Project:

Real-Time, Canadian Active Control System (CACS) Stations Monitoring

Location:

 Canadian Active Control System, Canada (2013)

Purpose:

Real-time data streaming from the CACS stations to GNT in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and processing very long baselines

Configuration:

1 GNT station (to feed GPS broadcast ephemerides), 28 CACS stations

Communications:

Global Internet network

Details:

The Geodetic Survey Division of Geomatics Canada, in partnership with Geological Survey of Canada, is presently operating the Canadian Active Control System (CACS) to provide improved GPS positioning capability for the Canadian surveying and geophysical community as well as for other spatial referencing needs. The system consists of unattended tracking stations, referred to as Active Control Points (ACPs), which continuously record carrier phase and pseudo-range measurements for all satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) within station view. Each ACP is equipped with a high precision dual frequency GPS receiver and an atomic frequency standard.

CACS streams raw GPS observations to their clients at a 1 Hz data rate in real-time. The GNT’s mmVu® deformation monitoring software is able to connect the CACS stations and process the streamed raw data in real-time. Recent tests, combining CACS data and broadcast ephemerides fed by one of GNT's GPS station, has shown static positioning precision at the mm level in each of the three-dimensional components for distances up to 400 km.