Blogs

Drotek has taken L1 RTK devices on the field under difficult conditions to see how they really perform.

Drotek, based in Toulouse (France) has had the opportunity to test SMARTNAV L1 RTK with laboratory grade devices. This test has been run in straight collaboration with GUIDE (GNSS Usage Innovation and Development of Excellence), a testing laboratory for satellite geolocation (http://www.guide-gnss.net/)

It is now quite clear that L1 RTK performs really well in open sky “easy” environnements. But we wanted to test its real performance in more difficult environments.

GUIDE is a equipped with a GBOX, a “black box” containing an aeronautical grade Inertial Measurement Unit and a multicontellation L1/L2 AsterX receiver. The unit constantly logs GNSS L1/L2 raw data + inertial measurements. The two datasets are then merged to output a precise reference trajectory.

The antenna is place on the roof of a car.

We set up two devices on the car ( + GBOX) :

• one standalone SMARTNAV (with its own antenna), logging raw data for post-processing

• one SMARTNAV connected to car’s antenna splitter, processing real-time NRTK (VRS) with Teria network corrections

The environments we wanted to test were the following :

• height differences (>10%)

• bridges and tunnels

• large round abouts

• housing estate

• urban canyon

• leafy streets

With this test, we will try to answer the three following questions :

• Repetability : is solution precise in an absolute or relative way? Are we able to reproduce it over time?

• Precision/Accuracy : how precise/accurate is the solution?

• Availability : is L1 as reliable/available as L1/L2?

Results will be posted this week !

DROTEK