Reply to post: Not quite

Smartphone SatNavs to get centimetre-perfect GNSS receivers in 2018

Kernel

Not quite

"The BCM47755 achieves its extra accuracy by locking on to three satellites using the L1-band transmission (the GPS broadcast of satellite location, time, and signature)."

Actually, any GPS receiver needs a minimum of four satellites to lock on to, otherwise it has no way of determining how inaccurate its internal clock is and making appropriate corrections.

Four satellites allows the calculation of three potential positions - since you're obviously not actually in three places at once, adjusting the clock to minimize the difference between the three calculated positions provides the feedback loop to ensure the cheap internal clock chip is running as close as possible to the rate of the very expensive (and comparatively large) Cesium clocks in the satellites.

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