It is worth upgrading OEM GPS sensor on D2?
 

I was thinking if GPS sensor technology has advanced far enough in all these years to make it compelling to change my existing D2 GPS sensor that sits on top of my boot lid?

Did they become more 'sensitive' / accurate / reliable?
If yes, what are the benefits? How better are they now?
Who manufactures the best GPS sensors?

Is there a modern sensor that you can fit into an OEM casing on top of the boot on D2?

Tell me all about GPS sensors. Cheers.

I've no reason to believe there's any major improvement. I had to replace the aerial (sensor) on my PF S8 and reception seemed very similar even though it was a 10 years or so newer design.

I took the old unit apart to see what was wrong - major corrosion - and decided that putting the "guts" of a new one inside it was going to be pretty difficult.

In the end I placed a replacement aerial just in front of the OEM location, at the bottom of the rear screen. Almost invisible - see picture:

I don't think you get any better accuracy - or if you do, you don't need it. Generally you lose accuracy when the GPS antenna starts to fail. When it's working properly, the onboard Sat Nav is pretty accurate.

Here's how I replaced my OEM one when it failed: http://forum.a8parts.co.uk/showthrea...1510#post21510

Very cheap and very quick, but I wouldn't bother it I didn't have to.

As HPSauce says, if by "sensor" you mean the antenna, no it does not make sense to change it - unless it is faulty like in HPsauce´s case.

The "brains" of the GPS are in the GPS chip inside the receiver, which you can't change anyway.

Oh yes you can, and I have! +++

The "top half" of an RNS-D is the GPS unit, including map CD drive. It is very easy to swap out if faulty. No coding or codes involved.

As for antenna location, I'd now probably say (if not directly replacing the OEM one) just wire it straight to the back of the RNS and place it at the bottom left of the windscreen, hidden by the tax disc or black edge. Easy to get the lead over there behind or below the glovebox.
That's where I've put it on my Ford Focus, which has a heated front screen, and it's well away from the heating elements and works fine.

Bare in mind Sergey has the 2nd gen rns-e from iirc a 2011 car so I'd expect the gps internals to be a bit more advanced in terms of getting and keeping a good signal. I'm not aware of any changes to the antenna tech that would make swapping it worthwhile though. There might be a newer chipset but whether it makes an appreciable difference....

What I meant was that you can't change the chip inside the receiver, but good to know the whole receiver unit can be replaced +++

Not sure about an RNS-E though, but definitely on RNS-D.

Guys, many thanks for all your replies!

I think the main improvement will come if you can use both GPS & Glosnass & soon to arrive Galileo satelites.
I believe that accessing the signal from so many more sources will greatly improve the accuracy of your location information.
My phone (Nexus 5) can do this, so the challenge is probably how best to integrate such an upgrade, invisibly, into your existing package.