GEOG 862
GPS and GNSS for Geospatial Professionals

The CDU

PrintPrint
Image of a CDU
Control and Display Unit (CDU)
Source: Trimble

A GPS receiver will often have a control and display unit. From handheld keyboards to soft keys around a screen to digital map displays and interfaces to other instrumentation, there are a variety of configurations. Nevertheless, they all have the same fundamental purpose, facilitation of the interaction between the operator and the receiver’s microprocessor. A CDU typically displays status, position data, velocity, and time. It may also be used to select different surveying methods, waypoint navigation, and/or set parameters such as epoch interval, mask angle, and antenna height. The CDU can offer a combination of help menus, prompts, reference frame (datum) conversions, readouts of survey results, estimated positional error, and so forth. The information available from the CDU varies from receiver to receiver. But when four or more satellites are available, they can generally be expected to display the PRN numbers of the satellites being tracked, the receiver’s position in three dimensions, and velocity information. Most of them also display the dilution of precision and GPS time or UTC.