From the documentation I’ve reviewed, it appears that a base station requires a precisely known, fixed position to function effectively.
While the vessel will generally remain stationary during operation, slight positional fluctuations may still occur due to factors such as waves or currents.
Given this potential for minor movement, I would like to inquire whether this would render it unsuitable as a base station for RTK applications.
It depends whether you need absolute or relative positioning accuracy. We had a user who wanted to have a Base in a moving vehicle, sending corrections to a moving Base on a UAV, sending corrections to a Rover also on the UAV. They needed the position, heading and orientation of the UAV relative to the moving vehicle. More details attached below.
+1 to what the others have mentioned, this depends on your application.
IE: If you want a Base + “X” Rovers to track assets moving around on a cargo ship - that would be fairly easy. But If you want a Base for a swarm of UAV’s and need tight elevation control, that’s a whole different animal when the base is bouncing around.
I’m working on implementing a positioning system for an unmanned surface vehicle (USV). To do this, I need to track the positions of two elements: the buoy and the USV. The buoy’s position needs to be monitored in real-time, while for the USV, it’s sufficient to accurately store its position data without real-time tracking. Since this operates at sea, I understand that achieving real-time RTK accuracy requires a base station, so I plan to install the base on a stationary vessel.
You might be fine with a typical Base/Rover(s) setup, if you aren’t expecting “X” cm accuracy at your RTK Rovers.
The “stationary” Base Vessel sends it’s Observation Data via RTCM, so it’s hard to predict the impact that any base movement will have on the RTK solutions, especially base movement that’s cyclical in nature (waves, wake, etc).
However, this should be fairly easy to test with a Base/Rover on Land.
After a Survey-IN, hold the base antenna in your hand and move it like an anchored boat does.
Watch the RTK solutions from a stationary Rover and see how they react to the Observation Data not coming from a truly Static Position.
Does everyone think that seems like a reasonable test… or no ?
You will have much less immunity to environmental conditions with a non-static base.
For Instance, last week had some nasty days in the Ionosphere for my location.
This type of Atmospheric activity makes it harder for a Base/Rover to perform, since Ionosphere correction is a key item in RTK. Naturally, this would be even harder to correct if the base was bouncing around during that Atmospheric “Upset”.
