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Effects of ionospheric scintillation in precision agriculture
While we’re enjoying the beauty of the recent increase in auroras, vital industries that rely on GNSS signals for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) are at risk.
We are currently experiencing a higher level of ionospheric disturbance as we climb toward the peak of Solar Cycle 25 resulting in increased ionospheric scintillation—the rapid fluctuation of GNSS signals.
Precision agriculture is a critical industry that relies on high-accuracy GNSS positioning to work 24/7. Scintillation occurs more often in equatorial regions, such as Latin America (LATAM), where much of the world’s agricultural activities occur. During operations, it is typical for agriculture machines with GNSS guidance systems to disengage if the positioning solution accuracy is worse than 5-8 cm.
Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division’s Agriculture team implemented software solutions to mitigate the effects of scintillation for precise point positioning (PPP) solutions, now available on 7.09.01 and later firmware versions with TerraStar Correction Services.
Machines loaded with the Hexagon solution remained operational 4x longer than the competition. Specifically, for days with stronger effects from the ionospheric scintillation, they reported 5 hours of outage with the competitor’s RTK versus only 1-1.5 hours with Hexagon’s PPP solution.
“Now that we have some solutions, I believe that customers in the market overall have a better experience and an expectation regarding more and more improvements that we can bring to them.”
What you will learn
Written by Luis Rodriguez Mendoza, geomatics engineer, agriculture and Holly Taylor, senior agriculture engineering manager at Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division, this article details how the Agriculture team captured the effects of ionospheric scintillation on SMART Antennas by establishing monitoring stations at some of the most affected locations in LATAM.
These regionally sourced, high-quality data analytics were used to support sophisticated firmware and algorithmic developments, ensuring the quick delivery of the updated firmware version 7.09.01 to our customers.
PPP solution positioning error from two SMART7 Antennas with 7.09.01 and 7.08.15 firmware located side-by-side. The receiver with 7.09.01 reduced positioning error by up to a half metre compared to the receiver with 7.08.15.
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