Re:FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
by BurningFrog on Saturday January 23, 2021 @08:32PM
(#25888019)
OK, I looked it up, and the GPS system is a different and simpler from what I thought I heard.
In the end the math is indeed similar, but how it gets there is quite different.
For one thing, each satellite carries an atomic clock to make things work. And the receiver locates itself by listening to signals, while triangulation is several receivers working together to locate a transmitter.
Re:FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
by Dylan16807 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @10:48PM
(#25889006)
I will note that you could make the system work fine without an atomic clock on the satellites. There are circuits that can keep a good enough sync to a ground-based reference. It would just be annoying.
But the math is not significantly harder. The only meaningful quirk is that without a perfect clock you don't know the exact distances to each satellite, instead you have distances a+n, b+n, c+n, etc. Still though, you're just looking for the spot where your numbers line up. There's no wizardry in the "compute a position" part of GPS.