A compliance assessment of GNSS station networks in Serbia

Abstract

Since the early 21st century, Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has dominated geodetic reference networks. Almost all countries established a permanent Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) station network to augment all available GNSS systems. By the end of 2005, Serbia completed the Active Geodetic Reference Network as a particular project of Serbia's Republic Geodetic Authority (RGA). Besides RGA, two private companies, Vekom and Geotaur, have established permanent station networks. This paper assesses the compliance of all the three networks, and network results are evaluated against the spatial distance determined by classical geodetic methods. When all available GNSS constellations are utilized, NAVSTAR, GLONASS, BEIDOU, and GALILEO, in the processing procedure, the established networks in Serbia align within a margin of about 3 mm across all coordinate axes. The results obtained within the research indicate that by using GNSS networks, it is possible to provide the coordinates of the points for the establishment of the national spatial reference system of Serbia, the reference system in almost all engineering fields, reference systems for the maintenance works of the real estate cadastre, and it is also possible to provide coordinates of points that can be used to define local, national, and world reference heights surfaces.