[time-nuts] Number of GPS sats in the sky?

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Thu Jul 9 20:40:35 EDT 2015


bob at evoria.net said:
> Is there a practical limit to the number of GPS sats overhead at any one
> time?

I think there is a 5 bit field for the satellite number in some of the packet 
formats.  You are unlikely to see more than half of them.

I think they actually have more than 32 satellites up there.  The extras are 
on hot standby, waiting to be told what number to use and/or to how to get 
into the correct orbit.

You might read the manual for the chip you are using.  It may use satellites 
from other systems and it may give you a limit on the number of copies of an 
array it will send.

-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.





More information about the time-nuts mailing list