Precise point positioning and its application in mining deformation monitoring

Precise point positioning (PPP)-based deformation monitoring scheme is presented for the use in mining deformation monitoring. Within the solutions of daily observation, outliers are detected and removed to avoid any potential misinterpretation of the results and then the deformation can be extracted by the coordinate differences between the two consecutive solutions. Meanwhile, because of the special location of a rover station in mining areas, the satellite geometry may be insufficient for a reasonable PPP solution, and the multipath impact an also be significant. Therefore, it is necessary to predict the satellite geometry before any daily observation. To evaluate the ability of extracting the deformation using the PPP-based method, various quality measures were introduced. The results of three datasets of the same station show that the precision of deformation monitored by PPP can reach up to cm level and even mm level. © 2011 The Nonferrous Metals Society of China.