Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Their Applications

The Global Positioning System (GPS) was once the only operational global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and it was used all over the world to access location-based services (LBS). With the Russian GLONASS navigation system and the future deployment of China's Compass and Europe's Galileo navigation, there will be increased focus on the capabilities and applications of such systems. This article gives an overview of the different navigation systems, explains the navigation channel and generic approach used by a commercial standard receiver to calculate a user position and generally describes channel acquisition and tracking. GNSS applications such as differential GNSS (D GNSS) and multiple frequency-band navigation, their complexity and benefits are also presented.