7 ms·

Apparently Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou don't count, because the backups for this backbone of the global economy have to be American? https://en.wikipedia.org/w

• deleted 8y ago
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• zkms 8y ago
  Any ill that would befall GPS could easily also affect those. The issue is "a shocking amount of critical infrastructure depends on positioning/timing information derived solely from a handful of satellites broadcasting weak signals in the 1.whatever GHz band", whoever runs the ground segment for these constellations is immaterial (to first order) and "GPS" is just layman terminology. Also eLORAN when?
  • NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    eLORAN never seems most likely now LORAN-C has been decommissioned and after 20 years of talking about it.
  • thermodynthrway 8y ago
    The real answer is star navigation at night and interial + sun guided during the day. Phone hardware is perfectly capable but ITAR says otherwise. There's a reason why every legal GPS receiver shuts down after altitude or speed limits are exceeded. Too easy to make weapons that fly in your window from hundreds of miles away, basically
    • jliptzin 8y ago
      Is it really so hard for a determined terrorist to build his own gps receiver? Or at least modify one to remove that limitation?
      • thermodynthrway 8y ago
        Yes. Look at the ham hobby, hardly any of them can pick up GPS signals, despite the technology being literally everywhere
        • oh_sigh 8y ago
          That's not true at all. You can use a $20 SDR card to receive GPS signals and and then can decode them on any commodity laptop, or a small computer like a raspberry pi. e.g. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/receiving-gps-with-an-rtl-sdr-dongle-and-gps-antenna/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/receiving-gps-with-an-rtl-sdr-dongle...
          • thermodynthrway 8y ago
            Possible maybe but unusual. 99% of ham is narrowband, GPS is spread across a megahertz. Somebody goofed and made a TV tuner chip that could be used as an SDR at that sample rate, and I'm sure the powers that be arent happy.
          • berti 8y ago
            Receiving the signals is only a part of the problem, and even getting a "fix" isn't all that hard. Maintaining an accurate fix, and at the same time refining away previous errors, on a fast moving vehicle, is a dark art.
            • londons_explore 8y ago
              Software architectures are the limiting factor here. Every app on your phone cares about "Where am I now", but no app wants to know "Where was I 5 seconds ago, but with more accuracy than you knew when I last asked". Neither android not iPhone have an API to allow GPS hardware to refine the accuracy of historic position locations.
  • kalleboo 8y ago
    > Any ill that would befall GPS could easily also affect those The linked article that we're commenting on was about a software bug in GPS only The root cause was a bug in the GPS network. When the U.S. Air Force, which operates the 31 satellites, decommissioned an older one and zeroed out its database values, it accidentally introduced tiny errors into the database, skewing the numbers
• deleted 8y ago
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• davidcuddeback 8y ago
  > I do wonder how many of these are supported by common hardware like mobile phones, anybody have a pointer to a compatibility list? iPhone X specs list "GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS" [1]. I'm pretty sure they've supported multiple GNSS systems for a few generations. I know I've seen several GNSS modules from u-blox that support multiple GNSS systems as well. One example, NEO-M8, supports "BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS / QZSS." [2] I know I've also seen several cheap GPS modules that are GPS-only, so multiple GNSS support isn't ubiquitous, but it's probably ahead of IPv6 adoption. [1]: https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/specs/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/specs/ [2]: https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/neo-m8-series https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/neo-m8-series
• cpncrunch 8y ago
  >the backups for this backbone of the global economy have to be American Where does the article say that?
  • jpatokal 8y ago
    It focuses squarely on GPS and proposed American solutions to make GPS (only) more resilient, while ignoring the other three operational backups the world does have!
• thermodynthrway 8y ago
  All satellite nagivation systems are trivially jammable. They use DSSS to spread out codes and resist jamming but signal levels are still so weak at the surface it's trivial to block. Most phones are compatible with GPS(US) +Galileo(Europe)+Glonass(Russia). Most of them also report which constellation the locks are from. GPS status and toolbox on android is a fun way to see what you're connected to. What we need, and will probably get soon, is inertial guidance based on laser ring or fibre optic gyros in mobiles. You get a location fix every week or so and it starts out much more accurate than gps. The US system was first by maybe a decade or more so support is nearly universal. The other systems are largely copycat, purposely compatible with existing GPS receivers. That's why it seems like we're relying on the US for GPS, they invented it and had a full constellation in orbit before anyone else even thought of it. Of course we're on the internet which was also invented by the US govt so I'm not so surprised why "the backups for this backbone of the global economy have to be American" in reference to GPS at least
  • maym86 8y ago
    > What we need, and will probably get soon, is inertial guidance based on laser ring or fibre optic gyros in mobiles. You get a location fix every week or so and it starts out much more accurate than gps. Corrections every week? This isn't possible given the drift rates of high end FOG or Lazer ring IMUs. A high-end marine-grade INS can cost over 1 million dollars. These systems will typically provide un-aided navigation solution drifts that are less than 1.8 km per day. This means that if the device were left stationary for one day, due to slight errors in the sensors and imperfect sensor calibrations, after integrating the position solution, the calculated position after one day would be 1800 meters away from the sensors actual position. With ones that you can affordably put in a phone within minutes the drift will be huge. You need something to regularly correct for the drift and currently this is GPS.
