NMEA 0183 sentences

Esri mobile GIS software supports a number of protocols for communicating with receivers, the most common of which is the NMEA 0183 version 2.0 standard protocol defined by the National Marine Electronics Association. The NMEA 0183 standard definition is available from http://www.nmea.org.

The NMEA 0183 standard defines sentences that are used to transmit data. These sentences consist of printable ASCII text (plus carriage return and line feed). Each sentence consists of the following data sequence:

The NMEA 0183 standard allows individual manufacturers to define proprietary sentence formats. These sentences start with $P, then a 3-letter manufacturer ID, followed by data from the manufacturer that follows the general format of the standard sentences.

A sample NMEA 0183 sentence for the GPS fix data might be as follows:

$GPGGA,121505,4807.038,N,01131.324,E,1,08,0.9,133.4,M,46.9,M, , *42

where

ArcPad recognizes the following NMEA 0183 version 2.0 or higher sentences.

NoteNote:

The first 8 sentences in this table contain the two-letter talker ID, GP. Other talker ID's can be substituted here to equally describe sentences applicable to different receiver types (eg: $GLGGA represents GLONASS fix data).

Sentence

Description

$GPGGA

GPS fix data

$GPGLL

Geographic position, latitude and longitude

$GPGSA

GPS Dilution of Precision (DOP) and active satellites

$GPGSV

GPS satellites in view

$GPRMC

Recommend minimum specific GPS/TRANSIT data

$GPRRE

Range residual error

$GPVTG

Track made good and ground speed

$GPZDA

Time and date

$PGRME

Estimated error information (Garmin Proprietary)

$PGRMT

Sensor Information (Garmin Proprietary)

$PMGNVER

GPS hardware and software version numbers (Magellan Proprietary)

$PASHR,POS

Position information (Ashtech Proprietary)

$PASHR,SAT

GPS satellite tracking status information (Ashtech Proprietary)

$PRWIRID

Version Information (Rockwell Proprietary)

$PRWIZCH

Channel Status (Rockwell Proprietary)

$SDDPT

Depth, in meters

$SDMTW

Water Temperature, in degrees Celcius

The NMEA 0183 version 3.0 standard adds the following additional values for the $GPGGA fix quality, which ArcPad recognizes:

Most receivers output a limited number of NMEA 0183 sentences. ArcPad uses data from a number of NMEA 0183 sentences to display all of the information in the GPS Position Window as well as to populate the fields associated with the GPS Tracklog. When information is not displayed in the GPS Position Window it is usually the result of ArcPad not receiving the required NMEA 0183 sentence from the receiver.

9/23/2019