Integrity Monitor - Monitoring Deformations

The Integrity Monitor module serves multiple purposes:

• Position adjustment and position update over time, thus allowing you to monitor deformations;

• Position output into the database;
• Data visualization;
• Alarm generation.

Adding the Integrity Monitor module

The module is automatically added when a processing module using terrestrial data, such as a Terrestrial Engine RT module, a Terrestrial Engine PP module or an Integrated Survey Engine module is added to the configuration. The new Integrity Monitor module has the same configuration name as the parent and uses default settings. Additionally, you can add the module to any of the GNSS processing modules, such as the RTK Engine or the Post Processing Engine. It also is available under NMEA Engine modules. If you add a Integrity Monitor module manually, the Integrity Monitor Properties dialog appears. It lets you define and select Integrity Monitor module configurations. Each configuration holds information on the adjustment settings and the alarming thresholds. Integrity Monitor configurations additionally hold the configuration for NMEA output.You may remove a configuration from here, if you do not need it anymore. You may change the settings of the selected Integrity Monitor configuration at any time.

Note - The properties of the Integrity Monitor module and its function depend on its parent module. For example, the calculation of slope distances is a terrestrial data feature only.

Adjustment and position calculation

The adjustment functionality is used to calculate positions from raw measurements, to establish points in the global point list and to distribute residuals.

Exporting data into TBC project files

For using Trimble Business Center to estimate weighting scalars for the Integrity Monitor adjustment, the Integrity Monitor terrestrial and GNSS data (as well as coordinate system information) can be exported to a TBC project file in the VCE file format. To do so, right-click the module representation in the Tree view to open its shortcut menu and select the Export to TBC Project File command.

Position Update

When the adjustment has resulted in reliable position displacement estimates, these can improve the known positions.

Tip - To export updated positions into files (for example, using the IGS Site Log format), use the Station list.

Slope distance monitoring

For some monitoring tasks slope distance measurement is the method mainly used for monitoring the prism movements.

Position Output

The Integrity Monitor module below GNSS processing engines enables the output of the individual position solution for each GNSS station in form of NMEA (GGQ or GGK) strings. Thus the data can be used outside of Trimble 4D Control Server. Use the Integrity Monitor module to generate the outgoing connections for NMEA output.

Data visualization

The Integrity Monitor visualizes displacements using the calculated offsets of positions of points or stations. 3-sigma (3-s) error limits define whether the computed displacements are reliable or not. If a displacement exceeds one of the defined thresholds, the respective point or baseline icon changes its color in the Current Displacements view or the 2D Map module views. There, also the position and height displacement indicator of the respective point change colors.

Tip - Whether points and / or stations are listed depends on the parent module.

• Current displacements display
  • in numerical form
  • as two-dimensional map

The history of the displacement changes for each coordinate of a station/point graphically display in the chart view form

Tip - The position adjustment functionality needs at least two terrestrial points or one station fixed. If not enough fixed points or fixed stations are available, a notification will appear in the Status Messages view. A possible reason is that not all fixed points are contained in the round measurement or only angles without distances have been measured. Another possible reason is that all fixed stations are disconnected (for example, because of data outages).
A further notification appears, when the adjustment restarts delivering results.

Alarm generation

Two sets of alarm threshold values define two levels for escalation, the warning and the alert. With GNSS data, both alarm modes are not triggered, that is they are disarmed, if the 3-s standard deviations exceed a user-defined disarming threshold. A warning has smaller thresholds than an alert; that means that an alert is more critical. The 3-s disarming threshold is the same for warning and alert.

Logging into the database

All actions of the Integrity Monitor module are logged into the central database. The database contains the following tables referring to the Integrity Monitor system:

*By default, the data of these tables is reduced depending on settings of the TableLifeTime table.

Reports

To create reports from the Integrity Monitor module's data, use the Trimble Report Generator application selecting from the Integrity Monitor Module, the Export Current Reference Coordinates, the Export Monitored Coordinates, the GNSS Coordinates and Velocity Report, the Slope Distance Displacement, or the Position Velocity Reportreport types. The following database tables contribute to these reports:

• PointList, ReferencePointHistory, StationList, and ReferenceStationHistory for the Export Coordinates report types
• CalculatedCoordinatesAndVelocities for the GNSS Coordinates and Velocity Report
• MeanPos_IntegrityMonitor_<config name> for positions
• DeltaTerrSlopeDistanceHistory_<config name> for slope distances

All of the Trimble 4D Control Server monitoring modules contribute to the Monitor Status Report report. The Monitor Status Report report summarizes alarms and illustrates measurements, velocities, and accelerations where applicable.