Australian Water Information Dictionary
DGPS
Differential Global Positioning System
An enhancement to Global Positioning System (GPS) that uses a network of fixed ground based reference stations to broadcast the difference between the positions indicated by the satellite systems and the known fixed positions.
The underlying premise of differential GPS is that any two receivers that are relatively close together will experience similar atmospheric errors. DGPS requires that a GPS receiver be set up on a precisely known location. This GPS receiver is the base or reference station. The base station receiver calculates its position based on satellite signals and compares this location to the known location. The difference is applied to the GPS data recorded by the second GPS receiver, which is known as the roving receiver. The corrected information can be applied to data from the roving receiver in real-time in the field using radio signals or through post-processing after data capture using special processing software.
This definition applies to: