Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Sunday, April 08, 2007
Alternative to GPS, from Russia
'GPS alternatives take flight' describes that Russia will launch 8 navigation satellites in the short term (24 in total later), Russia hopes they won't have to rely on GPS in the future, and they intend to provide their service to enterprises and consumers.
China is doing the same, yet the European Galileo system is currently on hold. In any case the U.S. military/defense (you choose) controlled GPS will not be the only choice for navigation in the future, which the article indicates will have political implications, as USA then can't use GPS as a diplomatical weapon.
There's no indication of better function in cities and in-doors in this new system. My own experiments show that the GPS precision is much lower (up to 30-40 meters) when only 3 satellites can be 'seen'. In most cases there's no reception at all in-doors, which is as per spec, but still annoying as in-doors navigation has many applications.
Quote: "Everything that moves will use a navigation signal - airplanes, trains, yachts, people, rockets, valuable animals and favorite pets."
Quote: "A receiver must be in line of sight of no fewer than three satellites at any time to triangulate an accurate position. A fourth satellite is needed to calculate altitude."
This is the same as for GPS, still supposedly 24 satellites are required to cover the whole world.
China is doing the same, yet the European Galileo system is currently on hold. In any case the U.S. military/defense (you choose) controlled GPS will not be the only choice for navigation in the future, which the article indicates will have political implications, as USA then can't use GPS as a diplomatical weapon.
There's no indication of better function in cities and in-doors in this new system. My own experiments show that the GPS precision is much lower (up to 30-40 meters) when only 3 satellites can be 'seen'. In most cases there's no reception at all in-doors, which is as per spec, but still annoying as in-doors navigation has many applications.
Quote: "Everything that moves will use a navigation signal - airplanes, trains, yachts, people, rockets, valuable animals and favorite pets."
Quote: "A receiver must be in line of sight of no fewer than three satellites at any time to triangulate an accurate position. A fourth satellite is needed to calculate altitude."
This is the same as for GPS, still supposedly 24 satellites are required to cover the whole world.
