Introduction
The concept of dilution of precision (DOP) originated with users of the Loran-C navigation system. The idea of Geometric DOP is to state how errors in the measurement will affect the final state estimation. This can be defined as:
Conceptually you can imagine errors on a measurement resulting in the term changing. Ideally small changes in the measured data will not result in large changes in output location, as such a result would indicate the solution is very sensitive to errors. The interpretation of this formula is shown in the figure to the right, showing two possible scenarios with acceptable and poor GDOP.
More recently, the term has come into much wider usage with the development and adoption of GPS. Neglecting ionospheric and tropospheric effects, the signal from GPS satellites has a fixed precision. Therefore, the relative satellite-receiver geometry plays a major role in determining the precision of estimated positions and times. Due to the relative geometry of any given satellite to a receiver, the precision in the pseudorange of the satellite translates to a corresponding component in each of the four dimensions of position measured by the receiver (i.e. x, y, z, and t). The precision of multiple satellites in view of a receiver combine according to the relative position of the satellites to determine the level of precision in each dimension of the receiver measurement. When visible GPS satellites are close together in the sky, the geometry is said to be weak and the DOP value is high; when far apart, the geometry is strong and the DOP value is low. Consider two overlapping rings, or annuli, of different centres. If they overlap at right angles, the greatest extent of the overlap is much smaller than if they overlap in near parallel. Thus a low DOP value represents a better GPS positional precision due to the wider angular separation between the satellites used to calculate a GPS unit's position. Other factors that can increase the effective DOP are obstructions such as nearby mountains or buildings. DOP can be expressed as a number of separate measurements. HDOP, VDOP, PDOP, and TDOP are respectively Horizontal, Vertical, Positional (3D), and Time Dilution of Precision. They follow mathematically from the positions of the usable satellites. GPS receivers allow the display of these positions (skyplot) as well as the DOP values.
The term can also be applied to other location systems that employ several geographical spaced sites. It can occur in electronic-counter-counter-measures (electronic warfare) when computing the location of enemy emitters (radar jammers and radio communications devices). Using such an interferometry technique can provide certain geometric layout where there are degrees of freedom that cannot be accounted for due to inadequate configurations.
The effect of geometry of the satellites on position error is called geometric dilution of precision and it is roughly interpreted as ratio of position error to the range error. Imagine that a square pyramid is formed by lines joining four satellites with the receiver at the tip of the pyramid. The larger the volume of the pyramid, the better (lower) the value of GDOP; the smaller its volume, the worse (higher) the value of GDOP will be. Similarly, the greater the number of satellites, the better the value of GDOP.
Read more about this topic: Dilution Of Precision (GPS)
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