o, and welcome to episode seven of NovAtel’s on demand webinar series on An Introduction to GNSS. My name is Neil Gerein. I’m the director of marketing at NovAtel, part of Hexagon. Thanks for joining me!
This is the final of seven episodes in our introduction to GNSS webinar series. In past episodes, we’ve explored the calculations underlying GNSS, what the GNSS signal is made of and how it’s used to calculate a position.
In this final episode, I’ll demonstrate how GNSS positioning and its related technologies are used to solve positioning problems for a variety of users across industries. I’ll cover GNSS positioning in agriculture, automotive, and defense industries.
For a more expansive view of the industries relying upon GNSS, download our Introduction to GNSS book.
How GNSS Solves a Positioning Problem
GNSS solves a user’s positioning problem. While accuracy, resiliency, and even technical requirements differ across industries, at the end of the day the goal is for GNSS to determine where you are in any environment.
In precision agriculture, GNSS technology enables farmers to improve efficiency with products and techniques that can cut unnecessary expenses on seed, fuel, agrochemicals and time. These applications can include autosteering, variable rate seeding and spray applications, auto section control and path planning.
GNSS positioning must be incredibly accurate over the region, down to the centimeter in some cases, which is possible thanks to correction services. These services, which we explored in episode four, must be reliable even as the farmer passes by trees that can block satellite signals at headland turns at the end of a field. Because of the row-based nature of planting and harvesting, the relative pass-to-pass accuracy of the positioning solution is a key metric for these users.
For the automotive industry, GNSS positioning provides everything from navigation support, to the development of autonomous vehicles. While accuracy is integral to the safety of autonomous vehicles, manufacturers are looking for lane-level accuracy, rather than centimeter-level. Further, because vehicles aren’t limited to a distinct geographic area, RTK-based correction services are not as effective as globally available PPP services.
As we saw in episode five on sensor fusion, a combined GNSS and INS solution is incredibly useful in a kinematic or dynamic solution like a moving vehicle. Sensor fusion with IMUs, LiDAR, photogrammetry and more helps build positioning redundancy if the GNSS signals are disrupted while the car moves through downtown areas. Positioning and the GNSS signals must be resilient to multipath, blocked signals, and more.
The automotive industry requires GNSS positioning that balances accuracy and availability with system redundancy and solution integrity. The defense industry, however, prioritizes signal resiliency.
The defense industry needs a positioning solution that will continue delivering an accurate position even while in a contested environment. Episode six explained some the specific technologies developed for contested GNSS environments. Resiliency of GNSS signals against interference is a major priority for the defense industry, as well as global availability of signals, and having built-in redundancy should GNSS signals be lost.
One requirement of positioning in Defense that we don’t see in agriculture and automotive is the need for situation awareness. As we saw in episode six, situation awareness provides an understanding of undesired and malicious signals that may interfere with desired position. It helps the user determine the best method to preserve GNSS signals and maintain their positioning solution.
Delivering Precise Positioning and Autonomy
While each industry has its own unique needs and requirements of their positioning solution, the technology and concepts we’ve covered in the past seven episodes outline how GNSS meets those needs.
Hardware like receivers, antennas, and inertial navigation systems build upon each other with advanced algorithms for a holistic positioning solution