Evaluating the trade-off between Global Positioning System (GPS) accuracy and power saving from reduction of number of GPS receiver channels

This study is aimed at evaluating the trade-off between Global Positioning System (GPS) accuracy and power saving from reduction of number of channels. The study is conducted for number of GPS receiver channels of 4 to 12 for two scenarios: 1) Normal scenario with full range of available GPS satellites; 2) Obstruction scenario with GPS satellite elevation cutoff of 20°. It is observed that increase of power saving from reducing the number of channels causes increase of probable error values, due to increasing position dilution of precision (PDOP) of the reducing number of GPS satellites tracked. However, reduction of number of channels to match the number of available GPS satellites does not cause degradation of accuracy, as there is no reduction in number of trackable GPS satellites. For the obstruction scenario, with significantly fewer available GPS satellites due to the GPS satellite elevation cutoff, significant power saving can be achieved without degradation of accuracy. An effective power saving system would require the management of minimum number of channels required to achieve the user's minimum required accuracy.