R. Pelc-Mieczkowska

Primary results of using hemispherical photography for advanced GPS mission planning

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Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary results of using hemispherical digital photography obtained from fish-eye lens for advanced GPS mission planning. Nowadays, reach GPS constellation ensure availability of 3 dimensional position, anytime, anywhere over the world, except, where the obstructions prevent signal receiving occur. At urban area, so called “urban canyon” and under some tree canopy a careful and taking into account the shape and type of terrain obstacles mission planning is still essential. Currently available mission planning applications allows to create obstruction diagram just manually, by determining each obstruction point by point (azimuth and elevation) which is inefficient. Other, described in the literature solution requires 3D digital building and other obstructions models, that are not yet widely available besides the large urban agglomerations. A vertical fish-eye image seems to be a great tool for direct determining of a site satellite window diagram giving complete view of site. This method is also easy and cost and time efficient. In the work, accuracy of obstacles shape determination, compared with tacheometry as a reference was examined. Afterwards, the efficiency of the proposed solution was tested at both urban and wooden area.

Keywords: GPS mission planning; Hemispherical photography; errain obstruction; Fish-eye lens.