GPS Week Number Rollover....and GLONASS!

Fun fact: GPS uses 10 bits to store the week. That means it runs out... oh heck – April 6, 2019 • The Register

What was old is new again!

Back about a million years ago (as measured by millennials) I worked for a company that was eventually swallowed up by SAIC.
We made big coin back then in an intense effort to thwart the end of human life on Earth by certifying dot.gov systems to be free of the Y2K bug.
One must remember that this was back in an ancient time when bipeds struggled to feed, shelter and clothe themselves without iphones, and only birders listened to tweets.
Since I didn't like the drama and tumult of working as a tick feeding on the backside of DOD at that time, I transitioned into a layoff-proof industry:
Telecommunications.

...Oops.
One of my very first overtime checks in fact, came from sitting in a central office as 1999 became 2000, since I was junior enough to be 'voluntold' to sit and watch the clocks switch from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00.

Another Fun Fact: Earlier that same day, Russian President Yeltsin announced that he would be resigning early in the belief that “Russia should enter the new millennium with new politicians, new faces, new people, who are intelligent, strong and energetic, while we, those who have been in power for many years, must leave."
An obscure Incumbent Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was then elevated to that post, an office that he would be elected to later by more than 100-percent.

Sadly, my only personal devices that support GLONASS are my fitness tracker and a recently re-retired iPhone 5S....

What is GLONASS And How It Is Different From GPS

 

Not even that.
Not much ado about nothing much......

....maybe.


If I'm not mistaken the week number rollover problem was a thing with Block I and maybe early Block II birds, and not even much of a problem at that.
It's easy to forget that the GPS system is over 40 years old, and we're trying to get Block III birds in orbit - a military expenditure that a future administration may or may not cut at will.

As mentioned above, multi-band GNSS receivers have gone from zero to medium-significant in just a few years, and even now it's more likely than not that you have GLONASS and perhaps even Gallileo capability (Beidou is regional IIRC.)
GLONASS is always subject to "control segment issues" but it's also wise to remember that even the newer Galileo systems are subject to their little interruptions as well, albeit from more of a committee or a technological thing.
Brussels has to green light "planned" outages and they've pretty much sorted out their clock problems.

It will be fun to watch how L4 and L5 autonomous vehicles treat this newfound wealth of navigation inputs.....