrade the autonomous real-time positioning accuracy to unauthorized users [3]. With the recent presidential decision of termination the selective availability, the obtained horizontal accuracy is expected to improve to about 22m (95% probability level) [7,11] (El-Rabbany 8-9) So, GPS is pretty accurate, anyone can tell you that, but how is it so accurate? That is where the math starts to come in. How GPS works can be summarized in three steps: 1) Triangulation from satellites. This is achieved by measuring the distance of the radio signals using the travel time (these must be very accurate). 2) The exact location of the satellite in space needs to be known. 3) The correction of any delays the signal experiences as it travels through the atmosphere. Accounting for delays or differences between the clock in the GPS unit and the clock in the satellite are needed as well. Let us first look to the triangulation step. Your GPS unit sends out a signal to the satellite, which then bounces back to the receiver, and based upon the total time it took to travel the distance between your unit and the satellite is established. Your GPS unit then does this for all the other satellites required to triangulate your position. The end result is there is an intersection from all the satellites and you are at the center (see Figure 1)

But how are distances then determined? As mentioned above the most common method is the measurement of determined through the sending of signals back and forth from the device to the satellite, such systems are called bi-directional systems. Since the clock receiver on the GPS unit is not perfectly synched with the clock on the satellite, certain ranges may be in error they are called pseudoranges. Assuming we have the distances from four satellites and we know, are the exact positions of the satellites, we must then solve the following system equations where c is the speed of light and tb is the receiver clock offset time. In the following Figure (Figure 3) d1, for example, represents the distance to satellite one, and d2 represents the distance to satellite two, etc.

There are many things, which can throw the equation off such as the atmosphere causing a distortion in the time it takes for the signal to go back and forth. However, this is usually taken into account and adjusted for, meaning the formula is very accurate. All right, now that we now just how GPS is calculated, what about an example? Let us say that a ship is lost at sea, and it wants to find its position using its GPS unit. Start off by imagining the Earth as being at the origin of a xyz-coordinate system. All time will be measured in units of milliseconds. Our ship is in an unknown position and has no clock, but it has a GPS unit receiving signals from four different satellites at once. The data is as follows in Figure 4. The position of the satellites are determined by where they are in space, the numbers are small here so as to be easy to work with.

The signal was sent at time 19.9 and arrived at time t. Traveling at a speed of .047 (that is Earth radii per millisecond), that makes the distance d=.047(t 19.9). This same distance can be expressed in terms of (x, y, z ) and the satellites position (1, 2, 0): d=(x 1)2 + ( y 2)2 + (z 0)2. Combining these results leads to the equation (x1)2 + ( y 2)2 + z2=.0472(t19.9)2 (Kalman 385). If we are to expand this equation, and do a little rearranging, we are left with 2x + 4y 2(.0472)(19.9)2 = 1+ 2 .0472(19.9)2+ x2 + y2 + z2 .0472t2. The equations for the other satellites are represented in Figure 5.

The quadratic terms are all the same in the above equations so by subtracting the first equation from the other three we obtain (Figure 6):

Now we know that this system cannot have a unique solution. But if the satellite data is accurate, there must be a solution to the original system of quadratic equations, and this linear system must be consistent. By deriving the general solution, it will be possible to express three of the unknowns in terms of the fourth. Then, substitution in one of the original quadratic equations will produce a quadratic equation in one variable. Solving that will lead, in turn, to values for the other three variables (Kalman 388). We then create a matrix to represent the data (Figure 7):

We then get the matrix into reduced row echelon form as follows (Figure 8):

The general solution then comes out to be x = 5.41 .095t, y = 5.41 .095t, z = 3.67 . 067t, t free. Substituting in the solutions we just found into the first equation we get 0.02t2 1.88t + 43.56 = 0. This leads us to two solutions 43.1 and 50.0. If we select the first solution, then (x, y, z) = (1.317, 1.317, 0.790), which has a length of about 2. We are using units of earth radii, so this point is around 4000 miles above the surface of the earth. The second value of t leads to (x , y , z ) = (.667, .667, .332), with length 0.9997. That places the point on the surface of the earth (to four decimal places) and gives us the location of the ship (Kalman 388-389). That is all there is to calculating GPS. Obviously this is under perfect conditions with certain variables removed, but the basics still remain the same. So while commercials for GPS may leave us thinking about that British voice, that the unit has, I hope this paper has demystified exactly how GPS does its calculations. From finding where you are at on a backcountry road, to locating your ships location in the ocean, GPS can do it. Just be thankful you do not have to do the math. That is what GPS is for. Works Cited El-Rabbany, Ahmed. Introduction to GPS: the Global Positioning System. Boston, MA: Artech House, 2006. Print. Gopi, Satheesh. Global Positioning System: Principles and Applications. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Pub., 2005. Print. "The GPS." Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University. Web.

09 June 2010. <http://www.math.tamu.edu/~dallen/physics/gps/gps.htm>. Kalman, Dan. "An Underdetermined Linear System for GPS." The College Mathematics Journal 33.5 (2002): 384-90. Web. <http://mathdl.maa.org/images/upload_library/22/Polya/Kalman. pdf>. Langley, Richard B. "The Mathematics of GPS." Innovation. Web. <http://gauss.gge.unb.ca/gpsworld/EarlyInnovationColumns/Innov.199 1.07-08.pdf>.