Use of a Single L1 GPS Receiver for Monitoring Structures: First Results of the Detection of Millimetric Dynamic Oscillations
Publication: Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 138, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper presents preliminary results to determine small displacements of a global positioning system (GPS) antenna fastened to a structure using only one L1 GPS receiver. Vibrations, periodic or not, are common in large structures, such as bridges, footbridges, tall buildings, and towers under dynamic loads. The behavior in time and frequency leads to structural analysis studies. The hypothesis of this article is that any large structure that presents vibrations in the centimeter-to-millimeter range can be monitored by phase measurements of a single L1 receiver with a high data rate, as long as the direction of the displacement is pointing to a particular satellite. Within this scenario, the carrier phase will be modulated by antenna displacement. During a period of a few dozen seconds, the relative displacement to the satellite, the satellite clock, and the atmospheric phase delays can be assumed as a polynomial time function. The residuals from a polynomial adjustment contain the phase modulation owing to small displacements, random noise, receiver clock short time instabilities, and multipath. The results showed that it is possible to detect displacements of centimeters in the phase data of a single satellite and millimeters in the difference between the phases of two satellites. After applying a periodic nonsinusoidal displacement of 10 m to the antenna, it is clearly recovered in the difference of the residuals. The time domain spectrum obtained by the fast Fourier transform (FFT) exhibited a defined peak of the third harmonic much more than the random noise using the proposed third-degree polynomial model.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the CNPq—the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development—that provided funds (Universal 2008, #422439-08-1) for the purchase of a pair of JAVAD TRIUMPH 100-Hz receivers and the authors’ productivity grants (PQ #300446/2010-1).
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 2 • May 2012
Pages: 92 - 95
Copyright
© 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 20, 2010
Accepted: Oct 7, 2011
Published online: Oct 10, 2011
Published in print: May 1, 2012
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