One annoying thing about my run/bike Garmin devices is getting all ready, and then having to wait at the bottom of the driveway for it to sync up with the magical GPS satellites. It's gotten better over the past few years, but could stand to get even better. Seems DARPA (who developed GPS) is working on tech to eliminate the satellites from GPS. Pretty cool stuff:
http://www.extremetech.com/...n-without-satellites
http://www.extremetech.com/...n-without-satellites
Quote:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has unveiled its plan for the future, and it’s a huge shift, marked by new goals in four main areas. Arguably the biggest change is its plan to reinvent complex military systems and make them more modular, in an effort to ensure “superiority in the air, maritime, ground, space, and cyber domains.” Among the planned developments is a brand new global positioning, navigation, and timing system (GPS) that doesn’t depend on satellites and is resistant to jamming. According to a document (PDF page 30) posted Thursday, DARPA’s new system will be much more advanced than what we have now, and will eventually trickle down to our cars and phones.Quote:
In the paper, DARPA hints at how it’s going to develop a positioning system without the use of satellites: “The need to be able to operate effectively in areas where GPS is inaccessible, unreliable or potentially denied by adversaries has created a demand for alternative precision timing and navigation capabilities. To address this need, DARPA is investing in radically new technologies that have the potential to deliver GPS-quality position, navigation and timing information for military systems, including novel inertial measurement devices that use cold-atom interferometry; chip-scale self-calibrating gyroscopes, accelerometers and clocks; and pulsed-laser-enabled atomic clocks and microwave sources.”