A Comparison of the Accuracy of VRS and Static GPS Measurement Results for Production of Topographic Map and Spatial Data: A Case Study on CORS-TR

The on-going developments in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) technology affect techniques in geographic information and associated documents. The national Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) networks, which operate on the Real Time Kinematic (RTK) principle, are multi-purpose geodetic networks and offer services to a large portion of society including all the public institutions and other organizations, military and civilian users and to scientific researchers. It is possible to utilize these networks both in real time positioning applications using the Network Real Time Kinematic (NRTK) method and in static applications using the Receiver Independent EXchange (RINEX) format data from reference stations. In this study, Virtual Reference Station (VRS) and static GNSS measurements were undertaken based on a Continuously Operating Reference Station-Turkey (CORS-TR) network in a test network established in Turkey. As a result of the measurements, repeatability attained using the VRS method was examined. Moreover, the coordinates obtained from VRS measurements based on CORS-TR network were compared with the coordinates calculated as a result of static observations. From the accuracies and repeatability, an investigation was implemented to determine the extent to which NRTK applications in real-time GNSS networks can be used to produce spatial data and create topographic maps