Establishing an Network RTK Solution in Great Britain; From Schema to Solution

I. Wilson, P. Cruddace, G. Pennington, M. Greaves, C. Fane, H-J. Euler, R. Keenan, and M. Levine

Abstract:	The Ordnance Survey (Great Britain’s National Mapping Agency) have established a trial network of 23 continuously operating GPS reference stations (CORS) in the north of England. The stations are linked together to provide a networked Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS correction within the region. The internal Ordnance Survey business driver for the creation of the network being savings in hardware and communications costs over traditional GPS field operations – one base plus one rover. With a field workforce of 450 surveyors, the benefits of such a system (enabling an RTK correction to be received from most national locations without the need for a user to establish their own base station) are substantial. If the trial proves successful, the Ordnance Survey will look to establish almost national coverage – the viability of this is discussed. The network consists of three components; the field reference stations, the ‘hub’ software that pulls the data in and generates the correction and the broadcast element. The network is spread over an area approximately 220km x 240km, with a station spacing of between 40km and 90km. All of the constituent parts are held together, or linked, by a communications mechanism. A key area of work within the development of the trial network was to overcome substantial communication issues; both in getting the data to the ‘hub’ and then broadcast out again to the users. The ‘lessons learnt’ from this process are presented along with the systems design architecture. Locating field stations proved to be one of the major inhibitors to the success of the project. GPS requirements; field of view, low multipath environment, etc, were insignificant when compared with the power, communications, political and financial considerations. A strategy of building up a partner relationship proved the most profitable to get stations actually established. The testing strategy adopted aimed to just as much investigate the robustness of the techniques being adopted as the final end positional accuracy of a point. The methodology involved analysing; site stability, station spacing, accuracy and repeatability testing, time to fix, station remove and restore tests and correction signal availability / propagation mapping. Results from these tests will be presented in full.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002) September 24 - 27, 2002 Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR
Pages:	2311 - 2323
Cite this article:	Wilson, I., Cruddace, P., Pennington, G., Greaves, M., Fane, C., Euler, H-J., Keenan, R., Levine, M., "Establishing an Network RTK Solution in Great Britain; From Schema to Solution," Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002), Portland, OR, September 2002, pp. 2311-2323.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In