Early Results on GNSS Receiver Antenna Calibration System Development

Abstract

Precise global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning is based on carrier phase observations, where the understanding of the receiver antenna’s phase center corrections (PCCs) is critical. With the main goal of determining the PCC models of GNSS receiver antennas, only a few antenna calibration systems are in operation or under development worldwide. In this paper, a new automated GNSS receiver antenna calibration system, recently developed at the Laboratory for Measurements and Measuring Technique (LMMT) of the Faculty of Geodesy of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, is briefly presented. The developed system is an absolute field calibration system based on the utilization of a Mitsubishi MELFA RV-4FML-Q 6-axis industrial robot. The antenna’s PCC modeling is based on triple-difference carrier phase observations and spherical harmonic (SH) expansion. Our early calibration results for the global positioning system (GPS) L1 frequency show sub-millimeter agreements with the IGS approved Geo++ GmbH values.

Keywords

• GNSS
• antenna calibration
• industrial robot
• phase center correction (PCC)