Kiwi scientists: NZ can improve world's GPS

Kiwi scientists can improve the accuracy of the world's GPS technology, says Professor Sergei Gulyaev, pictured at AUT's radio astronomy observatory in Warkworth. Photo / File

We use GPS for everything from tracking aircraft to mapping the best route to the office.

But Kiwi scientists say we can make GPS more accurate - and New Zealand has the expertise and technology to do it.

Today, GPS coordinates are continually corrected by two supercomputers based in Bonn, Germany, and Washington DC, which process the data streaming in from radio telescopes.

Performing this task with high accuracy can take days or even weeks.

Researchers at AUT's Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research believe New Zealand has the capability to process the data faster, in larger quantities and make the result more accurate.

Instead of relying upon conventional supercomputers, the institute will use the advantages offered by cloud computing and an ultra-fast network to transfer and correlate the data coming from radio telescopes located on different continents.

Making GPS calculations more accurate was the key goal of the new Kiwi-led project, dubbed the Long White Cloud Correlator.

"The GPS corrections are vital, because the Earth rotation in space is irregular," explained the institute's director, Professor Sergei Gulyaev.

"GPS satellites use the model which assumes a regular rotation of the Earth and give us our geographic coordinates on Earth based on this unrealistic model. Irregular rotation of our planet makes these coordinates inaccurate."

The radio telescopes monitor the rotation of the Earth using quasars - massive and extremely remote celestial objects that emit exceptionally large amounts of energy, typically creating a starlike image in a telescope.

More than 1000 of these quasars form an ideal frame for scientists to study the dynamics of the planet, its rotation, and the motion of its poles and tectonic plates.

To transfer the data, the AUT scientist will draw on the REANNZ Network, a high-capacity, ultra high-speed resource developed for Kiwi researchers.

While the German and US correlation centres can muster a data transfer speed of one gigabit per second, the AUT scientists say the REANNZ network could speed the work rate up to 100 gigabits per second.

To then correlate the data, and pin-point the corrections needed, the researchers will use New Zealand-based Catalyst IT's cloud network.

Ideally, Gulyaev said, radio astronomers should be able to give updates for GPS locations each day, but currently, these measurements weren't accurate enough.

"The cloud way of doing it would allow it to be done very accurately and close to real time."

In their new trial, the team will use the radio telescope at AUT's Warkworth Observatory, along with others in Australia, Japan, Sweden, Germany and China.

"German researchers will continue to process the data in the conventional way so we can compare the results."

It's not the first time AUT scientists have found global benefits for New Zealand's radio astronomy technology.

In 2012, as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Gulyaev and his team were tracking its position from the Warkworth observatory.

California-based SpaceX, owned by PayPal founder Elon Musk, contracted AUT to monitor up to 12 space flights a year, both because of its location and its experience with space agencies including Nasa, Jaxa, European Space Agency and the Russian Space Agency.

An AUT team is also involved in a global effort to build the technology required for the world's largest radio telescope: the Square Kilometre Array.