Super-Accurate GPS Just Got a Lot Cheaper and Faster

The GPS in your smartphone is okay. Yeah, I said it: just okay. It’s crummy while inside a building, and because of errors that pile up between the satellite that sends out its signal and the equipment that receives it back on Earth, it isn’t perfect outside, either. The errors mean that your standard GPS equipment is generally only accurate within 10 meters. That’s why your phone may take a while to figure out whether you’re walking, biking, or driving in the right direction, and why it sometimes says you’ve actually been sitting in the house next door this whole time.

But GPS can be much more accurate than that. In fact, it has been for at least two decades. Surveyors have used GPS to measure down to the centimeter for some time now. More precise GPS identifies signals at a higher frequency, called the carrier phase, but must use complex bits of mathematics to figure out locations. The problem is that this process is slow, and speeding it up to make it widely available to the public is expensive.