[time-nuts] GPS Usage

Javier Herrero jherrero at hvsistemas.es
Wed Mar 9 08:56:24 UTC 2011


El 09/03/2011 06:29, J. Forster escribió:
> This is a surprise:
>
> "in reality more than 90 percent of the users of GPS worldwide use it
> primarily for a timing reference."
>
>
This is a phallacy, except if we are taking into account indirect GPS 
users, i.e. admitting that a credit card user is a GPS user because the 
timestamping of the translation relies on a GPS :) But I suspect that, 
except in our time-nuts laboratories, the percentage of GPS receivers 
dedicated to timing compared to those dedicated to positioning is really 
low. Also, sometimes GPS timing is used because it is unexpensive, but 
provides an accuracy orders of magnitude better than the real needs (a 
traffic control radar camera tags the pictures with a one second 
precision... but uses a GPS, could be tagged with microsecond precission 
;) ).

And anyway, in a no-GPS world with real mass high-precission timing 
needs, other methods could be used... that would suppose a higher demand 
of Cs clocks and H-masers (so we could buy a good user H-maser for 
USD100 at the place you all know? mmm... not so bad ;) )

-- 
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Javier Herrero                            EMAIL: jherrero at hvsistemas.com
Chief Technology Officer
HV Sistemas S.L.                          PHONE:         +34 949 336 806
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