Question

I want to display a signal bar for a GPS device using .NET CF. I’m able to read NMEA data and get the SNR signals. But they are a number of satellites with some active and some inactive with various SNRs. I thought about getting average of total SNR but it won’t give a accurate value as three strong signal satellite is enough for GPS fix and with another 5 satellites with bad SNR can mess up the signal bar calculation. How am I gonna calculate GPS signal in percentages in a proper way?

Answer 1

Use the GSA NMEA sentance to get the Dilution of Precision:

This sentence provides details on the
nature of the fix. It includes the
numbers of the satellites being used
in the current solution and the DOP.
DOP (dilution of precision) is an
indication of the effect of satellite
geometry on the accuracy of the fix.
It is a unitless number where smaller
is better. For 3D fixes using 4
satellites a 1.0 would be considered
to be a perfect number, however for
overdetermined solutions it is
possible to see numbers below 1.0.

From GPS info.

A DOP value of 1 is perfect, while a DOP value of 20 or greater is poor. You typically want a DOP of less than 10.