All posts by Matteo Luccio

Why the NSRS and SPCS are being Modernized

Modernization of the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) is driving the adoption of the State Plane Coordinate System of 2022 (SPCS2022). This is big news for surveyors because 48 states already have a codified SPCS.

AUVs: Crucial to Seafloor Mapping Effort

In 1775, in Saybrook, Connecticut, the brothers David and Ezra Bushnell built Turtle, a little egg-shaped wooden submarine held together by iron straps, with a 30-minute air supply. The next year, in New York Harbor, Turtle engaged in the first naval battle in history involving a submarine. The first autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), undersea systems...

Running Interference

Is Ligado Networks’ proposed terrestrial nationwide network a threat to GPS or a boon to 5G? The Global Positioning System has always faced challenges inherent in its design (weak signal, orbital and clock errors, receiver noise, dilution of precision), as well as from natural phenomena (ionospheric and tropospheric delays, solar flares), local topography and the built environment...

A World War II Loran receiver

The Return of Loran

An obsolete WWII navigation system is making a comeback In the 1980s, I used Loran-C to navigate on sailing trips off the U.S. East Coast. It had an accuracy of a few hundred feet and required interpreting blue, magenta, black, and green lines that were overprinted on nautical charts.  The system was a modernized version, launched...

A Google app for Android phones collects raw GNSS data. Photo courtesy of Maren Euwer.

Apps: GnssLogger & Google’s Play in GNSS

GnssLogger? Many surveyors are familiar with the U.S. National Geodetic Survey’s Online Positioning User Service (OPUS), a cloud-based processing service that allows them to upload a Receiver-Independent Exchange (RINEX) file and receive results in minutes. Soon, they may be able to achieve centimeter accuracy by accessing raw GNSS measurements on their Android phone. Google announced...