GPS signals

Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites broadcast microwave signals to enable GPS receivers on or near the Earth's surface to determine location, velocity, and time. The GPS system itself is operated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for use by both the military and the general public.

GPS signals include ranging signals, used to measure the distance to the satellite, and navigation messages. The navigation messages include ephemeris data, used to calculate the position of each satellite in orbit, and information about the time and status of the entire satellite constellation, called the almanac.

There are 4 signals available for civilian use. In order of date of introduction, these are: L1 C/A, L2C, L5 and L1C. L1 C/A is also called the legacy signal and is broadcast by all satellites. The other signals are called modernized signals and not broadcast by all satellites. In addition, there are restricted signals, also broadcast to the general public, but whose encoding is secret and are intended to be used only by authorized parties. Nonetheless, some limited use of restricted signals can be made by civilians without access to the secret encoding details; this is called codeless and semi-codeless access, and is officially supported.

The interface to the User Segment (GPS receivers) is described in the Interface Control Documents (ICD). The format of civilian signals is described in the Interface Specification (IS) which is a subset of the ICD.

The GPS satellites (called space vehicles in the GPS interface specification documents) transmit simultaneously several ranging codes and navigation data using binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). Only a limited number of central frequencies are used; satellites using the same frequency are distinguished by using different ranging codes; in other words, GPS uses code division multiple access. The ranging codes are also called chipping codes (in reference to CDMA/DSSS), pseudorandom noise and pseudorandom binary sequences (in reference to the fact that it is predictable, but statistically it resembles noise).

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