Setting Up A Georeferenced RTK Base Station

Preamble

In my previous post I detailed how to use RINEX data to create a sub-decimeter level position solution. Using RINEX data in this way from government sources ties you to an agreed upon reference datum. With your own base station this can be problematic as the accuracy of the established position of the station will likely not be geographically accurate. This then leads to repeatable rover solutions but they will have some offset versus many other georeferrenced data sets, eg. aerial imagery, digital terrain maps, etc. To address this issue we can look at how we define the position of our own base station. If we treat our base station as a rover and use RINEX data from an established government or private network of base stations. This allows us to tie our self-managed base station to the same datum as the established network and as a result provide georeferrenced rover solutions from your own self-managed base station.

Method

  1. Setup reference station with a fixed antenna location
  2. Carry out a long term collection of raw GNSS observation data
  3. Find a RINEX data supplier in a nearby location and download a time correspondent RINEX file to your raw observation data set
  4. Post process to an RTK solution
  5. Take the median position and do some statistics to confirm the variance
  6. Program your reference station with this location
  7. Repeat every few weeks initially then back off to every quarter or so

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