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Test Results from Real-Time CORS Streaming, Space Weather and NDGPS

May 16, 2013  - By

Being a person who enjoys spending time in the field using RTK and DGPS, I followed up on my column last month, “Sources of Public, Real-time, High-Precision Corrections,” with a trip to the field to test the NGS CORS Streaming service. About a month ago, I made a trip to Colorado to attend the Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, stop by the SPAR conference in Colorado Springs, and visit with some of my colleagues in the Denver area.

When I arrived in Denver, my plan was to meet Tim Smith (GPS Coordinator for the U.S. National Park Service) and travel to the Bakerville GPS test site in the Rocky Mountains, which was at about ~11,000 feet in elevation. My intent was to test the CORS Streaming and PBO real-time streaming that I discussed last month to better understand the accuracy and reliability of those services.

I arrived at the Denver airport early on a Monday ready to rock and roll into the Rockies with some high-precision GNSS equipment. As it turned out, I was denied. In Colorado, the weather is dynamic. It was quickly degrading when I arrived in Denver. Snow was definitely in my future for the next few days. Tim made the decision that we shouldn’t travel to Bakerville. The reason for Tim’s trepidation wasn’t necessarily due to the weather in Bakerville, but rather that the I-70 Interstate might turn into a parking lot and we’d be stuck in traffic for a few hours. Fair enough. The backup plan was to do some local testing in the parking lot adjacent to Tim’s office in Denver.

Tim invited Mel Philbrook to join us. Mel is a long-time GNSS technologist who works for the local Trimble dealer. He brought an SUV full of Trimble GNSS equipment, including one of the new R10 GNSS units as well as a GeoXH handheld with an external antenna.

Mel also had an Intuicom RTK Bridge in the trunk of his SUV that facilitated the different sources of RTK reference data we could use. He could switch from CORS Streaming to the local VRS via NTRIP to UHF at the flip of a switch, sending corrections to both the R10 and the GeoXH. I was particularly interested in seeing how the units performed using CORS Streaming, which is/was a free RTK service (single baseline) that was in beta test phase. In Oregon, I don’t have access to CORS Streaming because the only CORS Streaming station west of the Mississippi River is in Boulder, Colorado. The station is TMGO (Table Mountain CORS).

The baseline distance from TMGO to our location was about 55 km. The R10 was reporting a horizontal precision of about 4 cm. Not bad for a 55-km baseline. I didn’t compare the results to a survey mark (shame on me, but keep reading because I get to that) so I’m trusting the R10’s precision estimate. Tim said he’s run the test before using a GeoXH and a longer baseline and saw sub 10-cm horizontal precision. It’s not what the typical person using short baseline or RTK network is accustomed to, but for the high-precision GIS user who’s mapping utility, transportation, and infrastructure, that’s pretty darn good.

Tim, Mel and I spent an hour or so messing around with the equipment before packing it up. Not a very scientific study, but it confirmed that CORS Streaming was accessible via NTRIP and reasonably accurate.

In the meantime, the snow wasn’t letting up. This is the view as I was leaving Tim’s office to head to Boulder for the Space Weather Workshop:

I wasn’t finished with my CORS Streaming testing yet. My experience at Tim’s office gave me enough confidence to allocate time later in the week to conduct a more detailed test after the Space Weather Workshop. Hopefully, the weather would cooperate (call me a fair-weather field guy).

Space Weather Workshop

Every April, NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder hosts the Space Weather Workshop (SWW), a gathering that has evolved into the leading conference in the U.S. for space weather-related topics. It attracts attendees, experts and speakers from all over the world. The discussion isn’t centered on GNSS, but GNSS certainly is a topic that is discussed. This year’s central topic was the electric power grid. You can view the SWW program here.

Believe it or not, this month (May 2013) was the predicted “solar maximum” for the current solar cycle (Solar Cycle 24, an 11-year cycle). However, Solar Cycle 24 has been unexpectedly weak. See the following slide presented by Doug Bisecker of the Space Weather Prediction Center. Doug is the Chairman of the Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel. His question, “Is there any chance we can still salvage some respectability?” speaks volumes about the difficulty in predicting space weather.

