NRCan Presents Positioning Lidar & the Canadian Geospatial Industry for the Future at Lidar CANEX 2023

Dr. Calvin Klatt, PhD, Natural Resources Canada’s Director Canadian Geodetic Survey spoke on Positioning Lidar and the Canadian Geospatial Industry for the Future during a livestream presentation at Lidar CANEX 2023, on Tuesday, April 25, 2023.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) has a leading role in the federal positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) community, and has federal responsibilities for positioning standards, services and infrastructure through the Canadian Spatial Reference System (CSRS). Canada’s federal government has relied on services such as GPS, Galileo, WAAS, VLBI, SLR, GNSS, and DORIS with both successes and failures.

NRCAN Canadian Spatial Reference System Precise Point Positioning Service (CSRS-PPP) has a kinetic mode that has been useful in Lidar work.

Reference systems are undergoing modernization in 2025. NAD83 will become NATRF2022 and give Canada the opportunity to address other known issues. Canada and the United States are heading towards a common goal. The goal is having fully compatible and modernized reference systems by 2023. There will also be an expansion of high-quality stations to be installed or converted in Canada. These are continuously operated GNSS networks (for earthquake hazards).

In regards to the future, Dr. Klatt discussed how positioning and GNSS is the largest element of Geospatial technology and is continuing to grow rapidly. It had the economic impact of two trillion USD in 2022, and has the expected economic impact of over five trillion USD by 2030. Klatt spoke of free, real-time PPP services and discussed the Galileo High Accuracy service which is not available but still being developed. Its official launch is early in 2024.

Dr. Klatt has provided a follow-up to a question asked during the Question and Answer period with this answer:

For further information about the accuracy of the CSRS-PPP Kinematic mode we refer you to the following publication which included a test using an automobile: Banville S, Hassen E, Lamothe P, Farinaccio J, Donahue B, Mireault Y, Goudarzi MA, Collins P, Ghoddousi-Fard R, Kamali O. Enabling ambiguity resolution in CSRS-PPP. NAVIGATION. 2021;68(2):433–451. https://doi.org/10.1002/navi.423

Regarding access to 1-second GNSS data:

Natural Resources Canada / Canadian Geodetic Survey provides high-rate (1 second) GNSS observations for a subset of the CACS network in RINEX v2.11 and v3.03 formats. This data is available publicly through two methods.

Method 1: CACS web application

URL: https://webapp.csrs-scrs.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/geod/data-donnees/cacs-scca.php

Note: Requires users to login using a free CSRS user account.

To download 1 second rate GNSS observation files select the “1 second” radio button in the “Observation Interval” panel (see image below); select the RINEX version; and the desired date/times. The map will automatically update to show the stations available based on the user’s desired observation interval and RINEX version. Stations can be selected by clicking on the station icon on the map and selecting the radio button (see image below).

When using the CACS web application the high-rate 15 minute files are decompressed and merged into one RINEX file, simplifying the process for the user.

Method 2: CACS anonymous ftp server

Clients who wish to fully automate their data downloads should use the CACS anonymous ftp server.

Address: cacs.nrcan.gc.ca

ftp://cacs.nrcan.gc.ca

http://cacs.nrcan.gc.ca

https://cacs.nrcan.gc.ca

The high-rate (1 second) GNSS data files are stored in 15 minute batches in RINEX v2.11 (GPS+GLO), and for a subset of stations, in RINEX v3.03 (GPS+GLO+GAL). These files are in Hatanaka compressed format and will need to be uncompressed by the user after download.

The directory structure is ftp://cacs.nrcan.gc.ca/gps/data/hrdata/yydoy/yyd/hr/ where: