Case Study: GPS Rollover Problems (2019)

18 August 2020 by Phillip Johnston 6 April 2019 was “GPS Rollover day”. The existing GPS standard uses a 10-bit counter to keep track of the number of weeks elapsed since 6 January 1980. Since it’s a 10-bit counter, the max count is 210-1, or 1023, weeks. On the 1024th week, it will rollover to week 0. If you’re keeping score, you’ll be surprised that this was a big deal at all: we already experienced a GPS rollover on 21 August 1999. Many GPS equipment manufacturers understand the rollover requirements and designed their systems to accommodate it. We knew in advnace …

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