ThePrediction

Source: Doug Bisecker presentation at the 2013 Space Weather Workshop

From the above, you can see the actual number of sun spot occurrence has been significantly less than predicted. Although sun spots aren’t what cause GNSS receivers to have problems, sun spots can indicate the amount of solar activity, which can be related to geomagnetic storms. Geomagnetic storms disturb the ionosphere and are the events that cause the most problems for GNSS receivers. Looking at the top chart above, you can see the difference in activity between the last solar maximum (peaked in early 2002) and today. The difference is clearly significant.

Does this mean we, the high-precision GNSS users, get a free pass on Solar Cycle 24?

Not at all.

Historically speaking, the most extreme geomagnetic storms (e.g., Oct/Nov 2002) have occurred after the solar maximum so our sensitivity to this issue should be keen for the next two years. Furthermore, there are orders of magnitude more high-precision GNSS receivers being used than ever before, and in mission-critical applications such as auto-steer in machine control (agriculture, construction, etc.). Most GNSS high-precision users today haven’t experienced the effects of an extreme geomagnetic storm. For a short primer on the effects of solar activity on GNSS/GPS, you might want to take a look at this article I wrote in 2008 as well Richard Langley’s 2011 Innovation column “GNSS and the Ionosphere.” In addition to the content, they both contain some valuable links to relevant articles.

In line with a goal of the workshop, a panel of GNSS professionals looked at issues that users face as they go about their business at solar max. The panel was “Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Services: Research Needed to Fill Operational Gaps.” Joe Kunches (SWPC) moderated the panel that included Dr. Geoff Crowley (Astra), Dr. Anthea Coster (MIT), Capt. Steven Miller (USAF) and myself. We highlighted precision GNSS, satellite navigation for commercial aviation (ADS-B), and current work to better understand the errors the ionosphere imposes on user activities.

Something else I learned at the conference was how tough ionospheric scintillation is on GNSS receivers in Brazil. I feel for those users. When I mentioned I was traveling to Chile for an RTK project, the scientists said it is worse in Chile than the U.S., but still not as bad as Brazil. I’ll be very interested to experience how different it is than the U.S. (or other parts of the world where I’ve traveled).

I keep a pretty close eye on space weather and in contact with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. When I hear of a space weather event that may affect high-precision GNSS/GPS receivers, I send out a Tweet with the hashtag #SolarActivity. You can follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric.

From Space Weather Back to Local Weather

As the week progressed during the Space Weather Workshop, the snow continued. Boulder looked like Christmas in April.

I really wanted to spend some more time in the field to test the accuracy of the NGS’s CORS Streaming service and I was running out of time. In order to perform the test the way I wanted, I needed to find a local NGS survey mark that was observed using GPS. I checked out the NGS survey mark database and got lucky. There was one (PID = KK2060) located on a vista point parking area off of Highway 36 on the way from my hotel to the Space Weather Workshop. I couldn’t have asked for a better or more convenient survey mark location. I was planning to use a Bluetooth GNSS receiver so I could actually collect data while sitting in my car.

On Thursday morning, Mother Nature cleared her skies for me so I drove to the vista point. Remember, there’s a couple of feet of snow on the ground, so I was really hoping to see some kind of wood lathe that would get me close to the survey mark (no, I didn’t preload the KK2060 coords in my GPS L). Fortunately, a wood stake was near the survey mark. However, I didn’t have a shovel or a metal detector so it was either using my hands to shovel and search under two feet of snow for the mark, or…thanks to the rental car company, the car came with a healthy-sized windshield scraper. After 15 minutes of digging in the snow with a windshield scraper, I found KK2060. I’m sure to the people parked on the vista enjoying the view; I looked very suspicious using a windshield scraper to dig a hole in the snow. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a state trooper had shown up.

KK2060Hole

KK2060 recovered from under two feet of snow with a windshield scraper.

My final challenge was…no tripod or tribrach. I travel light and didn’t want to pack a set and, of course, I forgot to ask Tim if I could borrow a set. It’s never a good idea to set a GNSS antenna directly on the ground, but the antenna was small (<3” in diameter) and I did have a 5” diameter ground plane with about a 1” post. I was able to place it over the survey mark with reasonable confidence.

