Galileo Improved Services for Cadastral Augmentation Development On-field Validation

Project Information

GISCAD-OV

Grant agreement ID: 870231

DOI 10.3030/870231

Closed project

EC signature date 28 November 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 31 May 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies – Space

Total cost € 3 361 825,00

EU contribution € 2 606 317,51

Coordinated by

GEOWEB SPA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GISCAD-OV (Galileo Improved Services for Cadastral Augmentation Development On-field Validation)

Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2021-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

GNSS measurements are largely used in cadastral surveying and mapping. GNSS features’ appeal vs. the conventional methods and techniques are well known and widely applied. Nevertheless, cadastral surveying operations based on GNSS are limited by several factors such as:
• cost of the augmentation services (e.g. number of reference stations to be installed, maintenance costs, software licensing),
• cost of professional GNSS receivers,
• not easy-to-use services and
• lack of customer care and supporting services

The main scope of GISCAD-OV is therefore to design, develop and validate an innovative and cost-effective High Accuracy Service for cadastral surveying applications, based on GPS + Galileo High Accuracy Services (HAS) and Precise Point Positioning-Ambiguity Resolution quick convergence (PPP-AR) advanced techniques.
Additionally, GISCAD-OV aims at exploiting the new business opportunities that will rise in the cadastral land surveying, through the availability of the differentiation introduced by Galileo HAS correction services
GISCAD-OV includes the whole value chain of the cadastral sector counting National mapping and cadastral agencies (NMCAs), professional cadastral surveyors, manufacturers, local operators service providers, academia and research centers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the reporting period, the following main technical activities have been carried out:
• Analysis of User Requirements (WP2): the analysis of functional and non-functional User Requirements for the implementation of high accuracy cadastral surveying has been carried out throughout interviews and questionnaires to the cadastral value chain actors.
The user’s requirements have been extracted and conveyed into the Deliverable D2.1
• Architecture Design (WP3): the functional decomposition, system requirements and subsystem requirements for the architecture design for the development of HAS, including Galileo HAS, for the development of a service infrastructure for high accuracy cadastral surveying has been carried out. Global augmentation systems integration and interfacing (e.g. Geoflex GFXops), based on a worldwide network of reference stations for SSR messages derivation service delivery, as well as local augmentation systems integration, based on local network, has been designed.
A central GISCAD-OV Control Centre has been designed, interfacing to Global SSR and Local Reference Services providers to gather the raw data required for performing precise local STEC and ZTD estimations needed for NRTK and PPP-RTK services implementations.
An integrity monitoring system for SIS and reference stations and relevant optimised integrity messages has been defined, as well as the interfacing versus remote areas reference stations and systems belonging to European wide Services (e.g. EUREF Stations). A standard interface versus the future GSC NTRIP Caster has been also designed. The on-field receiver for the development of the cadastral surveying activities has been designed, based on a COTS NovAtel receiver (implementing the Real-Time Galileo HAS decoder) and a software receiver (implementing the PPP-Engine). The architecture design of the interfacing versus the Galileo Ground Segment and GSC for the performance analysis and system availability, has been developed as well as the design of the communication system. Following the above, deliverable D3.1 D3.2 and D3.3 have been submitted.
• Pilot Project Design (WP 4): the development of the designed architecture has been carried out. The assembly, integration and test of the augmentation system (see WP4) has been carried out as well. Single countries local augmentation service operators have been contacted. Agreements have been set to allow the access to the relevant reference stations. The GISCAD-OV Control Center, equipped with the local network SSR and the interfacing to the global SSR and single countries reference stations, has been implemented. The prototype of the on-field GNSS equipment, has been developed. The Galileo HAS ICD has been analyzed and the decoder has been developed in post-processing.
The Pilot Project test plan has been designed (D4.1). The development and planning of the cadastral surveying activities to be performed in the 7 countries has been carried out through the agreements reached with single countries NMCAs and professional surveyors.
A standard for the cadastral surveying operational procedures has been defined (see D4.2). The infrastructure monitoring system, based on the GISCAD-OV solution, has been designed and tested in a trial site.
• Validation of the Test Results (WP5): The adaptation of the core algorithms of the IPS (Ionospheric Prediction Service) has been adapted for carrying out the comparison to the STEC and ZTD calculated by GISCAD-OV, as well as the design of the interfaces for the development of the Galileo HAS availability monitoring Centre.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GISCAD-OV selected impacts for the cadastral domain at large are:
Service Providers
• Reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs
• Communication burdens reduction through HAS
• Service Levels Differentiation
Cadastral Professional users
• Improved availability in urban areas
• Reduced Service costs
Receivers’ manufacturers
• Market uptake due to lower barrier to entry for High Accuracy Users
• Cost production reduction due to economy of scale
NMCAs
• Reduced time for cadastral acts approval
• Increase in the number of yearly processed acts

The following are some of the main advancements of GISCAD-OV vs. the current SoA:
• GNSS – PPP-AR: GISCAD-OV will provide a complete service architecture and extensive on-field validation for multi-constellation multifrequency Real-Time PPP.
• Precise Ephemeris and clock broadcasting: Implementation of the Galileo E6 augmentation messages decoder into a commercial GNSS receiver.
• PPP-RTK Performance Analysis: Extensive On-Field Validation in harsh environmental scenarios.
• PPP Ambiguity Resolution Validation: GISCAD-OV will develop and analyze the possible combination of Advanced Ambiguity Fixing techniques and will test them on the field.
• Satellite Biases Broadcasting: Performance analysis and validation of the broadcast Augmentation satellite biases (including the Galileo E6B ones) for PPP-AR implementation and comparison among the proposed and other available solutions.
• Performance Analysis and validation of the broadcast Augmentation satellite biases for PPP-AR implementation and comparison: update of current IGS and EUREF procedures for inserting Galileo into IGS and calculating orbit and clock with respect to the same Reference Framework of GPS.
• Integrated Global and Local Services: GASOp and LASOp integration and testing, including Galileo multiple frequency, is native into the project and will be extensively validated.
• Integrity: An Integrity monitoring system for FDE will be implemented.
• PPP solutions generalization: An uncombined measurements approach will be tested, through RTCM SSR message, able to integrate different PPP-AR solutions.
• Reference Framework for Multi-constellation Services: Proposals at international level for deriving coherent Galileo Precise Ephemeris in the same Reference Frame will be carried out.
• PPP-AR on low-cost GNSS receivers: Smartphone High Accuracy solutions, through the integration of high-quality antennas with existing GNSS, equipped smartphone, will be implemented.

bg-2.jpg