RTN expert Gavin Schrock provides everything you need to know about network-corrected real-time GNSS observations.
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As GPS has been adopted by surveyors, its proven benefitshigher productivity and efficiencyhave been recognized. The unfortunate tradeoff to these benefits remains the high system cost of a traditional base and rover setup. To reduce the costs of GPS surveying, many countries have installed a permanent RTK infrastructure which allows rover-only GPS positioning. This approach cuts GPS system costs in half by eliminating the purchase a base receiver.
Countrywide RTK networks, seen predominately throughout Europe, provide surveyors with consistent centimeter-level positioning performance no matter where they work within their country. However, not all international locations have access to an adequate RTK infrastructure.
Troubles Facing Permanent RTK Infrastructures
Some regions face obstacles in creating full RTK coverage, such as lack of funding and slow adoption rates. In many countries including the United States, specific regions have only partial network RTK coverage. This lack of full coverage greatly hampers surveyors needing to work outside of the established RTK area. Also, as GPS reference stations and RTK networks involve permanent installations, their RTK coverage area is fixed and cannot be easily customized.
SOKKIA's Mobile Reference Station technology, included at no cost and integrated within SOKKIA's GSR2700 ISX receiver, overcomes this limitation by offering a flexible RTK infrastructure that can be set up and taken down in minutes.
The Mobile Reference Station Solution
The GSR2700 ISX receiver operates within a permanent RTK infrastructure in a rover-only configuration for centimeter level positions. In addition, the GSR2700 ISX can be configured as a portable Mobile Reference Station for surveyors needing to work outside of permanent RTK coverage areas. This flexible alternative to a permanent RTK infrastructure supports any number of GPS rovers.
The Mobile Reference Station performs just like permanently installed reference stations. However, unlike permanent RTK networks, it can be set up anywhere because it does not require any electrical or internet connections. Since the Mobile Reference Stations relies on cellular technology, rather than UHF radios, surveyors can work any distance from their base station without worry of losing their data link.
Surveying in the Midst of a Disaster
The Mobile Reference Station excels in many applications. A great example of its effectiveness involves the recovery efforts after China's Great Sichuan Earthquake.
This devastating, magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck western China in May 2008, killing nearly 80,000 residents and severely injuring more than 360,000. Much of the region was reduced to rubble.
The Chinese government immediately coordinated relief efforts, including dispatching survey crews to reestablish crucial parcel boundaries and control points. To accomplish the job quickly and accurately, the survey crews turned to GPS surveying.
The damaged area was surrounded some of the tallest mountains in the world, which severely limited the broadcast range of UHF radios. Additionally, the earthquake severed the majority of communication and electrical lines. As a result, a permanent reference station and RTK networks could not be established.
Instead, survey crews employed SOKKIA's Mobile Reference Station technology to create versatile RTK coverage. With a touch of a button, the Mobile Reference Station began to send RTK corrections to numerous GSR2700 ISX receivers within the 80 km2 work area. The crews completed the job in record time, and rebuilding began.
Maximizing Potential
SOKKIA's Mobile Reference Station provides surveyors with endless RTK coverage options. Regardless of the size of job or location, surveyors can trust that the Mobile Reference Station will exceed their expectations and maximize their productivity.
A 217Kb PDF of this article as it appeared in the magazine—complete with images—is available by clicking HERE
Editorial: America the Beautiful
After a rough wagon ride up to Pikes Peak in 1893, it was the view from the top that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write a poem that became known as "America the Beautiful." Later set to music by Samuel Ward, its images have become part of our national conscience. Few there are who cannot sing at least one stanza of the four. It's no secret to .... Read the Article
Brass Caps and Bandanas—Monumenting Anaktuvuk Pass
The Inupiaq are Eskimo people that live along the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska's North Slope. In the last few hundred years a nomadic splinter group of the Inupiaq known as the Nunamiut moved inland away from the coast to follow the Caribou migrations and settled at Chandler Lake and the Killik River in the .... Read the Article
GIS Mapping—Campus Style
When Craig Moore switched from the academic side of Virginia Tech in October 2004 to become an engineer for site development in the campus' Facilities Department, he inherited a GIS that was not easily updated, and maintaining it was a problem. As a result, "it trailed off to nothing," he said. At that time the system focused on ... Read the Article
Alleviating Poverty in the Developing World—Leveraging Property Rights with Geospatial Technology
According to renowned economist Hernando de Soto, the inability of persons worldwide to gain formal recognition of their real property rights is a major stumbling block to alleviating poverty. This lack of formal legal recognition of property rights is ... Read the Article
A Dividing Line Brings Us Together
Oh, the lines. The shortest distance between two points? A line pulled to ring a bell? A colonial boundary between two long forgotten counties? Lines of dialog in a television documentary? The lines marked of legal secession from an illegally seceded state? Soup lines during the depression? A line connecting a hook to .... Read the Article
Conference Review: Leica HDS 2009—Simplifying the Complicated
When GPS technology first began to filter into survey work, it was necessarily complex, depending, as it did, on satellites, atomic clocks, relativistic equations, and the like. Surveyors took this in stride and accepted that working with such arcane magic would always require expensive equipment, lengthy training, and endless hours of .... Read the Article
FeedBack
Clarification Regarding 2009 Manual: I found the article "Why a Federal Surveying Manual is Relevant to the States," by Steve Hansen intriguing [Sept. 2009]. I interpret the author to mean that the new manual soon to be published (2009) is binding on all recovery, restoration, and retracements of the Public Land Survey regardless of the date of ... Read the Comments
Vantage Point: Going Out with a Sigh
The story I'm about to relate took place over the space of seven months, and the outcome ratcheted up so much emotion that it was impossible to write at its last turning point. On October 1, 2009, the backhoes revved up their engines at 8 A.M. sharp, the earliest time allowed for such noise in my township, and La Ronda began falling to ... Read the Article
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A “Fixed” Fight: A peek inside one construction expert’s campaign to make fixed-price contracts and cost containment the industry’s new normal: Huge cost overruns and missed deadlines have long been the accepted norm for construction project operations. But as the economy struggles to fully recover, construction expert Barry LePatner stresses that these precepts can no longer define the nation’s most inefficient industry. He provides a proposal for hardwiring construction cost containment into future projects.
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