As Solar activity rises, Sat Nav devices might face big errors to the world which is becoming more and more dependent on satellite.
The irregular activity of the sun can bring in a needless disturbance to the weak satellite signals we use. Last time when sun reached a peak in its state, satellite navigation being a consumer product barely was able to resist the change. But again when sun reaches another solar maximum, the satellite navigation could generate large and uncertain errors. For the modern infrastructure, it is not just car that are in need of sat nav signals, precise and reliable sat nav signals are becoming very very necessary for many other applications. One of the significant usage of sat nav signals is for the military purpose, since worldwide, the operation of military is purely and largely depending up on these signal, of course the equipments used are far more advanced.
Sat nav being a popularly developing technology, is now becoming a part of emergency vehicles such as docking ships, high precision surveying and soon could be used to land commercial aircraft automatically. Closer to habitation, most of the trains depends upon the sat nav signals to locate stations.
A Simple Construct
Currently the concept of satellite navigation is possessed by Russia’s Glonass network and US GPS system with competitors to come in the form of China’s compass system and Europe’s Galileo design. The whole concept depends on a simple root, ‘triangulation calculation’. A swift of satellites revolving around the earth, constantly transmit two bit radio signal with exceptionally accurate information regarding where they are and at what time and so. On the other side, the sat nav receiver on earth, say on plane or ship gathers positions and time signals from the satellites that are revolving near to the line of sight. Later with the received signals, the sat nav receiver calculates based on the time taken by the signals to arrive and the distance between each of these satellites using simple geometry to yield the current position.
Researchers have recently come to know that received signals are unbelievably weak as it is sensitive to the sun’s activity. The reason being from the surface of the sun, the huge exhalation of magnetic energy spreads out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, ie along with the explosion of high energy particles towards the earth. These radiations coming out from the sun is the main cause to weaken the sat nav receivers to pick up the signals from the satellite. With an exclusion of complicated directing antennas, employed in the military purpose, the problem can be lessened with the help of current technology.
The Ionosphere
Another hinderance comes from the nature. Ionosphere, the outer most layer of the earth’s atmosphere. It consist of ionized particles that tears to get isolated due to the sun’s radiation depending up on the intensity of the radiation coming out from the sun at a given point of time. The problem arises since the technology of the sat nav assumes that the signals pass through at constant speed, ignoring the concept of Ionosphere. When signals pass through Ionosphere, they slow down by a number which causes error to the system while calculating the position. The Ionosphere differs between summer and winter, causing error.
The interruption caused by the solar radiation is quite high. How ever the effects faced by the sat nav users is difficult to predict. It is been said that sat nav that are used in cars could face more difficulty rather than danger. A number of schemes are been declared to correct these signals by using other means of mobile phone network. However, it still remains unclear whether it is possible to make manufacturers correct the sat nav enable technology.
Hence before raising sun attains to its peak, it is very essential for the people to be aware of the change in sat nav.
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