The Global Positioning System time epoch is ending and one other one is starting, an occasion that might have an effect on your units or any gear or legacy system that depends on GPS for time and site.
Most clocks get hold of their time from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But the atomic clocks on satellites are set to GPS time. The timing indicators you may get from GPS satellites are very correct and globally obtainable. And in order that they’re usually utilized by techniques as the first supply of time and frequency accuracy.
When Global Positioning System was first carried out, time and date perform was outlined by a 10-bit quantity. So in contrast to the Gregorian calendar, which makes use of 12 months, month and date format, the GPS date is a “week number,” or WN. The WN is transmitted as a 10-bit area in navigation messages and rolls over or resets to zero each 1,024 weeks.
Since that point, the depend has been incremented by one every week, and broadcast as a part of the GPS message.
The GPS week began January 6, 1980 and it turned zero for the primary time midnight August 21, 1999. At midnight April 6, the GPS WN is scheduled to reset, which might be problematic for legacy techniques and impression time and the time tags in location information. Utilities and mobile networks additionally use GPs receivers for timing and controlling sure capabilities. For occasion, the U.S. energy grid makes use of timestamps embedded in GPS. The U.S. Department of Energy says that “GPS supports a wide variety of critical grid functions that allow separate components on the electric system to work in unison.”
It needs to be famous that the WN restart date might be totally different in some units, relying on when the firmware was created.
The bug, which some has described because the Y2K of GPS, will trigger issues in some GPS receivers similar to resetting the time and corrupting location information. The GPS WN rollover occasion could damage the reliability of the reported UTC, in accordance with U.S. Department of Homeland Security. HDS stated an GPS machine that conforms to the newest IS-GPS-200 and gives UTC shouldn’t be adversely affected. The company additionally supplied a phrase of warning:
However, exams of some GPS units revealed that not all producer implementations accurately deal with the April 6, 2019 WN rollover. Additionally, some producer implementations interpret the WN parameter relative to a date aside from January 5, 1980. These units shouldn’t be affected by the WN rollover on April 6, 2019 however could expertise an analogous rollover occasion at a future date.
If you personal a more recent business machine with up to date software program, it’s more than likely high quality. But double examine and ensure the software program is up-to-date.
The U.S. Naval Observatory suggests contact the producer of your GPS receiver if in case you have been effected by the GPS week quantity rollover. Some GPS receiver producers might be discovered on the GPS World web site.
Work has been finished to keep away from this type of rollover challenge — or no less than punt it down the road. The modernized GPS navigation message makes use of a 13-bit area that repeats each 8,192 weeks.
