Developing a highly-available GNSS reference station network

Author(s):  
Ryan Ruddick ◽  
Amy Peterson ◽  
Richard Jacka ◽  
Bart Thomas

<p>Having modern and well-maintained geodetic infrastructure is critical for the development of an accurate and reliable Global Geodetic Reference Frame (GGRF). Geoscience Australia (GA) contributes to the development of the GGRF through a network of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reference stations positioned in key locations across Australia, Antarctica and the Pacific. Data from these reference stations contribute to the realisation of the GGRF, the development and maintenance of the Asia-Pacific Reference frame and the monitoring of deformation across the Australian continent. We are also seeing a rapid increase in the use of this data for location-based positioning applications, such as civil engineering, transport, agriculture and community safety. These applications bring with them a new suite of challenges for geodetic infrastructure operators, such as reduced data latency, denser networks and accessing the latest signals in the most modern formats. Through the Positioning Australia program, GA is addressing these challenges by developing a modern highly-available GNSS reference station design that will be deployed at over 200 sites across the region. This paper discusses the concept of highly-available infrastructure and presents a GNSS reference station design that is openly available for use by the global geodetic community.</p>

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-133
Author(s):  
Su-Kyung Kim ◽  
Tae-Suk Bae

The current Korean national geodetic reference frame, KGD2002, refers to the fixed epoch at 2002·0 under the assumption that there is no crustal movement of the Korean peninsula. A discontinuity in the coordinates of the reference stations may occur due to the relocation of the stations, antenna replacement, or earthquakes. The static reference frame has difficulty in covering continuous and/or discontinuous crustal movements at the same time. A new dynamic local geodetic reference frame has been calculated based on eight years (2007–2014) of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data. The final geodetic coordinates and velocities were calculated on the basis of the IGb08 reference frame. The discontinuity caused by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake can be addressed using the newly proposed model in this study, which ensures the consistency and continuity of the local geodetic datum.


2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-155
Author(s):  
Timo Saari ◽  
Markku Poutanen ◽  
Veikko Saaranen ◽  
Harri Kaartinen ◽  
Antero Kukko ◽  
...  

Precise levelling is known for its accuracy and reliability in height determination, but the process itself is slow, laborious and expensive. We have started a project to study methods for height determination that could decrease the creation time of national height systems without losing the accuracy and reliability that is needed for them. In the pilot project described here, we study some of the alternative techniques with a pilot field test where we compared them with the precise levelling. The purpose of the test is not to evaluate the mutual superiority or suitability of the techniques, but to establish the background for a larger test and to find strong and weak points of each technique. The techniques chosen for this study were precise levelling, Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) levelling, which included static Global Positioning System (GPS) and Virtual Reference Station (VRS) measurements. This research highlighted the differences of the studied techniques and gave insights about the framework and procedure for the later experiments. The research will continue in a larger scale, where the suitability of the techniques regarding the height systems is to be determined.


2018 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Romero ◽  
Mike Mustafa Berber

Abstract Twenty four hour GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) data acquired monthly for 5 years from 8 CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Station) stations in Central Valley, California are processed and vertical velocities of the points are determined. To process GNSS data, online GNSS data processing service APPS (Automatic Precise Positioning Service) is used. GNSS data downloaded from NGS (National Geodetic Survey) CORS are analyzed and subsidence at these points is portrayed with graphics. It is revealed that elevation changes range from 5 mm uplift in the north to 163 mm subsidence in the southern part of the valley.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 5637
Author(s):  
Łukasz Marchel ◽  
Cezary Specht ◽  
Mariusz Specht

