Category Archives: GNSS/Location Tech
Tracking Aircraft in Flight
From surveillance methods using ground-based radar to space-based systems, it’s more complex to track aircraft than you might think. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, was both tragic and stunning. The loss of a modern commercial aircraft operating in government-controlled airspace, which remains unexplained, represents...
RFID
Above: RFID tags take many forms. The inside of a tag shown above—designed to attach to metal infrastructure in harsh environments, such as water pipes and valves—has a thin copper “bow-tie” antenna with a minuscule chip in the middle. It’s shown contrasted with a grain of rice. An electronic handshake has brought together the worlds...
Mapping Peripheral
A review of Trimble’s R1, a GNSS Bluetooth peripheral for mobile devices, with multiple options for correction sources. The idea of a GNSS “puck” has broad appeal: a peripheral GNSS receiver to precision-enable mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets, and a variety of purpose-built field-data-collection devices. There is a lot of functional territory between...
GNSS
Above: The third satellite in IRNSS being tested before its successful launch. What Did Not Happen and Increases, Improvements, Innovations Sometimes the most telling precursors of the future are things that did not happen. By all accounts, 2014 should be remembered a horrible, terrible, very bad GNSS year with botched launches, toxic broadcast ephemerides, near peak...
GNSS Antennas that Protect and Observe
Editor’s note: Public awareness of the potential for interference and jamming has rightfully increased over the past few years; due partially to at least one high profile incident each of “trucker jammers,” news of battlefield jamming, the jamming event along the North Korean border, and an inadvertent interference instance of naval origin in San Diego....
Going Smaller to Grow Bigger
Editor’s note: Some of the more significant changes in workflows and data management in surveying field and office operations have come in recent years: a move to mobile, robotics, and cloud-enabled software suites. But, how has implementation played out? We offer the following case study of a forward-thinking surveying and mapping firm that has implemented...