GPS Network Services For Supporting Surveying Tasks.

Joël van Cranenbroeck
Director GPS Reference Station Program,
Leica Geosystems AG,
Heinrich-Wild-Strasse CH-9435 Heerbrugg, Switzerland
Tel: (32) 8141 2602, Fax: (32) 8141 2602
Email: Joel.VanCranenbroeck@leica-geosystems.com


The NAVSTAR GPS was not designed for the civilian users who are today a much bigger community that the previously targeted. GALILEO the new European global navigation satellite system project will however not provide also the ultimate performances needed in surveying tasks. It’s clear that a network of permanent reference stations will remain the necessary infrastructure to support high accuracy applications.

This presentation will underline the support of a GPS permanent reference stations network in the daily surveying production. By surveying we understand that the maximum range between any reference stations and the user location will be less than 100 kilometers in order to differentiate those tasks with the geodetic applications.

All observations collected in real time from a network of GPS permanent reference stations help existing GPS receivers to increase the conventional RTK range and to insure the user a fast fix in his positions as well as a constant precision over the all area covered by that network and a significant improvement in the reliability of the results.

This contribution has also to be considered with the fact that only one GPS surveying receiver is needed on the field to establish sub-metric and centimeter position accuracy and by the way can attract new non-surveyor users.

For that new community the services provided by such infrastructure need to be attractive and easy to use.

This presentation will emphasize which kind of services - RTK corrections, coordinates generator facility, availability of RINEX observation files, centralized processing - can be made available through an Internet Web server.

The variety of potential applications generated by such infrastructure are also a key requirement for the “GPS Network service providers” who want to expand their customer base to ensure a proper return on their investments (ROI).