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) are increasingly used to perform numerous tasks connected with measurements in inland waters and seas. One of such target applications is hydrography, where traditional (manned) bathymetric measurements are increasingly often realized by unmanned surface vehicles. This pertains especially to restricted or hardly navigable waters, in which execution of hydrographic surveys with the use of USVs requires precise maneuvering. Bathymetric measurements should be realized in a way that makes it possible to determine the waterbody’s depth as precisely as possible, and this requires high-precision in navigating along planned sounding profiles. This paper presents research that aimed to determine the accuracy of unmanned surface vehicle steering in autonomous mode (with a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller) along planned hydrographic profiles. During the measurements, a high-precision Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning system based on a GNSS reference station network (positioning accuracy: 1–2 cm, p = 0.95) and a magnetic compass with the stability of course maintenance of 1°–3° Root Mean Square (RMS) were used. For the purpose of evaluating the accuracy of the vessel’s path following along sounding profiles, the cross track error (XTE) measure, i.e., the distance between an USV’s position and the hydrographic profile, calculated transversely to the course, was proposed. The tests were compared with earlier measurements taken by other unmanned surface vehicles, which followed the exact same profiles with the use of much simpler and low-cost multi-GNSS receiver (positioning accuracy: 2–2.5 m or better, p = 0.50), supported with a Fluxgate magnetic compass with a high course measurement accuracy of 0.3° (p = 0.50 at 30 m/s). The research has shown that despite the considerable difference in the positioning accuracy of both devices and incomparably different costs of both solutions, the authors proved that the use of the GNSS RTK positioning system, as opposed to a multi-GNSS system supported with a Fluxgate magnetic compass, influences the precision of USV following sounding profiles to an insignificant extent.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-148
Author(s):  
Nestoras Papadopoulos ◽  
Melissinos Paraskevas ◽  
Ioannis Katsafados ◽  
Georgios Nikolaidis ◽  
Euagelos Anagnostou

AbstractHellenic Military Geographical Service (HMGS) has established and measured various networks in Greece which constitute the geodetic infrastructure of the country. One of them is the triangulation network consisting of about 26.000 pillars all over Greece. Classical geodetic measurements that held by the Hellenic Military Geographic Service (HMGS) through the years have been used after adjustment for the state reference frame which materializes the current Hellenic Geodetic Reference System of 1987 (HGRS87). The aforementioned Reference System (RS) is a static one and is in use since 1990. Through the years especially in the era of satellite navigation systems many Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) networks have been established. The latest such network materialized by HMGS is ongoing and covers until now more than the 2/3 of the country. It is referenced by International GNSS Service (IGS) permanent stations and consists a local densification IGS08 Reference Frame. Firstly, this gives the opportunity to calculate transformation parameters between the two systems and a statistical analysis of the residuals leads to intermediate conclusions. After that and in conjunction with existing past transformations, tectonic deformations and their directions are concluded. Moreover past GPS observations on the same pillars in compare to the newer ones give also a sense of tectonic displacements. Greece is one of the most tectonically active countries in Europe and the adoption of a modern kinematic or semi-kinematic geodetic datum is a necessity as it should incorporate a deformation model like 3d velocities on the reference frame realization. The detection of geodynamic changes is a continuous need and should be taken into consideration at each epoch.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1320
Author(s):  
Yuan Du ◽  
Guanwen Huang ◽  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Yang Gao ◽  
Yuting Gao

The real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning technique of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) has been widely used for deformation monitoring in the past several decades. The RTK technique can provide relative displacements in a local reference frame defined by a highly stable reference station. However, the traditional RTK solution does not account for reference stations that experience displacement. This presents a challenge for establishing a near real-time GNSS monitoring system, as since the displacement of a reference station can be easily misinterpreted as a sign of rapid movement at the monitoring station. In this study, based on the reference observations in different time domains, asynchronous and synchronous RTK are proposed and applied together to address this issue, providing more reliable displacement information. Using the asynchronously generated time difference of a reference frame, the proposed approach can detect whether a measured displacement has occurred in the reference or the monitoring station in the current epoch. This allows for the separation of reference station movements from monitoring station movements. The results based on both simulated and landslide monitoring data demonstrate that the proposed method can provide reliable displacement determinations, which are critical in deformation monitoring applications, such as the early warning of landslides.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duojie Weng ◽  
Xingli Gan ◽  
Wu Chen ◽  
Shengyue Ji ◽  
Yangwei Lu

