A Study on Simultaneous Adjustment of GNSS Baseline Vectors and Terrestrial Measurements

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) is mostly used for high-precise surveys due to its accuracy and efficiency. But this technique does not always fulfill the demanding accuracy in harsh operational environments such as urban canyon and forest. One of the remedies for overcoming this barrier is to compose a heterogeneous surveying network by adopting terrestrial measurements (i.e., distances and angles). Hence, this study dealt with the adjustment of heterogeneous surveying networks consisted of GNSS baseline vectors, distances, horizontal and vertical angles with a view to enhancing their accuracy and so as to derive an appropriate scheme of the measurement combination. Reviewing some technical issues of the network adjustments, the simulation, and experimental studies have been carried out, showing that the inclusion of the terrestrial measurements in the GNSS standalone overall increased the accuracy of the adjusted coordinates. Especially, if the distances, the horizontal angles, or both of them were simultaneously adjusted with GNSS baselines, the accuracy of the GNSS horizontal component was improved. Comparing the inclusion of the horizontal angles with those of the distances, the former has been more influential on accuracy than the latter even though the same number of measurements were employed in the network. On the other hand, results of the GNSS network adjustment together with the vertical angles demonstrated the enhancement of the vertical accuracy. As conclusion, this paper proposes a simultaneous adjustment of GNSS baselines and the terrestrial measurements for an effective scheme that overcomes the limitation of GNSS control surveys.