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WHAT'S YOUR ENGINEERING QUOTIENT?

Problem 1—What is the "chip" rate (spreading code bit rate) of the Coarse/Acquisition (C/A) signal of a GPS satellite? What about the Precision (P) signal?

The C/A chip rate is 1.023 MHz, and the P chip rate is 10ý higher, at 10.23 MHz.

However, this does not mean that the P signal is ten times as accurate as the C/A signal ý the accuracy is controlled more by the short-term accuracy of the receiver's timing reference. A high-quality receiver can give very precise results using only the C/A signal.

Contributor: Dave Tweed

02-02 — NEXT Q&A