Do we have to account for motion when receiving transmissions for things life planes and sattelites?
Submitted by Acceptable-Lemonade t3_zsqueq in askscience
Commercial planes fly up to 600 mph (roughly) and can send and receive internet data and radio communication and satellites travel around 17,000 mph and obviously transmit data. Do any issues arise from this motion? Do shockwaves from exceeding the speed of sound make any difference? I know red shifting and blue shifting are a thing which could cause issues with matching frequencies but these speeds seem far too low to me for that to be an issue. Any other phenomena?
PropOnTop t1_j1d0z27 wrote
I tried to calculate the shift as a joke and came to the conclusion that it's about 1/38038th of a second IF both objects move at the greatest relative speed to each other (17600mph - disregarding triangulation and relative angles). This is on the order of 26000 nanoseconds of shift (7867 metres per second, 0.19m is the wavelength of the GPS L1 signal@1575MHz, so about 41405 wavelenghts to 7867 metres, or 1/38038th of a second - same calculation if speed of light is used).
However, apparently general relativity plays a bigger role here (https://www.avionicswest.com/Articles/howGPSworks.html) and due to it the faster moving clocks on the satellites need to be slowed down, and by a relatively substantial amount too:
"... The physics of general relativity states that space-time is warped in the presence of massive bodies (the earth) with the result that clocks run slower as they are brought closer to that body. Satellite clocks at 4 earth radii are influenced less than the same (atomic) clock running on the surface of the earth. So the atomic clocks on the satellites must be slowed down to stay in sync with clocks in your GPS receiver. The frequency is reduced from 10.23 MHz by 4.547 milli-Hertz (a half a part in one billion) to stay in sync with earth clocks. While small, the error if not corrected would accumulate to a 38 ms advance per day, or a distance error of 10 km."