Case Sharing | Centimeter-Level Underground Survey Application
Estimated reading time for this article: 9 minutes
Author of this article | Franco de Lo renzo, Chief Product Director, u-blox Services
High-precision GNSS technology promotes paradigm changes in the field of underground surveying and mapping.
Screening Eagle combines ground-penetrating radar with u-blox's GNSS enhancement services to achieve truly easy underground mapping and generate meaningful 3D underground maps in real time.
01.
The driving force behind major changes
What comes to mind when you hear the words “paradigm shift”? What drives us to make fundamental changes in how we see the world, how we do things, or what we believe? A “paradigm shift” describes this type of disruptive change. Paradigm shifts occur when new technologies force radical changes in the way we develop processes, products or services. This article describes those light-bulb moments that changed the game in the world of underground mapping.
02.
Pain points of underground mapping projects
Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a geophysical positioning technology that has been used for decades. This technology can detect underground conditions in a minimally destructive way and supports various geophysical fields such as public utilities and archaeology. Application occasions.
The biggest advantage of GPR is its ability to locate objects without damaging the surface. GPR enables cost-effective virtual surveying in a variety of applications, including utility mapping, underground mapping and rock excavation projects.
Unfortunately, there have always been three pain points in traditional methods:
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Time-consuming exploration work is required before scanning;
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It is difficult to interpret the collected 2D radar images in the field;
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Post-processing is required to obtain 3D results.
These limitations have slowed down underground mapping projects, causing long lags in the actual start of underground project operations compared to initial site scans.
To date, determining precise positioning for underground mapping still requires survey-grade Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning systems.
But this solution requires a costly combination of hardware and services, including a powerful receiver (costing between thousands and tens of thousands of dollars), RTK software (costing hundreds of dollars), and other add-ons. Expenses, such as peripheral hardware (tripod, pole, or mobile station pole).
Site surveys can be quite time-consuming, taking days to weeks depending on the size, scope or complexity of the ground. When it comes to increasing the speed of field surveys, practical considerations such as the reliability, coverage and availability of RTK systems can make the difference between success and failure.
To solve the pain points of traditional methods, it is necessary to combine advanced GPR technology with new high-precision Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology.
03.
Inspire innovation with high-precision GNSS solutions
Fortunately, today we can meet the need for precise positioning through solutions that are different from traditional ones. To create high-precision products, we can combine GNSS receivers with existing high-precision augmentation services available globally, which uses a technology called PPP-RTK to combine precise single-point positioning with real-time dynamics. Precise solutions can be provided almost anywhere, eliminating the need for time-consuming and costly field surveys.
This solution enables high-precision mapping within a relatively short period of time (usually just seconds), with an error of less than 10 centimeters, allowing operators to focus on their underground mapping targets. In addition, its delivery flexibility and pricing model ensure the predictability of operating costs and facilitate the integration of this cost into the overall business cost structure.
Driven by these important developments, high-precision GPS solutions have gotten rid of the original pain points of high cost, customization and time-consuming, and entered a new mass market era. Today’s innovators are revolutionizing subsurface surveying by leveraging the benefits of value-driven, high-precision GPS solutions in geophysical positioning applications.
Given the advantages this paradigm shift brings.
Customers such as Screening Eagle have combined geophysical positioning technology with u-blox PointPerfect GNSS enhancement services.
Screening Eagle GS8000 is an underground utility surveying and mapping system that combines advanced GPR and GNSS technologies. It can not only locate underground objects, but also digitally present scanned features and line drawings onto 3D maps directly on site. And export to CAD/GIS. Therefore, the GS8000 is both a survey tool and a GPR tool.
"PointPerfect gives us the opportunity to deliver a higher level of user experience to GS8000 customers. With just one click, users can obtain survey-level accuracy in Europe and the United States, truly getting geo-located underground 3D images while strolling around. image. This reduces the time and hassle before and after scanning to almost zero; it also eliminates guesswork to a large extent, killing three birds with one stone.”
——Gorka Santamaria
Screening Eagle Senior Product Manager
PointPerfect Advantages:
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Results are obtained within seconds, with an accuracy of 3-6 cm1 ;
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Achieve >99.9% uptime via Internet and L-band satellite;
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Supports the United States, Europe and South Korea, and is gradually adding support for new regions;
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An intuitive and easy-to-use IoT service delivery platform that provides flexible packages suitable for different usage scenarios and application needs;
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Low data bandwidth reduces transmission costs for users;
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Seamlessly integrate positioning and communications hardware.
