‘SuperGPS’ Technology Accurately Pinpoints Your Position Within Inches

Science Alert  November 23, 2022
Although GNSS can provide centimetre-level precision, GNSS receivers are prone to many-metre errors owing to multipath propagation and an obstructed view of the sky, which occur particularly in urban areas where accurate positioning is most needed. Moreover, the vulnerabilities of GNSS, combined with the lack of a back-up system, pose a severe risk to GNSS-dependent technologies. Researhers in the Netherlands have demonstrated a terrestrial positioning system that is independent of GNSS and offers superior performance through a constellation of radio transmitters, connected and time-synchronized at the subnanosecond level through a fibre-optic Ethernet network. Using optical and wireless transmission schemes similar to those encountered in mobile communication networks, and exploiting spectrally efficient virtual wideband signals, the detrimental effects of multipath propagation were mitigated, thus enabling robust decimetre-level positioning and subnanosecond timing in a multipath-prone outdoor environment. According to the researchers their work provides a glimpse of a future in which telecommunication networks provide not only connectivity but also GNSS-independent timing and positioning services with unprecedented accuracy and reliability…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 

Positioning performance. Credit: Nature volume 611, pages473–478 (2022) 

Posted in Global navigation satellite system and tagged , , .

Leave a Reply