Published on Australian Maritime Safety Authority (https://www.amsa.gov.au)
AMSA discontinued its DGPS service on 1 July 2020 as it is no longer required to support safe navigation in Australian waters. On 4 May 2020, we provided formal notification of the shut down of DGPS through Marine Notice 03/2020– Shut down of AMSA’s differential global positioning system (DGPS) service.
Your Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver will be unaffected by this action.
For the vast majority of maritime users, discontinuation of DGPS should not impact the accuracy of satellite positioning or the safety of navigation.
There will be no impact on Stand-alone GNSS. However, GNSS receivers that have an integrated DGPS/DGNSS receiver, will no longer receive AMSA’s DGPS corrections and may alert or alarm. This will be no different to what happens today as the receiver moves out of range of a DGPS stations.
The effects can be summarised as follows:
If your GPS receiver is older than or fitted before 2003, it might be time to upgrade your receiver. It is unlikely that pre-2003 receivers will monitor the integrity of the information they receive.
If integrity monitoring is important to you, then you may wish to replace your satellite navigation receiver with one that includes Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM).
For higher accuracy, a multi-constellation GNSS receiver may provide better accuracy than a GPS-only receiver.
The Australian Satellite-Based Augmentation System project, led by Geoscience Australia, will deliver high accuracy positioning for GNSS users. To benefit from this service in the future, you will need an ‘SBAS’ capable GNSS receiver. More information on the Australian SBAS project is available on the Geoscience Australia website.
Lastly, the better the receiver, the better the GNSS derived position will be. Just like a mobile phone, the technology for GNSS antennae and receivers has modernised significantly over the last 20 years. Upgrading to a modern GNSS receiver is likely to provide improved precision and accuracy of the derived position.