Factors Affecting GPS Signal
Posted on April 30, 2008
Certainly, in spite of the much touted accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS) signal, there are factors that can degrade it and thus affect its accuracy. Some of these are due to ionosphere and troposphere delay, signal multi-path, receiver clock errors, orbital errors, number of satellite visible, satellite geometry/shading and intentional degradation of the satellite signal.
Satellite signals tend to slow down at it passes through the atmosphere or is reflected off by objects such as tall buildings or large rock surfaces before reaching the receiver. A receiver’s built-in clock is usually not as accurate as the atomic clocks on-board the GPS satellites thus the slight timing errors. The inaccuracies of the satellites reported location, less GPS receivers that can “see” as well as poor geometry of satellites can all affect the accuracy of the GPS signal.
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