As I mentioned before, I was using a Bluetooth GNSS receiver (GPS L1/L2, GLONASS), the SXBlue III GNSS.

To collect the data, I was using an SXPad handheld with an AT&T SIM card for the Internet connection. For data-collection software, I used VisualGPSce, a free GPS data-collection program that collects and displays raw NMEA data. Although it doesn’t display enough digits of precision for the horizontal position, it accomplishes the simple task of collecting NMEA-formatted data without applying any transformation so I get the raw NMEA-formatted data from the receiver. It also displays some useful information such as PDOP, RTK indicator and elevation.

The last piece of data-collection software I used was a free NTRIP client software written by the SXBlue people called SXBlue RTN. I needed an NTRIP client software to access the CORS Streaming mount point. The software manages the IP address, port and login/pwd of the CORS Streaming system.

Logging into the NGS CORS Streaming site was painless, and within a few seconds I had an RTK FIXed position from the GNSS receiver, all from the comfort of my rental car, thanks to long-range Bluetooth. I collected ~45 minutes of NMEA data (1-Hz data rate) without interruption.

When I returned to the office, I began the process of comparing the results from CORS Streaming to the NGS survey mark coordinate. I checked with NGS and they reported that CORS Streaming is referenced to the ITRF00 (epoch 1997.0) datum. The KK2060 coordinate is published in NAD83/2011 (epoch 2010.0). I needed to reconcile the datum difference before performing any analysis so I used the NGS HTDP (Horizontal Time Dependent Positioning) online tool to accomplish this.

Finally, I used NMEA Analyzer (custom-built software for performing statistical analysis on GNSS NMEA data to NSSDA horizontal accuracy standards) to calculate accuracy (not precision) values of the data. I set up the NMEA Analyzer software to randomly select 200 epochs out of the ~2,700 collected to mitigate any bias due to filtering or other receiver “tricks”. Following are the horizontal results:

HRMS Error: 0.0168m
99%: 0.036m
95%: 0.029m
68%: 0.0189m
50%: 0.014m

Not bad for an antenna sitting on the ground and an 18-km baseline using a $6,000 GNSS receiver and a free RTK base station. Folks, this is the direction that GNSS technology is heading. The continued proliferation of high-precision GNSS infrastructure (RTK networks, real-time PPP, etc.) and the falling prices of RTK GNSS receivers will dramatically increase the availability of high-precision technology to those who previously could not afford to make the investment.

I didn’t get a chance to test the PBO real-time streaming while I was in Colorado, but fortunately there are many PBO real-time stations that I can test from the comfort of my home office here in Oregon. In fact, there are so many in Oregon and Washington that I can test many different baseline distances to understand what accuracy users can expect. Look for my test results on that sometime this summer.

National Geodetic Survey (NGS) Suffering

Only a week after I did my field test of NGS’ CORS Streaming system in Colorado, NGS announced it was shutting down the CORS Streaming service effective April 26. On April 23, NGS issued the following notice by email:

*********************************************

The National Geodetic Survey’s prototype Real Time GNSS Data Service (Streaming CORS) will be discontinued effective April 26, 2013.  The prototype was introduced a few years ago as a small research project to gauge interest and usage as well as test a proof of concept with the RTCM communities.  However, due to low usage of this prototype service and staff limitations within the National Geodetic Survey, we have decided to discontinue the prototype. There were many contributing factors that lead to this decision but the following recent series of events has had a significant impact on project support and operations:

— Funds were cut due to sequestration and rescission
— Upcoming furloughs will impact all National Geodetic Survey Personnel
— A NOAA-wide hiring freeze is in effect
— Our only real-time expert will retire on April 30, 2013

If you have any questions or comments to share, please contact Neil Weston at 301-713-3191 or by email – Neil.D.Weston@noaa.gov.

*********************************************

I think the action was premature. Hardly anyone knew about the CORS Streaming service and it was only deployed in a small number of locations, which was not enough to cover a significant geographic area or major metro areas.

