Open Source Virtual Reference Station software

Does anyone know of open source projects, papers or any other info about the calculations needed to create a virtual reference station for RTK corrections given realtime access to multiple uBlox F9P fixed receivers scattered across a large geographical area.

I have a hunch that it’s a matter of doing relatively simple interpolation of observations, but I have not seen any open source implementation or even discussion of this, so maybe it’s a difficult mathematical problem.

Any pointers would be great. I’m thinking of doing this an a open source project if it’s realistically feasible.

Thx
Joe.

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I don’t know about what calculations you would need besides a coordinate for the “base”. I have been tinkering with a similar project in order to have employees around the area allow me to put up an M2 receiver as a station. It works out that I can plan an area that would encompass most of Central Texas which could be rather large, maybe 3,000 sq miles with 4 receivers.

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I think the idea of a “virtual” station positioned very close to your work area is that you get a better quality fix than using a “real” station that’s far away. The virtual station taps into the the collective knowledge of atmospheric state gained from several stations in the area instead of one. But I’ve been finding reading material on the theory and implementation of this difficult to come by.

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I think it is more about proximity and having a good amount of similar satellites seen by both the base station and rover. With Texas being so big it is easy to get more than 30m (50km) from a station. I hadn’t planned on VRS but it would be interesting. I don’t think Emlid has the capability but don’t quote me on that.

I am not 100% sure but, I believe Trimble owns the copyright to VRS. If that is the case, finding any info will be difficult at best, and more than likely impossible.

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Start by looking into Least Square Adjustments, as your reference stations would need to have almost millimeter precision in relation to each other.

Here are some results from a quick google-search on network RTK or RTN:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263937529_Development_of_a_network_real-time_kinematic_processing_platform

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