Abstract:
Centimetre accurate geolocation service is beneficial to a wide range of applications, ranging
from sports engineering, civil infrastructure, autonomous vehicles, surveying to digitisation
of historically significant structures. Previously, these features were confined to
prohibitively expensive commercial hardware, requiring technical knowledge and experience
to operate. Continued technological advancements have seen the miniaturisation of
electronics and antennas, coupled with an increase in the number and performance of global
navigation satellite systems (GNSS) by various nations and organisations, providing
global signal coverage. This paper demonstrates a low-cost, mobile, real-time kinematic
(RTK) geolocation service for engineering and research applications, fabricated from components
readily available from commercial suppliers. This solution, consisting of a mobile
RTK base station and RTK rover, provides centimetre-accuracy performance up to a distance
of 15 km away from the base station. Correction data is transmitted over the internet
using free and open software solutions. The small footprint of both the RTK base station
and RTK rover, provides versatile applications even in remote locations. The performance
of the geolocation service is validated using field experiments, comparing measurements
against state-of-the-art photogrammetry, light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and digital
level measurement technologies. The authors encourage the adoption of the RTK geolocation
solution based on the calibrated results.