Nonetheless, I think this action points to bigger problems at the NGS. To all of us in the U.S. (and those in other countries), the NGS has been a tremendous source of GNSS technical expertise, products and services. The problem is that they are losing expertise at a faster rate than they are gaining. Just in the past few months, Dave Doyle and Bill Henning have both retired. Those two were a big part of the NGS user community outreach “boots on the ground” effort.

Furthermore, as the notice indicates, NGS’s only “real-time expert” (Bill Henning) is now retired. That’s a problem. As real-time, high-precision GNSS is gaining traction quickly in industries beyond surveying and engineering, the resources for NGS to support this trend should also expand, not contract. On the other hand, the use of GNSS post-processing is not increasing, yet NGS has loads of resources allocated to support post-processing. As technology trends shift, resources need to be redistributed in alignment with those trends.

The Future of NDGPS Open for Public Comment

The U.S. NDGPS program is on the chopping block again. However, this time it’s much more serious. The last time this issue surface was in 2007 when funding for some of the NDGPS sites was being threatened. At that time, only some of the inland sites were facing decommissioning. The U.S. Coast Guard DGPS part of NDGPS was safe and funded.

However, that’s not the case this time. Even the U.S. Coast Guard is starting to question the value of the DGPS system it created and has been using for more than 15 years. The FAA’s WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) has proven to be a viable alternative to NDGPS and is used by thousands of sport mariners and commercial marine pilot associations across the U.S., as well as high-precision users in GIS and surveying/engineering. To further complicate the issue, the use of GLONASS is not supported by NDGPS. Like what we’ve seen in high-precision surveying/engineering receivers, GLONASS is becoming an important feature in receivers used by commercial mariners who have to deal with terrain and structures that impede satellite visibility. Even though WAAS doesn’t support GLONASS, some newer GNSS receivers are able to integrate GLONASS data into the WAAS solution, further increasing the value of WAAS over NDGPS.

It’s likely that you aren’t an NDGPS user, but you might still be affected if the NDGPS is decommissioned. There are a total of 86 NDGPS stations across the Continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii. As well as being NDGPS signal broadcasters, they are also part of the NGS CORS program that is used by the NGS’s OPUS online post-processing service. If you are using OPUS or NGS CORS for post-processing, you might be using NDGPS CORS data and not realize it. Following is a map of all NDGPS stations in the U.S.:

US_DGPS_Coverage_MAY13_Lg

U.S. NDGPS coverage map.

If you’re interested in reading an explanation from the U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Transportation about the request for public comment and submitting a comment, click here. To be considered, comments must be submitted by July 15.

See you next month.

Following me on Twitter@ https://twitter.com/GPSGIS_Eric

This article is tagged with , , , and posted in Opinions, Survey

About the Author: Eric Gakstatter

Eric Gakstatter has been involved in the GPS/GNSS industry for more than 20 years. For 10 years, he held several product management positions in the GPS/GNSS industry, managing the development of several medium- and high-precision GNSS products along with associated data-collection and post-processing software. Since 2000, he's been a power user of GPS/GNSS technology as well as consulted with capital management companies; federal, state and local government agencies; and private companies on the application and/or development of GPS technology. Since 2006, he's been a contributor to GPS World magazine, serving as editor of the monthly Survey Scene newsletter until 2015, and as editor of Geospatial Solutions monthly newsletter for GPS World's sister site Geospatial Solutions, which focuses on GIS and geospatial technologies.

2 Comments on "Test Results from Real-Time CORS Streaming, Space Weather and NDGPS"

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  1. Hi Eric,
    Awesome article. Many of you articles have been required reading for my ‘mobile mapping’ class at Humboldt State.

    Did you ever do a write-up on using the PBO streaming service?
    We have a PBO site here on campus. I’d be interested to know what kind of equipment you were using – especially the antenna you used in on your Colorado trip.

    Thanks a bunch and keep writing!

    • Eric Gakstatter says:

      Thanks Brian,

      Actually, I used a PBO site a couple of weeks ago when I was in the SF Bay Area. I have a Survey Scene newsletter emailing tomorrow or Friday detailing my experience. Feel free to follow up with comments/questions.

      Eric