04.
The u-blox difference
Support smooth business
Flexible delivery methods are one of the differentiators of our solutions. Our IoT services are enterprise-grade cloud platforms that leverage auto-scaling technology to deliver all u-blox services. The intuitive and easy-to-use interface constitutes a self-service environment, giving users full autonomy to manage IoT device groups, billing, monitoring events, and fully control functions through APIs.
For now, the platform has proven to power billions of messages. In addition to traditional subscription-based approaches, we offer flexible pay-as-you-go service options to meet the needs of a variety of customers, use cases and applications. Thingstream eliminates complexity and achieves a frictionless business experience. Its users are more engaged and can significantly shorten the time to market.
SPARTN data format effectively reduces transmission costs
Modern positioning systems need to combine low bandwidth, high accuracy, high availability, high reliability, and ensure communication integrity between service providers and end users. The SPARTN format is an industry-driven messaging standard designed to meet these requirements. SPARTN combines the advantages of status representation with the foundation of modern communication protocols to form a bandwidth-optimized solution that reduces transmission costs for end users.
Traditional solutions require separate bidirectional communication flows for each endpoint, which consumes a lot of bandwidth and data, creating scalability challenges. PointPerfect supports all endpoints with a single broadcast stream, achieving economies of scale and supporting mass-market use cases.
SPARTN is an open protocol, so any relevant party in the GNSS industry can design products or services based on this protocol without applying for additional licenses or paying any fees.
Efficient messaging via MQTT
Compared with the HTTP protocol, the highly reliable and lightweight MQTT protocol is more efficient when transmitting a large number of messages through a single connection. Due to lower overhead and simpler message transmission, the amount of data transferred and the cost of transmission can be reduced.
The MQTT protocol is scalable: broadcasting a message to a million devices is as easy as sending it to one device. In terms of streaming of GNSS correction data, a special or proprietary client needs to be integrated when using the NTRIP protocol. This is not required when using the MQTT protocol, because many communication products have embedded MQTT clients.
05.
The result: a paradigm shift across the industry
Customers such as Screening Eagle are combining advanced methods in geophysical subsurface positioning with value-oriented GNSS enhancement services, which is bringing significant changes to the field of subsurface mapping.
Now, the industry has a truly painless way to generate 3D underground maps in real time. This is where survey-grade geolocation plays an important role.
This technology solves various pain points and provides the following advantages:
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No need to spend time planning field operations;
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Able to easily interpret 3D results in real time;
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Ultra-high data clarity and precise geographical coordinate reference;
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Collaborate and deliver CAD and GIS results with "one click".
“We are proud to say that the GS8000 system has transformed the way subsurface mapping occurs, bridging the gap between the geophysical and geospatial domains. Our partnership with u-blox has played an important role in achieving this, I eagerly look forward to seeing where these developments take us in the future.
——Gorka Santamaria
Screening Eagle Senior Product Manager
Learn more about PointPerfect GNSS enhancement services and explore how this service can bring breakthrough changes to your high-precision GNSS mass-market applications.
1
Horizontal accuracy: Typically 3-6 cm when using a compatible receiver. All accuracy results are based on:
a) Error-free GNSS observation data;
b) Receive complete and uninterrupted correction data;
c) Positioning results with resolved ambiguities.
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u-blox Switzerland (SIX:UBXN) is a leading provider of positioning and wireless communications technologies and services for the automotive, industrial and consumer markets. Its solutions accurately locate people, vehicles and machines and communicate wirelessly over cellular and short-range networks. With a broad and diverse portfolio of chips, modules and a growing ecosystem of product-supported data services, u-blox is uniquely positioned to help its customers quickly and cost-effectively develop innovative solutions for the Internet of Things. U-blox is headquartered in Thalwil, Switzerland, and currently has offices in Europe, Asia and the United States. www.u-blox.com
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Industry keywords: #u-blox, #ublox, #subsurface mapping, #RTK, #GPR, #HighPrecisionGlobalNavigationSatelliteSystem, #GNSS, #PPP-RTK, #HighPrecisionGPSSolution, #ScreeningEagle, # u-blox PointPerfect GNSS augmentation services, #PointPerfect, #SPARTN, #MQTT
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