Getting Ready For Leap Second
How Will Leap Second Effect Your GNSS Receiver?
Every four years an additional or leap second is added to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to synchronise our current clocks worldwide with the Earth’s rotation. This is the same concept as a leap year but doesn’t effect most people except those in the surveying industry.
A positive leap second will be inserted into the UTC time 31 December 2016 at 23h59m59s, which is 1pm Jan 1st 2017 NZDT.
What To Expect:
Glonass is aligned to UTC while GPS, BeiDou and Galileo are aligned to international atomic time, and because of this difference you may experience some GNSS issues with Glonass tracking after midnight 31 Dec 2016 UTC ( 1pm Jan 1st NZDT) due to Leap Second synchronising.
To ensure your equipment is working properly, it is recommended to check the Measurement Engine firmware installed on your receiver and update if required.
Tracking for GPS, BeiDou and Galileo of GeoMax GNSS receivers should not be affected over the leap second change. GLONASS tracking will drop lock briefly and should recover a few seconds later.
If a GeoMax GNSS receiver is used after the leap second switch, the receiver should have no trouble tracking the GLONASS signals. Nevertheless, if there are still issues tracking GLONASS signals, restart the receiver.
Should you encounter any issues after restarting the receiver please contact us