OmniSTAR Virtual Base Station System

The OmniSTAR Virtual Base Station system was originally developed in 1990 to provide users reliable differential GPS corrections for high accuracy real time applications. At the present time there are OmniSTAR systems covering all the World's major land masses (excluding the Poles and extreme Northern and Southern latitudes). The system delivers its corrections via geostationary satellite, thus providing seamless coverage over the entire service areas. The OmniSTAR system is unique in that corrections from the entire network are used in the user system solution to provide RTCM corrections for GPS that are at least as good as a dedicated base station within one kilometer of the users position. This paper will describe the OmniSTAR network and user system and address recent advances resulting in enhanced accuracy. It will show results accumulated over the last 4 yrs demonstrating how final position results an dependent on the quality of the GPS engine.