As powerful as GPS is, +/-50 - 100 meters of uncertainty is not acceptable in many applications. How can we obtain higher accuracies?

A technique called differential correction is necessary to get accuracies within 1 -5 meters, or even better, with advanced equipment. Differential correction requires a second GPS receiver, a base station, collecting data at a stationary position on a precisely known point (typically it is a surveyed benchmark). Because the physical location of the base station is known, a correction factor can be computed by comparing the known location with the GPS location determined by using the satellites.

The differential correction process takes this correction factor and applies it to the GPS data collected by a GPS receiver in the field. Differential correction eliminates most of the errors listed in the GPS Error Budget discussed earlier. After differential correction, the GPS Error Budget changes as follows:

GPS Error Budget

Source		Uncorrected	With Differential
Ionosphere	0-30 meters	Mostly Removed
Troposphere	0-30 meters	All Removed
Signal Noise	0-10 meters	All Removed
Ephemeris Data	1-5 meters	All Removed
Clock Drift	0-1.5 meters	All Removed
Multipath	0-1 meters	Not Removed
SA		0-70 meters	All Removed

By eliminating many of the above errors, differential correction allows GPS positions to be computed at a much higher level of accuracy.

Go back to the previous chapter: Measuring GPS Accuracy

Go on to the next chapter: Levels of GPS Accuracy

Return to the Table of Contents