Within the GeoWSN project, two approaches of estimating
position and movement of the sensor nodes with high accuracy
are investigated and compared: On the one hand, changes in
the positions of the sensor nodes (and therefore landslides)
are detected using an RTK approach. This technique requires
a GPS reference antenna, located at a non-moving known
point. Here, the reference antenna is located at the site of
the base station which is installed outside moving terrain.
Consequently, baselines between the base receiver and the
sensor node receivers can be formed and a movement of the
sensor nodes relative to the base station can be detected. In the
past, RTK has proven successful for monitoring applications in
various fields of geodesy with centimetre accuracies. Further
characteristics and details concerning the RTK approach are
not covered in this paper.