Base to rover communication

[GVecino]

Good afternoon gentlemen,

I have been working with the Piksi prototyping kit successfully. I am trying to use Piksi to set up a base point from which I can run several rovers for topographic and hydrographics works. To cover a wider area, I would like to replace the 3dr radios with a more powerful radio. What would I need to understand in terms of the communication between the Piksi and the new radio, and the type of correction that the radios will transmit to achieve RTK accuracy.

What is the communication protocol between Piksi and the radios?

There are others radios recommended by Swiftnav to improve coverage?

Thank you very much for your advice.

[Kirk Martinez]

As nobody has replied - here is half an answer:
the typical protocol setup uses Swift's own SBP protocol for the messages between base and rover. I guess its possible to use NMEA but I haven't tried that (it would be great for using Leica base or rovers if that's possible!).

On radio modules - I have also been looking for lower power radios but haven't tested any yet (Xbee pro 868, Lora radios are a possibilty)
Cheers
Kirk

[Clive Turvey]

The Base sends "observations" to the Rover, it does so using binary packets in the SBP format. The 3DR radios just deliver bytes across the air, it is not aware of the packet format. A radio that is aware of the packet boundaries can improve latency and recovery.

LoRa radios work quite well, being both robust, and having significant throw. Support for Single Base, Multiple Rover is relatively simple to implement using one of many Semtech SX1272/1276 based radios and open stack software.

SiLabs has an EZR32 radio using Cortex-Mx processors which replace the 8051 design used in the 3DR radios.