    • thermodynthrway 8y ago
      Fibre optic gyros can be miniturized to millimeter dimension, if it wasn't for ITAR. High end civilian IMU's typically use mechanical gyros which have been obsolete for decades. Also, a phone isn't typically moving constantly like the oceans so error rates would be lower.
• nodesocket 8y ago
  It is pretty widely accepted that the global economy is dependent on America.
  • sjwright 8y ago
    Dependent is a strong word. If the USA disappeared tomorrow, the rest of the world would reorganise quickly enough; the global economy would settle into a new normal within a few years. I'd go out on a limb and assert that if China disappeared tomorrow, the consequences to the world economy would be far more devastating. So much of the global economy is tied—directly or indirectly—to Chinese manufacturing. It would take multiple decades for the world to replace the supply chains and highly skilled labour.
    • jquery 8y ago
      While losing China would certain set off shockwaves, I'd say you are in fact on a limb and have it backwards. Manufacturing can be moved and trivially ramped over a few years, perhaps at great cost, but still, only cost. Advanced technology, culture, and other elite exports are not so easily moved to Bangladesh or Vietnam. I'll go out on a limb and say losing Japan would be a bigger loss for the world than losing China due to this. Things I own that are made in China, or have parts made in China, are mostly owned for the cheaper price, not for any uniqueness. Japan and the USA export unique things which cannot be replaced by merely paying a higher price. Losing Google alone would set the world years back. Losing America would scramble world culture entirely (maybe for the better, you say, but that's a value judgement). Whereas China is so insular, the world would move on quickly. It depends on what you value, I guess.
      • sjwright 8y ago
        "There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is." "The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields." -- Tim Cook, from this article: https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/apple-ceo-tim-cook-this-is-number-1-reason-we-make-iphones-in-china-its-not-what-you-think.html https://www.inc.com/glenn-leibowitz/apple-ceo-tim-cook-this-...
• walrus01 8y ago
  GLONASS is supported in every major GPS-receiving chipset these days (including those in smartphones, etc), because Russia put a huge import tariff on any satellite navigation equipment that isn't GLONASS capable. So the manufacturers of such, who were already doing it, made GPS Rx chips that also listen to GLONASS. https://books.google.com/books?id=DuoKFiZKbwEC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=russia+glonass+import+tariff&source=bl&ots=c-39V3l-fg&sig=NXsqdF6ik-ZxmFVElYM2xq7hmlI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiv-dfl9bvcAhW2CDQIHYFyC94Q6AEwB3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=russia%20glonass%20import%20tariff&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=DuoKFiZKbwEC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA... https://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/21/the-iphone-4s-glonass-support-may-help-it-escape-a-25-russian-import-tax/ https://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/21/the-iphone-4s-glonas... this is pretty old news.
  • psyklic 8y ago
    Galileo is catching up too. There is a supported device list here: https://www.usegalileo.eu/EN/ https://www.usegalileo.eu/EN/. In addition, Galileo was just added in a recent software update to some Garmin watches. (Interestingly, they have supported GLONASS for a while.)
• lern_too_spel 8y ago
  The article mentions all those systems by name. Of those, only GLONASS has global coverage (also mentioned in the article), and it is operated by a hostile state.
  • z3phyr 8y ago
    Off-Topic: Is HN primarily serving the US/Western audience? There might be some areas in the world where Russia is apparently "not" a hostile state? I must apologize again for going a little off-topic
    • jcrawfordor 8y ago
      HN is English-language, so it's a strong assumption that the majority of users are English speakers. Russia is to some extent hostile to all the major English-speaking nations (in large part because all of those nations are strongly allied).
      • handsomechad 8y ago
        Isn't India English speaking? And HN has a huge Indian demographic I would imagine. And historically, I believe they have been allied with the Soviet Union whilst the USA has historically allied with their arch-rival Pakistan.
    • pjc50 8y ago
      Russia is a hostile state to the average Russian, too. It's an unaccountable kleptocracy.
    • lern_too_spel 8y ago
      > There might be some areas in the world where Russia is apparently "not" a hostile state? Very few. The Kremlin and the presidential palace in Damascus come to mind, but Russia is actively antagonizing the rest of the developed world, including the areas just outside the walls of those two.
  • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
• labster 8y ago
  As far as I know, all of those constellations are vulnerable to Kessler syndrome. Ground-based equivalents (eLoran) wouldn't be.
  • rzimmerman 8y ago
    GPS satellites are in an unusual orbit (between LEO and geosynchronous) where there is not a lot of debris. They’re also highly redundant and the constellation can lose several satellites without dropping service. Jamming is honestly more of an issue than debris.
• paranoidrobot 8y ago
  Others have already pointed out that these systems are also susceptible to the same types of jamming/interference. Two other issues - the biggest one is mentioned in the article - global coverage. GLONASS is the only one to claim global coverage. The other issue is that there's still a huge number of devices that don't support those systems. Most of the time if something says it uses/depends upon GPS, it means literally just that one system, not the others.
• dyukqu 8y ago
  > I do wonder how many of these are supported by common hardware like mobile phones, anybody have a pointer to a compatibility list? I see GLONASS compatibility on "the specs" list of almost every smart phone on gsmarena[0]. Even iPhone 4S has it. Just did a quick look-up, newer phones now support GALILEO and BDS too. [0] https://gsmarena.com https://gsmarena.com