Inverted RTK system and its applications in Japan

The Real Time Kinematic (RTK) technique is the most productive and accurate GPS positioning method today, as it can be determinate position within few centimeters instantly. This method is widely used for applications such as surveying, structure monitoring and machine guidance etc. In order to perform RTK processing for large scale systems (i.e. precise vehicle monitoring with many rovers), many expensive RTK receivers and same number of bi- directional communication units have to be installed to collect observation data communicate with the reference site and monitor its RTK solutions. Moreover, if applications require remote control or apply sensing instruments, we have to install computers at each rover. To limit expense and complexity of system management with a large number of rovers, we have developed server based RTK processing platform to share RTK function for all rovers. The system can be process many GPS stations with a single personal computer. we have also developed a specialized dual frequency GPS receiver unit without on-board RTK processing capability to reduce receiver cost in order to demonstrate the advantage of our server based RTK platform. This paper describes the concept of our server based RTK platform and specialized GPS receiver unit with existing applications in Japan.