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Monitoring the quality of GPS station coordinates in real time

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Abstract

This paper evaluates various statistical process control algorithms for monitoring the quality of GPS station coordinates in real-time kinematic applications. Real-time detection of small but persistent shifts in GPS coordinates is critical for applications requiring automatic and reliable results in deformation monitoring. Examples include monitoring of dams, high-rise buildings, bridges, tectonic movements, landslides and so on. The conventional cumulative sums (Cusums), the robustified and self-starting Cusums, the adaptive Cusum and the exponential weighted moving average are some of the control charts applied to real-time-kinematic (RTK) data in field experiments. All control charts have been evaluated for their effectiveness in detecting an actual but intentional deformation shift of at least 0.5 standard deviations from a target mean. The observations used in testing these control charts had initially been assumed to be independent and follow a normal distribution, but later, their serial correlation was taken into consideration. These results show that the self-starting but robustified Cusums as well as the exponentially weighted moving average charts are suitable and efficient tools in monitoring quality in the RTK data. All presented control charts are implemented as modules in a software package being developed by the Technical University of Crete.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is based on a similar paper presented at the ION GNSS 2005, The 18th International Technical Meeting of the Institute of Navigation Satellite Division, Long Beach, California, 13–16 September 2005. This present work has advanced and modified the previous contribution by rectifying the performance of the adaptive Cusum in the first experiment and by improving its performance in the second experiment. It also modified the EWMA chart and increased its performance by reducing the number of false alarms (from 39 to 8). This work has been supported by the “IRAKLEITOS-Fellowships for Research awarded to the Technical University of Crete”, MIS 88727, “Operational Programme for Education and Initial Vocational Training”, Third Community Support Framework co-financed by the European Social Fund. We thank Dr. M. Schenewerk for reviewing the manuscript and making excellent suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering Laboratory, Technical University of Crete, University Campus, Chania, Crete, 73100, Greece

    Stelios P. Mertikas & Kosmas I. Damianidis

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  1. Stelios P. Mertikas
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  2. Kosmas I. Damianidis
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Correspondence to Stelios P. Mertikas.

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Mertikas, S.P., Damianidis, K.I. Monitoring the quality of GPS station coordinates in real time. GPS Solut 11, 119–128 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-006-0044-6

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