The global position system (GPS) it’s a system able to provide geographic position expressed in spatial coordinates and based on radio signal received from artificial satellites orbiting the Earth. We really think this is one of the most interesting and useful technology introduced in the last Years: officially up and running since 1994. Initially developed and in use just for U.S.A. military environment, it has been extended to civil purposes very soon (sjust some years later). What we mostly know, born thanks to that technology, is for sure ‘the car navigator’: maybe younger people don’t even think possible to have a car without it. So, how GPS works and how it could be possible to use it to have exact geographic position expressed in coordinates and useful for our personal app?
Without going into too much detail, let’s say that the operating principle is based on a spherical positioning method. The GPS receiver ‘receives’ signals emitted by the different satellites and, based on the temporal information and their time difference of reception (due to the different sources’ distance), the GPS device can determine its geographical position with a series of triangulations and mathematical calculations.