Different navigation standards

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kingdragonfly

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#207935 20-Jan-2017 08:20

My understanding is their are four global navigation systems

- GPS (US military)

- Galileo (European Space Agency)

- Glonass (Russian military)

- Beidou (Chinese military)

Are any of these inter-operable? In other words, can a typical consumer model navigation system see more than one system?

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richms

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#1706203 20-Jan-2017 08:42

One of my cheap $9 USB GPS sticks that I got to use as a time source can be changed over to glonass. The most I have seen was 3 satillites on that with it on a window sill and the location was jumping all over the place. Possibly its not quite there yet.

I think there is some Japanese standard as well, but have not really looked into it.

Richard rich.ms

heapsort

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#1706317 20-Jan-2017 10:46

If you mean "typical consumer model navigation system" to include smartphones, then yes - some certainly can make simultaneous use of satellites from different systems to obtain a position.

Using the GPS Test Plus app I can see that my Android phone is currently using a mix of GPS and GLONASS satellites to calculate the location. I've never seen Galileo or Beidou sats appear, evidently my phone's hardware won't read those. But the app often shows one or more geostationary SBAS satellites (either of the two Japanese ones, or the westernmost USA one) on the northern horizon.