SITE CALIBRATION WITH PROJ AND WKT2

Abstract. In surveying projects, a site calibration is the solution to the problem of finding a transformation between the coordinate space of a site local coordinate reference system and a well known coordinate reference system given a set of pairs of corresponding coordinates. A site calibration enables the localization of new positions with cm accuracy using a RTK/PPK GNSS receiver and a transformation, which is a much more cost-effective than using a total station and much faster than other more traditional surveying methods. While site calibration is featured by almost every modern professional-grade GNSS receiver, the implementation is closed source and the output stored in proprietary file formats, tying the user to the vendor’s ecosystem. In this paper we propose a complete solution to the site calibration problem that can be fully implemented with open source software (in particular PROJ for coordinate transformations) and whose output can be represented in terms of an open standard (WKT version 2). Two methods and representations of a site calibration are described, a fully 3D one and a split horizontal and vertical one. Our main contribution is the openness and interoperability of the solution. Another important contribution is the analysis of the sensitivity of these solutions to measurement errors.