Interesting Facts:

The GPS project was launched by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1973 for use by the United States military and became fully operational in 1995. It was allowed for civilian use in the 1980s.

The GPS does not require the user to transmit any data, and it operates independently of any telephonic or internet reception, though these technologies can enhance the usefulness of the GPS positioning information. The GPS provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created the system, maintains it, and makes it freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.

It is a global navigation satellite system that provides geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites ( to obtain an accurate result for the position of the receiver ).

Although four satellites are required for normal operation, fewer apply in special cases. If one variable is already known, a receiver can determine its position using only three satellites. For example, a ship or aircraft may have known elevation. Some GPS receivers may use additional clues or assumptions such as reusing the last known altitude, dead reckoning, inertial navigation, or including information from the vehicle computer, to give a (possibly degraded) position when fewer than four satellites are visible.

The current GPS consists of three major segments. These are the space segment, a control segment, and a user segment. The U.S. Air Force develops, maintains, and operates the space and control segments. GPS satellites broadcast signals from space, and each GPS receiver uses these signals to calculate its three-dimensional location (latitude, longitude, and altitude) and the current time.

Many civilian applications use one or more of GPS's three basic components: absolute location, relative movement, and time transfer:

• Agriculture: Today, a growing number of crop producers are using GPS and other modern electronic and computer equipment to practice Site-Specific Management (SSM) and precision agriculture. This technology has the potential in agricultural mechanization (farm and machinery management) by providing farmers with a sophisticated tool to measure yield on much smaller scales as well as precise determination and automatic storing of variables such as field time, working area, machine travel distance and speed, fuel consumption and yield information.


• Vehicles: location and routes for cars and trucks.


• Cartography: both civilian and military cartographers use GPS extensively.


• Cellular Telephony: Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations (cell sites), whereas satellite phones connect to orbiting satellites. Both networks are interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to allow any phone in the world to be dialed.


• Clock synchronization: the accuracy of GPS time signals (±10 ns)[88] is second only to the atomic clocks they are based on, and is used in applications such as GPS disciplined oscillators.


• Fleet tracking: used to identify, locate and maintain contact reports with one or more fleet vehicles in real-time.


• Vehicle tracking systems, person tracking systems, and pet tracking systems use GPS to locate devices that are attached to or carried by a person, vehicle, or pet. This can provide continuous tracking and send notifications.


• Navigation: navigators value digitally precise velocity and orientation measurements.


• Telematics: GPS technology integrated with computers and mobile communications technology in automotive navigation systems.

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