Engineers who plan to include global positioning satellite (GPS) receivers in equipment might have misconceptions about how the GPS system works and the information provided by a receiver--the portion of the system that detects satellite signals and interprets them.  A typical receiver does not simply provide latitude, longitude, time, and altitude.  Instead, it communicates with "sentences" of serial data that encapsulate GPS information for a host controller.  A simple handheld GPS receiver might provide sentences with just the information noted above.  An OEM-type GPS receiver could provide more extensive information such as the quality of a location "fix," number of satellites tracked, horizontal dilution of precision, vertical dilution of precision, and so on.