Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by 0x12 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:07AM
(#3129947)
I don't understand from your table how the combined use of GPS+GLONASS would have a worse 'best case', 2.00 for GPS alone vs 2.37 for GPS+GLONASS.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by dfox on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @10:28AM
(#3130276)
There probably is some general statistical explanation of why you can get worse accuracy from combining multiple sources than each source by itself, but it seems irrelevant.
In actual receiver implementation you really get worse accuracy for simpler reason: most of the hardware resources (ie. receiver channels) are same between GPS and GLONASS, so using GLONASS ties up resources for GPS and vice versa.
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by jrockway on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @07:17PM
(#3132578)
I don't think this is true. Most of the cheap GPS chips I see on sparkfun can track 60 satellites at once, and you're not going to be seeing that many at one time anyway.
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by jstclair on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:31AM
(#3130025)
I would imagine for the same reason as wearing two watches doesn't improve your knowledge of the current time. You're more likely to be within the largest margin of error (i.e., the latest time on either of the watches is probably no later than the current time), but what can you say about the earliest time? Since it's equally likely to be correct on either watch, the only thing you can do is average it. But in the case that one of the watches is actually correct, you've just introduced error.
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by 0x12 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:38AM
(#3130050)
So, if I understand you correctly, the average error decreases but the best error actually increases?
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by Alex3917 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:54AM
(#3130121)
I don't know the explanation, but I know this comes up in biometrics a lot. E.g. using fingerprints + facial geometry to identify someone is much less accurate than using either one or the other. Bruce Schneier has written about this in his book Beyond Fear, and I'm sure there are explanations online somewhere.
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS
by Symmetry on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @10:14AM
(#3130204)
If you expect that more information will decrease performance, your algorithms are seriously borked.