Anacortes Senior College

Global Positioning System (GPS) has transformed from a relatively unwanted, obscure government program to one of the technological pillars of modern life. GPS provides critical infrastructure not only to the more obvious applications of positioning services (navigation, emergency services, construction, and agriculture), but also highly accurate timing services (communications, finance).

The course will cover what the system is and a non-nerd friendly walk through of how it works (only one equation, I promise, and it’s OK to close your eyes when it comes up). We will cover system accuracy, error sources, and how choice of receiver changes user results. We will also look at the history of the system and the breadth of applications supported by this amazing public/private partnership. Given the criticality of the system to modern life, it’s also essential to look at vulnerabilities including inadvertent interference, deliberate jamming, and spoofing.

Instructor: Susan Crippen

Susan is a retired engineer (EE,CS) who spent her working life in the remote sensing community. Effective use of GPS was critical to most of her projects.

Her GPS experience started in the mid-80s time aligning separate data streams when an incomplete satellite constellation only provided enough visible satellites a few hours a week. A later program was a DARPA funded airborne 3D radar topographic mapping system.

She also holds a private pilot license and has a grateful appreciation of the benefits of GPS instrument approaches.