Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
This year (1980) the U. S. Department of Defense has scheduled to have in operation six satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which will provide timing and three dimensional position recovery potential to North America during certain segments of a day. By the mid-eighties, continuous timing and three dimensional recovery from 18 GPS satellites are planned. Although the GPS is designed for fast position recovery to the 10-meter level, extended data collection periods could yield subdecimeter relative positioning on a routine basis.