Geodetic Datums and Reference Frames

As Fugro‘s GNSS augmentation services undergo continuous improvement, accuracies at sub-centimetric level are becoming routine*With a subscription to one of Fugro's PPP or Network DGNSS services for our global PPPPrecise Point Positioning (orbit and clock corrections) services, and achievable at ever greater distances from our reference stations, with our Network Differential GNSS services.

To maintain consistency, all the stations in our reference station network are coordinated with respect to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). The datum for Fugro‘s reference station network was updated to ITRF2020, at 1300 UTC on 27 June 2023.

ETRS89, ITRF and WGS84

ETRS89The European Terrestrial Reference System of 1989 is based on ITRF89, epoch 1989.0 and monitored by a network of about 250 GNSS tracking stations known as the EUREF Permanent Network (EPN).

WGS84 is a dynamic reference frame, with realisationsG730 (1994), G873 (1997), G1150 (2002), G1674 (2012), G1762 (2013), G2139 (2021) regularly released to keep it coincident with the ITRF (currently with the IGb14 realization of ITRF 2014). Recent WGS84 realisations (since G2139 in Oct 2018) are coincident with ITRF at the sub-centimetre level. For these realisations there are no official transformation parameters and one can consider that ITRF2020, ITRF2014 and WGS84 (G2139) are likely to agree at the sub-centimetre level, yielding conventional 0-transformation parameters.

Further reading: ITRF 2020 at the IGF, Datums and Reference Frames at NOAA National Geodetic Survey, NGA WGS84 Evolution paper presented at ICG-13.

last modified 09:58:30 3 Jul '23 09:58:30