MAX Industry Standard for Network RTK

The Master-Auxiliary Concept, jointly proposed and put forward by Leica Geosystems (Switzerland) and other members of the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM), has been accepted as the basis of the RTCM V3.1 network messages – the first industry standard for Network RTK. During the RTCM SC104 meeting in May 2006, the proposed network RTK messages for RTCM V3 were finally approved and the decision taken to release them in the next update of RTCM – Version 3.1. The formal release of RTCM V3.1 is expected imminently, once editorial changes to the documentation are finalised.

The RTCM V3.1 network messages provide an open, unambiguous and manufacturer-independent standard for Network RTK corrections. In addition to promoting increased compatibility and innovation in the industry, the new standard provides several distinct advantages to the end-user over the previous non-standardised methods for generation of network corrections. Thanks to the Master-Auxiliary Concept, complete information on the prevailing errors is made available to the rover, thereby facilitating the use of more intelligent positioning algorithms by the rover. The net result is an increased robustness of the system and increased rover performance in terms of time to fix, reliability of the ambiguity fix and position accuracy.

The RTCM V3.1 standard will also include, for the first time, a defined indicator for network RTK corrections that are represented to the rover as single site corrections.