Opinion | GPS – Advantages & Disadvantages (PART-1)

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. The global positioning system provides a position on the earth’s surface and above with accuracies within about 10meters but within 2m for most of the time.

The GPS system is very quick and responsive; the position is updated every second in normal low-cost units. Another feature is the precision time, and derived features are speed and direction and track. The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil and commercial users around the world. It is maintained by the United States government and the biggest advantage is that it is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver.
The location system is not something new. Land Surveying is a very old activity as well as an important one when it comes to defining the boundaries of a certain piece of land. The importance of this activity is such that there is no room for errors in calculation and measurement. Land surveying in earlier days was done manually and hence the scope for errors was high. However, with the technological advancements, GPS came into picture and now it is being used with great success in the field of land surveying which comes with the advantage of accuracy and less cost of surveillance. The satellite that sends and receives signals is fully equipped with software protection that reduces mistakes.  Data is obtained directly from satellites and the GPS survey equipment does the necessary computation. Since whole calculation work is being performed by the equipment; hence there is no chance of error.
Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) tracking system is a very powerful tool and was originally designed and utilized by the military for a variety of purposes. Military personnel generally used this system to provide location and information of objects or individuals around the world, during navigation in the middle of forests, to trace soldiers lost in the forest, for launching missiles and other aerial weapons. GPS has been used in the last decade by civilians as well as to effectively track vehicles and locations, inventory, Alzheimer’s patients, migrating animals, and even pets. Despite its high rate of accuracy, there are some factors that affect the dependability of a GPS system. If the GPS system is of low quality, then the results produced will be one containing errors and will require multiple surveys to get accurate results.
History of Global Positioning Systems
The Global Positioning System project was developed in 1973 by America to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems. It was not a purely new innovation; rather it was an integration of ideas from several predecessors, including a number of classified engineering design studies from the 1960s. GPS was created and realized by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and was originally run with 24 satellites and used only for military and aviation purposes. It became fully operational in 1994. Bradford Parkinson, Roger L. Easton, and Ivan A. Getting are credited for inventing it.
During 1973, a meeting of about 12 military officers at the Pentagon discussed the creation of a Defense Navigation Satellite System (DNSS). It was at this meeting that “the real synthesis that became GPS was created.” Later that year, the DNSS program was named Navstar, or Navigation System Using Timing and Ranging. With the individual satellites being associated with the name Navstar, a more fully encompassing name was used to identify the constellation of Navstar satellites, Navstar-GPS, which was later shortened simply to GPS. It was in 1983 after Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 carrying 269 people, was shot down after straying into the USSR’s prohibited airspace, in the vicinity of Sakhalin and Moneron Islands, a directive was issued making GPS freely available for civilian use, once it was sufficiently developed, as a common good. The first satellite was launched in 1989, and the 24th satellite was launched in 1994. Roger L. Easton is widely credited as the primary inventor of GPS.
Over the last decade, the U.S. has implemented several improvements to the GPS service, including new signals for civil use and increased accuracy and integrity for all users, all while maintaining compatibility with existing GPS equipment. GPS modernization has now become an ongoing initiative to upgrade the Global Positioning System with new capabilities to meet growing military, civil, and commercial needs. The program is being implemented through a series of satellite acquisitions, including GPS Block III and the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX). The U.S. Government continues to improve the GPS space and ground segments to increase performance and accuracy.
Directions of Use
Global Positioning System is a modern technology that is used worldwide for a majority of purposes that includes military as well as civil uses. GPS has been successfully used for navigation, traffic and shuttle control, location, traffic control as well as locating landing spaces for aircraft at times of emergency. The U.S. Government controls the export of some civilian receivers. All GPS receivers capable of functioning above 18 kilometres (11 mi) altitude and 515 meters per second (1,001 km) or designed, modified for use with unmanned air vehicles like e.g. ballistic or cruise missile systems are classified as munitions (weapons) for which State Department export licenses are required. (To be continued)

– The writer can be reached at vkmalout@gmail.com