Course Information
The use of satellite-based navigation systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), GLONASS, and the soon to be deployed Galileo system has increased tremendously over the past decade. The GPS industry generates revenue of several billion dollars each year. GPS is already tightly integrated into such disparate sectors of our lives as recreation, travel, telecommunications, the power industry, and financial world. The number of applications is only expected to increase in the coming years, as new uses for the timing and positioning information provided by these systems are found.
This course is intended to provide seniors and graduate students with a broad background on the basics of satellite-based navigation systems in addition to an in-depth working knowledge of the Global Positioning System. Students will learn about the signal structure, encoding techniques, orbital dynamics, sources of error, and numerical methods used to create a navigation solution. Students will gain hands-on experience in the laboratory working with a GPS receiver that allows access to the low-level information provided by the satellites. By the end of the semester, students will have developed Matlab code to interact with this GPS receiver and generate a navigation solution.
ECE 498JM: Global Positioning Systems meets for lectures on Mon, Wed, and Fri from 10:00-10:50a. There is a weekly lab on either Wed or Fri afternoon from 2:30-5:00p. The lab is held in 251 Everitt Laboratory.
Tentative Syllabus
| Date | Lecture | Laboratory | Homework |
| M 8/25 | Course Overview and a History of Navigation | ||
| W 8/27 | Overview of GPS Satellites and Receivers | ||
| F 8/29 | Basic Principles of Satellite Navigation Systems | ||
| M 8/31 | NO CLASS (Labor Day) | ||
| W 9/3 | The Newtron-Raphson Method | HW #1 | |
| F 9/5 | Time Standards (read "Time and Frequency Dissemination" | ||
| M 9/8 | Reference Frames | LAB 1: A Frist Look at the GPS Signal and an Introduction to the OpenSource GPS Receiver Card | |
| W 9/10 | Coordinate Transforms | HW #2 | |
| F 9/12 | Orbital Dynamics | ||
| M 9/15 | Calculating the Satellite Location | ||
| W 9/17 | Corrections to the Ephemerides | HW #3 | |
| F 9/19 | The GPS Signal and Spread-Spectrum Communications (read "The ABCs of Spread Spectrum - A tutorial" | ||
| M 9/22 | Pseduo-Random Codes | LAB 2: Ephemerides and Satellite Locations | |
| W 9/24 | GPS Signal Structure | HW #4 | |
| F 9/26 | Range and Pseudorange | ||
| M 9/29 | Phase Range | ||
| W 10/1 | The Effects of Relativity on GPS | HW #5 | |
| F 10/3 | Code Range Navigation Solution | ||
| M 10/6 | Code Range Navigation Solution | LAB 3: GPS Observables | |
| W 10/8 | Phase Range Navigation Solution | HW #6 | |
| F 10/10 | Error Statistics | ||
| M 10/13 | Ranging Errors | ||
| W 10/15 | MIDTERM 1 (IN CLASS) | ||
| F 10/17 | NO CLASS | ||
| M 10/20 | Dilution of Precision | ||
| W 10/22 | Overdetermined Navigation Solution | HW #7 | |
| F 10/24 | Propagation of Radio Waves in a Plasma: The Effects of the Ionosphere | ||
| M 10/27 | Atmospheric Effects | LAB 4: The Navigation Solution | |
| W 10/29 | Differential GPS | HW #8 | |
| F 10/31 | The Wide Area Augmentation System | ||
| M 11/3 | Virterbi Decoding | ||
| W 11/5 | Viterbi Decoding | HW #9 | |
| F 11/7 | Applying WAAS Corrections | ||
| M 11/10 | Design Project Overview | LAB 5: Differential GPS | |
| W 11/12 | Velocity Determination | HW #10 | |
| F 11/14 | Future Improvements to GPS | ||
| M 11/17 | Alternatives to GPS (GLONASS & Galileo) | ||
| W 11/19 | Alternatives to GPS (GLONASS & Galileo) | ||
| F 11/21 | Preparing for Final Project Presentation | ||
| M 12/1 | Final Project Presentations | ||
| W 12/3 | Final Project Presentations | ||
| F 12/5 | Final Project Presentations | ||
| M 12/8 | Final Project Presentations | ||
| W 12/19 | Final Project Presentations | ||
| F 12/19 | Final Project Report Due |
