United Way LawRence County

Global Positioning System is a very famous navigation system that is used by a large number of people today. The purpose of this system is the detecting of the velocity and position of the objects. It can detect the object at any place on Earth, even in polar areas and in space to 100 kilometers above Earth in any weather conditions. The developer of Global Positioning System became the United States Department of Defense that has realized the project.

The main principle of functioning is identifying of the location by the method of measuring the distance to an object from the point with fixed coordinates. The distance is counted by the delay time of radio signal diffusing from the sending satellite to the receiving of it by a GPS antenna. 3-dimensional coordinates can be detected when GPS receiver will know the distance to 3 satellites and the time of the Global Positioning System. And to define a receiver's coordinates and altitude it must apply minimum 4 transmitters' signals. The direction of the satellites from Earth is implemented in the control station that is located in Schriever base, Colorado.

GPS receivers are often applied today by civil persons, sailors, rescuers and the police for location and speed definition of different objects. You can get GPS devices in different shops. Today it is usually built in cell phones, personal computers and onboarders. A customer may define his geographical location with the assistance of GPS receiver at any moment of time that he needs. The exactness of the detection of the signal location is from 3 to 5 meters and it is greatly heightened with the correction signal from Earth and the calculating error is one millimeter.

GPS tracking software is also offered to consumers. This arrangement helps a customer define his location that is displayed on the electronic map.

There are two types of electronic maps. The first type of raster electronic maps is the most open and the simplest kind. This type of maps is a usual picture of the territory where the coordinates of a receiver are used. The scale of such an electronic map depends on the initial variant of it. This map can be a simple picture from satellite or a scanned geographical map.

And vector electronic maps are created with their proper data system inside that makes them very helpful. There are all information about surrounding objects, the territory you are located in and other useful data for a traveler. For example the country information includes the streams, lakes, mountains and other objects that are situated in this territory. The likeness of these 2 types of maps is in the data about all the hotels, restaurants and filling stations. They have all the data about the places you will need to relax in. Portable GPS is you advantage over usual navigation maps.

But we are to tell you some words about the shortcomings of this product. The main shortcoming of all radio-navigation systems is that a signal would not reach the receiver due to some conditions. For example it is almost impossible to detect your location in reinforced concrete buildings. None the less it remains to be the best way of the location detecting for the present moment of time.