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Base station quality & monitoring
cono44 asked 9 months ago
Does anyone have any good reference they can point me to for how to check and monitor the quality of corrections data being sent by a base station?
For example, I have a base station that intermittently causes problems in that rovers cannot get a fix. I suspect the base station is not well located and that nearby trees and buildings might be affecting the quality. How would I go about checking this in RTKlib for example? What do I need to look for?
For example, I have a base station that intermittently causes problems in that rovers cannot get a fix. I suspect the base station is not well located and that nearby trees and buildings might be affecting the quality. How would I go about checking this in RTKlib for example? What do I need to look for?
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replied 9 months ago
If I were post-processing I’d take local (rover) and RTMC3 (base) data and see what kind of solution convergence (rms) and ambiguity resolution(%) I was seeing. RTK can only process forward in time, where as post-procession can go forward and backward in time and get get a broader picture of the signal and cycles.
One could presumably also record raw data at the base and post-process that against governmental sources (CORS)
replied 9 months ago
Thanks clive, this was basically my plan just I don’t have easy access to the base station at the moment due to distance. I guess my question is more related to base station site selection and what I should be doing and what metrics are important. There doesn’t seem to be any good guides out there. For example, if I want to compare two potential sites what metrics should I be evaluating, are solution convergence (rms) and ambiguity resolution (%) sufficient?
replied 9 months ago
You can record the RTCM3 from the Base at the receiving end, you can convert them into RINEX Observation files usable by Post-Processing tools
You should be able to make a reasonable determination about the effectiveness of a Base antenna location based on it height and view of the sky, horizon-to-horizon. Something with a lot of obscuration, or things/surfaces that would reflect off of, including the ground, will be poor locations. Have a ground plane under the antenna if it needs one. The ANN-MB expects at least a 10×10 cm one.
Use uCenter, and do a Sky-Map, understand how it sees the sky using the heat-map.
The Post-Processing gives you a perspective on the quality / cleanness of the data you are generating. Being unduly noisy and inconsistent, clearly not helpful.