Wide Area Differential GPS

Changdon Kee, Bradford W. Parkinson, Penina Axelrad

Abstract: The Global Positioning System (GPS) has proven to be an extremely accurate positioning sensor for a wide variety of applications. However in some situations, such as aircraft approach and landing, higher accuracy is required. Wide Area Differential GPS (WADGPS) is a system which could be used to meet such requirements. The WADGPS system is comprised of a master station, and local monitor stations distributed across the United States. The WADGPS system calculates and transmits a vector of error corrections to the users. This correction vector consists of parameters describing the three dimensional ephemeris errors, satellite clock offsets, and ionospheric time delay parameters. The master station gathers GPS measurements made at each of the local stations and estimates the errors using a combination of batch least squares plus either nonlinear static estimation or Kalman filtering algorithm. The performance of a 15 station WADGPS network was investigated by simulation for users at sites across the U.S. The monitor stations were located at existing LORAN or VOR stations. Simulation results indicate that normal GPS positioning errors can potentially be reduced by more than 95% using WADGPS.
Published in: Proceedings of the 3rd International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1990)
September 19 - 21, 1990
The Broadmoor Hotel
Colorado Spring, CO
Pages: 587 - 598
Cite this article: Updated citation: Published in NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation
Full Paper: ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit
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