TABLE OF CONTENTS [*]
Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) is clearly the most accurate worldwide navigation system yet developed, it still can exhibit significant errors. By understanding these errors, the user can both hope to reduce them and to understand the limitations of the GPS system. This section of the book should help develop that understanding. This chapter provides both an overview of the sources of error and a detailed analysis of the general error equations. It also presents a standard table of errors that should help clarify the impacts of variations in the specific error magnitudes. Later chapters delve into the expected ranges of these errors.
This development assumes that we are dealing with state-of-the-art receiver technology. In general, this requires a six-channel, continuous tracking implementation. Receivers with fewer channels will probably give a significantly degraded performance. In fact, a number of implementation compromises can produce receiver errors that are greater than those presented here.
This chapter first develops the general error equations and then illustrates how the dilution of precision (DOP) caused...
