NAVSTAR GPS is a very famous navigation facilities that are applied by a great amount of people nowadays. This system is made for detecting the position and speed of the objects at any place on Earth. It can be done almost in any weather conditions and in all the territories on Earth including polar territory and in outer space to 100 kilometers above Earth. The developer of Global Positioning System became the United States Department of Defense that has realized the project.
The situation is identified by the principle of measuring the distance from the spot with the definite coordinates to an object. The sending satellite spreads the signal to a GPS antenna and the delay time is calculated to detect the distance between the receiver and transmitter. 3-dimensional coordinates may be detected when GPS receiver will recognize the distance to 3 satellites and the time of the NAVSTAR GPS system. And to define a receiver's coordinates and altitude it has to apply minimum 4 transmitters' signals. Orbital force tracking is implemented from the main control station that is situated in Schriever base, Colorado.
GPS receivers are often used nowadays by civil persons, sailors, rescuers and the police for location and velocity definition of diverse objects. Handheld GPS systems are being traded in different shops and they are built in cell-phones, PCs and onboarders. A user may define his geographical position with the assistance of GPS receiver at any moment of time that he needs. The maximum precision is from 3 to 5 meters and with the correction radio signal from Earth it is to 1 millimeter.
GPS mapping software is also offered to consumers. Such system gives you a possibility to detect your geographical position on the electronic map.
GPS electronic maps are separated into 2 kinds. The first kind is raster electronic maps, the simplest and the most open ones. It is the picture of an area where the coordinates of a receiver are used. There are used various scales but it mostly depends on the primary variant of a map. It can be either a photo from satellite or scanned version of a usual geographical map.
Vector maps, instead, are the maps with their own data system inside them. The database includes the information about objects, territory and almost anything you need to know. There may be different types of the country information, like the lakes, mountains etc. These two types of electronic maps contain the information about all the hotels, motels, restaurants and filling stations in the area you are. You would receive a real pleasure of a travel with the assistance of portable automotive.
And of course as everything that is made by human Global Positioning System has its own shortcomings. As in any radio-navigation arrangement GPS signals would not reach from the satellite to a receiver and visa versa owing to diverse circumstances. For example it is almost impossible to detect your location in reinforced concrete constructions. But anyway it is the greatest system of detecting your geographical coordinates for today.