Introducing Relativity in Global Navigation Satellite Systems

Abstract

Today, the Global Navigation Satellite Systems, used as global positioning systems, are the GPS and the GLONASS. They are based on a Newtonian model and hence they are only operative when several relativistic effects are taken into account. The most important relativistic effects (to order 1/c^2) are: the Einstein gravitational blue shift effect of the satellite clock frequency (Equivalence Principle of General Relativity) and the Doppler red shift of second order, due to the motion of the satellite (Special Relativity). On the other hand, in a few years the Galileo system will be built, copying the GPS system unless an alternative project is designed. In this work, it will be also shown that the SYPOR project, using fully relativistic concepts, is an alternative to a mere copy of the GPS system. According to this project, the Galileo system would be exact and there would be no need for relativistic corrections.

24 pages, RevTeX 4, based on a talk given in "International School: Relativistic Coordinates, Reference and Positioning Systems", Salamanca (Spain), January 21-25, 2005; final version with an extended section on the SYPOR project, accepted in Annalen der Physik (Leipzig)

References in corpus (5)

• World function and time transfer: general post-Minkowskian expansions
• Relativity of GPS Measurement
• Two-dimensional approach to relativistic positioning systems
• A principal positioning system for the Earth
• A globally well-behaved simultaneity connection for stationary frames in the weak field limit

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Evaluation of Kinematic Precise Point Positioning Convergence with an Incremental Graph Optimizer
• Numerical modeling of a Global Navigation Satellite System in a general relativistic framework
• A null frame for spacetime positioning by means of pulsating sources
• Assessment of the relativistic rotational transformations
• Enabling Robust State Estimation through Measurement Error Covariance Adaptation
• On the Doppler effect for light from orbiting sources in Kerr-type metrics
• Emission coordinates for the navigation in space
• The Doppler shift in a Schwarzschild spacetime
• Relativistic Positioning System in Perturbed Space-time
• Optical data implies a null simultaneity test theory parameter in rotating frames
• Gravitational time dilation as a resource in quantum sensing
• Approaches to relativistic positioning around Earth and error estimations
• Using global positioning systems to test extensions of General Relativity
• Relativistic positioning: including the influence of the gravitational action of the Sun and the Moon and the Earth's oblateness on Galileo satellites
• Assessment of the experimental support for differential simultaneity
• The Relativistic framework of Positioning systems
• Two null gravitational cones in the theory of GPS-intersatellite communications between two moving satellites. I. Physical and mathematical theory of the space-time interval and the geodesic distance on intersecting null cones
• Mapping the spacetime metric with GNSS: a preliminary study
• Relativistic versus Newtonian frames: emission coordinates
• Clocks' synchronization without round-trip conditions