Incorporation of Network Information in Multiple GNSS Processing Environment

Hans-Jürgen Euler, Joachim Wirth

Abstract:	Since some years a number of professional receivers supporting more than one GNSS are available. Most of the manufacturers are offering independent RTK baseline applications. These applications are mainly supporting the operation in conjunction with their own reference stations. In the GNSS positioning community permanent reference stations applications, often called Network RTK, have been established. Even so this may still be considered as an emerging technology for some countries, there are already a lot of installations readily available and are offering their services to a broad community. However the efficient use of these services with GNSS receivers supporting multiple satellite systems is still quite limited. Obviously, a pure GPS reference station network can provide only the GPS portion of the required reference station information for positioning. For dual GNSS receivers half of the available rover observation information cannot be utilized. Network RTK installations supporting multiple GNSS on all reference stations need significant investment on the service provider side for exchanging all receivers. Only new networks are more likely to be equipped completely with reference station receivers supporting all the same GNSS; at the time being GPS and GLONASS. For the future Galileo is on the horizon and again the service providers have to adapt their services. It is not very likely that a large portion of the services will be homogenously equipped with reference station receivers supporting the same GNSS. During an EU-funded project the overall concepts for processing GNSS observations in real-time have been adapted to support any type of current or future GNSS. A preliminary outline of this study has been published in Euler and Wirth 2007. The software solution can support more than one reference station at a time. Without the limitation of traditional baseline technologies it uses a concept to allow combinations of reference stations featuring different GNSS. Most recent investigations are using RTCMs network RTK information along with their baseline processing. In the approach presented in this paper the processing of Network RTK information is directly incorporated in the processing strategy.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2008) September 16 - 19, 2008 Savannah International Convention Center Savannah, GA
Pages:	338 - 347
Cite this article:	Euler, Hans-Jürgen, Wirth, Joachim, "Incorporation of Network Information in Multiple GNSS Processing Environment," Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2008), Savannah, GA, September 2008, pp. 338-347.
Full Paper:	ION Members/Non-Members: 1 Download Credit Sign In