Hungary's Pannon GSM is testing a GPS based location finding service, in co-operation with Kerti's Kft., a distributor of cartographic and geodesic GPS equipment. The combining of this accurate positioning method with GSM data transfer offers a far more cost-effective, flexible and quicker solution for land measurement.
The RTK (Real Time Kinematics) measurement system uses the signals received simultaneously by two GPS receivers to determine the position of individual geographical features - e.g. fences, roads, canals - to an accuracy of one tenth of a metre, as opposed to the 10-20-metre "error margin" of simple GPS-based measurement. Traditionally, the base GPS receiver and the "rover" carrying out the measuring communicate with each other via a radio modem. However, the costly radio equipment required for this connection has a maximum range of 10 kilometres. In contrast, GSM data interchange (which only requires a normal mobile phone equipped with a modem) effectively has an unlimited range, and, in the case of land measurement, allows even the degree of accuracy that is acceptable for geodesic measurement purposes within a range of up to 30-50 kilometres.
According to Bence Nagy, senior product manager at Kerti's Kft., GSM technology will have an important role to play in geodesics in the future. "Mobile data transfer could revolutionise the field of cartographic surveying, while in the area of land measurement the goal is to build up a country-wide network of base stations which will make it unnecessary to install GPS measuring equipment separately for each individual measuring project, which will in turn make it much simpler and quicker to carry out measurements to a high degree of accuracy."
"The innovative ISDN-based (V110 protocol) data communication that we offer makes it possible to build a connection within 2.5 seconds, which is up to 8 times faster than in the case of a normal data call. This means that each individual data call lasts on for, on average, 15 seconds less time, which represents a serious cost saving for the user in the case of a complex measuring task," said J
Posted to the site on 5th May 2003
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/8800.php