Thread: GPS and Satelite Radio

Originally Posted by vxcarpc

Hello all.. I haven't realy done any major investigation on this but could say a GPS reciever with the correct software also pickup satelite radio? Do they run on the same frequencies? Are they different satelites for the FM reception? Does anybody know of any good USB pc based satelite radio recievers?

In essence all electromagnetic waves are of the same nature, so yes, you can use the same equipment to receive GPS / XM / Sirius / AM / FM / whatever. To receive signal of frequency A with device designed for frequency B all you need is to drive to (or from) the source of the signal to appropriately increase (or decrease) frequency A to the desired frequency B.

I leave required calculation as a trivial exercise for the reader.

Originally Posted by vxcarpc

Hello all.. I haven't realy done any major investigation on this but could say a GPS reciever with the correct software also pickup satelite radio? Do they run on the same frequencies? Are they different satelites for the FM reception? Does anybody know of any good USB pc based satelite radio recievers?

Cheers.

FM is not from satilte it is from Towers.

I don't think it would be cost efective to try to use a gps for xm, the likelyhood that it would work is slim to none.

Each antenna is tuned for each use.

The only USB satilite i know of is the XMPCR but they are hard to get now days.

But what good is it going to do you? XM is only for US. unless you know something i dont lol.

Webdog is right, what XM and GPS have in common is that their signals are transmitted from satellites. After that, there's little in common. XM runs at 2.3 ghz and GPS runs at about 1.5ghz. Your GPS receiver includes a microchip inside that processes the GPS signal and converts it to messages that it sends to your computer, most often NMEA strings of information.

This is not how XM does it. In fact, I don't have any idea how XM does it, other than I'm pretty sure they're not outputting NMEA strings and converting that into audio!

Incompatible systems. Kind of like trying to use an 56K dialup modem to connect to a DSL line.