About QinetiQ GPS

QinetiQ's team of GPS specialists have been developing new and innovative GPS solutions for 25 years. Our expertise in location based technologies and state-of-the-art GPS solutions can give your business a competitive advantage.

What is GPS and how can it help me?

GPS (Global Positioning System) is the USA department of defence satellite navigation system. Each of the satellites sends a coded message to Earth which, when decoded by a GPS receiver allows the position of the receiver to be retrieved.

There are 24 satellites in orbit of the earth, travelling at around 7000 miles per hour, information from 3 satellites is required to triangulate a position. Each of the satellites is equipped with an atomic clock, so that the GPS receiver can calculate how long it has taken for the coded message to reach the receiver, this time multiplied by the speed of light will result in the distance between the receiver and satellite.

GPS is finding its way into various applications since its introduction in the 1980's, navigation is the most well known of these at sea, in vehicles etc. GPS is also finding itself in sports activities, asset tracking, people tracking and timing applications.

What is different about QinetiQ GPS

One of the primary drawbacks of GPS is that it is incapable of providing a position if it can not acquire direct line of sight with a satellite. This means that many environments such as urban canyons (between tall buildings), under dense foliage, or inside buildings are excluded from this technology. QinetiQ has developed a solution which can overcome these obstacles - High Sensitivity (HS) GPS.

QinetiQ HS GPS solutions are capable of providing positions in some of the most GPS hostile environments, it is capable of listening to extremely weak GPS messages and decoding them.