I've heard that eventually most GPS devices, like phones, will be able to also use Galileo and GLONASS (the Russian satellite navigation system). Does anyone know the status of that? There's a list on Wikipedia of GLONASS-compatible phones, but it's not clear if the typical American phone can actually use it.
Also, does anyone know how much more accurate the positioning will be with the 3 systems combined? And whether phones will have access to regional systems like for Japan? The Wikipedia pages are enticing on these ideas, but I haven't seen most of it updated in a while.
Multiple band GNSS chipsets have just recently become more common. The GLONASS constellation was inactive for quite some time due to economic issues in Russia, probably the reason it's seen slow adoption. Galileo is the only other GNSS system, but it's incomplete. Then there is the issue of different bands, and need for more complex antennas and LNAs. Most of the numbers I've seen for chipsets indicate that GLONASS support is still relatively unoptimized, power consumption for GLONASS acquistion is far higher than for GPS, but I'm not sure if that's simply a poor front end for the GLONASS frequencies, or if the signal/processing is significantly different.
Beidou (China), QZSS (Japan/Australia) and IRNASS (India) are all regional systems with far smaller systems (3+ satellites), and in the case of IRNASS and QZSS, heavily augmented by ground based stations (). Development of low cost RTK (real time kinematics), giving centimeter precision in some cases, has really been driven on a large scale by the Japanese. There is some great reading (and heavy math) on the RTKLIB site, http://www.rtklib.com/rtklib_document.htm, not only about RTK, but GNSS in general.
And things are going to get even more interesting with the data from the GRACE satellites, their gravity model will help improve position accuracy even further.
Oops, I misspoke. Both Galileo and Beidou are GNSS, but both are incomplete, and are expected to be fully populated sometime 2020+. China has had a regional system up for sometime (Beidou-1), but I didn't know they've been planning and launching a second, global system (Beidou-2).
> To improve development of the user segment, on August 11, 2010, Sergei Ivanov announced a plan to introduce a 25% import duty on all GPS-capable devices, including mobile phones, unless they are compatible with GLONASS. As well, the government is planning to force all car manufacturers in Russia to make cars with GLONASS starting from 2011. This will affect all car makers, including foreign brands like Ford and Toyota, which have car assembly facilities in Russia.[15]
Since the USA owns GPS they could turn it off whenever they feel the need to sanction Russia, therefore they have created their own infrastructure.
And yes, this is also relevant for the military, Russia needs the ability to strike any adversary if they have to, as does the US and China.
No block is going to lower their guard (I'm not so sure, that the US wouldn't strike Russia right now if they could without being punished), so everyone is going to race to a first strike potential where they can't be punished by an adversary.
Once that point is reached by any side, nobody knows what will happen, which is obviously the reason, why Russia resisted the US missile defense in Poland.
We couldn't even tell what would happen, if all sides had friendly relations to each other. Someone will have the upper hand, therefore someone could be submitted. And I'm sure that none of those countries mentioned would accept submission.
I really don't think it's misplaced paranoia. Assume, hypothetically, that the Ukraine becomes a NATO member (they applied I heard) and that an attack on one triggers an attack on all and that it triggers world war three (I said hypothetical, right?), then I don't think America is going to let the Russians use GPS anymore.
And if it so happened that Europe decided that the Iraq and other middle east wars were kind of pointless and that Iran has not been developing nukes like America said they were over and over, and it ends up in war, I really doubt that we (Europeans) will get to share either the American's system.
World wars are maybe not that likely, I'm no expert, but in the case of some big war anywhere, I think the Americans would not hesitate to disable the public signal (there is already an encrypted GPS signal which is much more accurate) for a month or two and win the war because nobody can orient themselves anymore. Having a couple of system kind of makes sense.
Paranoia about being denied any use of GPS. The US could arbitrarily shut down GPS over any territory they want, pretty much fucking up the everyday life there, given how more and more things depend on GPS signals nowdays. They did this before, and though they say they won't do this again [0], the fact remains that they can, and that's good enough reason for others to deploy a system of their own.
Japan is covered by a single orbit and there system provides significantly higher accuracy (cm vs meter) than GPS so for the fairly low price tag for seven satilites it's probably worth it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smartphones_using_GLONA...
Also, does anyone know how much more accurate the positioning will be with the 3 systems combined? And whether phones will have access to regional systems like for Japan? The Wikipedia pages are enticing on these ideas, but I haven't seen most of it updated in a while.