Knowledge Bank

The subject of this investigation is to answer the question: Whether any significant increment to accuracy could be transferred from a super-control continental net (continental satellite net or supertranscontinental traverse) to the fundamental geodetic net (first-order triangulation). This objective was accomplished by evaluating the positional accuracy improvement for a triangulation station, which is near the middle of the investigated geodetic triangulation net, by using various station constraints over its geodetic position. This investigation on a 1858 kilometer long triangulation chain shows that the super-control net can provide a useful constraint to the investigated geodetic triangulation net, and thus can improve it only when the accuracy of super-control net is at least 1 part in 500,000. The preliminary accuracy of super-transcontinental traverse is already better than this limiting accuracy of 1 part in 500,000; however, the preliminary accuracy of continental satellite net is lower than this limiting accuracy of 1 part in 500,000. As such, continental satellite nets do not seem to provide any useful constraint, at least to this particular investigated triangulation chain.