One’s position has become an important piece of information for our everyday lives in a smart city. Currently, a position can be obtained easily using smartphones that is equipped with low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) chipsets with accuracy varying from 5 m to 10 m. Differential GNSS (DGNSS) is an efficient technology that removes the majority of GNSS errors with the aid of reference stations installed at known locations. The sub-meter accuracy can be achieved when applying the DGNSS technology on the advanced receivers. In 2016, Android has opened the accesses of raw GNSS measurements to developers. However, most of the mid and low-end smartphones only provide the data using the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) protocol. They do not provide the raw measurements, and thus do not support the DGNSS operation either. We proposed a DGNSS infrastructure that correct the standalone GNSS position of smartphones using the corrections from the reference station. In the infrastructure, the position correction is generated considering the GNSS satellite IDs that contribute to the standalone solution in smartphones, and the position obtained is equivalent to the solution of using the range-domain correction directly. To serve a large number of smartphone users, a Client/Server architecture is developed to cope with a mass of DGNSS positioning requests efficiently. The comparison of the proposed infrastructure against the ground truth, for all field tests in open areas, showed that the infrastructure achieves the horizontal positioning accuracy better than 2 m. The improvement in accuracy can reach more than 50% for the test in the afternoon. The infrastructure brings benefits to applications that require more accuracy without requiring any hardware modifications.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Yibin Yao ◽  
Linyang Xin ◽  
Qingzhi Zhao

Abstract. As an innovative use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the GNSS water vapor tomography technique shows great potential in monitoring three-dimensional water vapor variation. Most of the previous studies employ the pixel-based method, i.e., dividing the troposphere space into finite voxels and considering water vapor in each voxel as constant. However, this method cannot reflect the variations in voxels and breaks the continuity of the troposphere. Moreover, in the pixel-based method, each voxel needs a parameter to represent the water vapor density, which means that huge numbers of parameters are needed to represent the water vapor field when the interested area is large and/or the expected resolution is high. In order to overcome the abovementioned problems, in this study, we propose an improved pixel-based water vapor tomography model, which uses layered optimal polynomial functions obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) by adaptive training for water vapor retrieval. Tomography experiments were carried out using the GNSS data collected from the Hong Kong Satellite Positioning Reference Station Network (SatRef) from 25 March to 25 April 2014 under different scenarios. The tomographic results are compared to the ECMWF data and validated by the radiosonde. Results show that the new model outperforms the traditional one by reducing the root-mean-square error (RMSE), and this improvement is more pronounced, at 5.88 % in voxels without the penetration of GNSS rays. The improved model also has advantages in more convenient expression.


2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (S1) ◽  
pp. S55-S72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liu ◽  
Xingqun Zhan ◽  
Wei Liu ◽  
Mancang Niu

As the technology of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and augmentation systems are evolving rapidly, compatibility becomes a critical issue for system providers. By April 2011, China had successfully launched eight satellites of the Compass phase II (CP II) navigation system, which will provide positioning, navigation, timing and communication services to the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2012. Due to the limitations of available radio frequency bandwidths, it is important to assess the compatibility and to design signals based on the compatibility within these limited radio frequency bandwidths. This paper presents a modified compatibility assessment methodology, derived from the traditional methodologies that are based on the spectral separation coefficient (SSC) and the effective carrier-power-to-noise density ratio. The modified methodology takes into account additional factors including the Doppler offset, code tracking loop, and band-limiting, sampling and quantisation (BSQ) of the GNSS receiver. In the simulation section, the comprehensive compatibility assessment between CP II and other GNSSs, such as GPS, Galileo, Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) on L1 Band are carried out and presented with some new results. Simulation results reveal that CP II does not cause serious interference on GPS, Galileo, WAAS and EGNOS as the interference level is below the 0·25 dB threshold recommended by ITU.


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