Antenna Mechanical Pose Measurement Based on Structure from Motion

doi:10.19729/j.cnki.1673-5188.2018.04.006

ZTE Communications ›› 2018, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (4): 38-45.doi: 10.19729/j.cnki.1673-5188.2018.04.006

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Antenna Mechanical Pose Measurement Based on Structure from Motion

XU Kun¹, FAN Guotian¹, ZHOU Yi¹, ZHAN Haisheng², GUO Zongyi²

^1. ZTE Corporation, Shenzhen 518057, China
^2. Xidian University, Xi’an 710000, China

Received:2017-12-31 Online:2018-12-31 Published:2020-04-28
About author:XU Kun (xu.kun7@zte.com.cn) received his master’s degree from Xidian University, China. He is now the director of Big Data Department 4, ZTE Wireless Research Institute. From 2009 to 2012, he was the project manager of the UniPOS NetMAX product group at ZTE Corporation. He served as the product director and then the head of the Wireless Network Optimization Tool Department, ZTE Corporation from 2012 to 2014. He has rich experience in wireless network optimization.|ZHOU Yi (zhou.yi5@zte.com.cn) received his master’s degree in computer system architecture from Xidian University, China in 2008. Now he is a system engineer and project manager at the Wireless Big Data Center of ZTE Corporation. His research interests include big data and machine learning.|ZHAN Haisheng (zhan_haisheng@vip.163.com) received his doctor’s degree in computer application technology from Xidian University, China in 2007. He is now an associate professor of the School of Network and Continuing Education, Xidian University. His main research interests include image processing and Chinese semantic processing.|GUO Zongyi (guozongyi75@126.com) received his bacherlor’s degree in computer science and technology from the Department of Computer Science, Xidian Universidy, China in 2014. He is currently pursuing the master’s degree at Computer Technology in Multimedia Technology Institute, Department of Computer Science, Xidian University. His research interests include image processing, machine vision, photogrammetry, and machine learning.
Supported by:
This work is supported by ZTE Industry-Academia-Research Cooperation Funds.

Abstract

Abstract:

Antenna mechanical pose measurement has always been a crucial issue for radio frequency (RF) engineers, owning to the need for mechanical pose adjustment to satisfy the changing surroundings. Traditionally, the pose is estimated in the contact way with the help of many kinds of measuring equipment, but the measurement accuracy cannot be well assured in this way. We propose a non-contact measuring system based on Structure from Motion (SfM) in the field of photogrammetry. The accurate pose would be estimated by only taking several images of the antenna and after some easy interaction on the smartphone. Extensive experiments show that the error ranges of antenna’s downtilt and heading are within 2 degrees and 5 degrees respectively, with the shooting distance in 25 m. The GPS error is also under 5 meters with this shooting distance. We develop the measuring applications both in PC and android smartphones and the results can be computed within 3 minutes on both platforms. The proposed system is quite safe, convenient and efficient for engineers to use in their daily work. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first pipeline that solves the antenna pose measuring problem by the photogrammetry method on the mobile platform.

Key words: antenna mechanical pose measurement, SfM, photogrammetry, smartphone

XU Kun, FAN Guotian, ZHOU Yi, ZHAN Haisheng, GUO Zongyi. Antenna Mechanical Pose Measurement Based on Structure from Motion[J]. ZTE Communications, 2018, 16(4): 38-45.

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Figures/Tables 14

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.a)

Figure 7.

Figure 8.

Table 1

Experiment results based on the indoor antenna dataset: the values of downtilt"

True value (°)		0d		2d		3d		Error average (°)
T	H	Result (°)	Error (°)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Error average (°)
3	316	2.824	0.176	2.643	0.357	2.689	0.311	0.281
$6$	317	5.982	0.018	5.574	0.426	5.774	0.226	0.223
9	318	8.550	0.450	8.489	0.511	8.484	0.516	0.492
12	318	11.975	0.025	12.188	0.188	12.507	0.507	0.240
15	320	14.872	0.129	14.663	0.337	14.157	0.844	0.436

Table 1

Table 2

Experiment results based on the indoor antenna dataset: the values of heading"

True value (°)		0d		2d		3d		Average error (°)
T	H	Result (°)	Error (°)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Average error (°)
3	316	314.513	1.487	311.253	4.747	311.090	4.910	3.715
$6$	317	314.542	2.458	314.007	2.993	314.907	2.093	2.514
9	318	314.060	3.940	316.146	1.854	316.404	1.596	2.463
12	318	316.468	1.532	318.755	0.755	322.213	4.213	2.167
15	320	319.239	0.761	319.947	0.053	316.660	3.340	1.385

Table 2

Figure 9.

Figure 10.

Table 3

Figure 11.

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Short-distance
Distance (m)	Downtilt		Heading		Longitude result	Latitude result	GPS error	Altitude
Distance (m)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Result (°)	Error (°)	Longitude result	Latitude result	GPS error	Altitude
4	11.317	0.317	178.509	1.491	108.827724	34.098129	0.805	416.767
6	11.623	0.623	178.993	1.007	108.827728	34.098129	3.173	414.408
8	11.389	0.389	178.774	1.226	108.827733	34.098131	2.423	418.637
10	11.910	0.910	181.284	1.284	108.827735	34.098137	2.587	410.937
12	11.101	0.101	179.571	0.429	108.827734	34.098138	1.957	406.251
14	11.159	0.159	181.577	1.577	108.827746	34.098133	4.506	406.005
16	11.239	0.239	183.794	3.794	108.827755	34.098147	2.587	406.087
18	11.388	0.388	184.699	4.699	108.827742	34.098126	5.106	407.377
20	11.606	0.606	182.926	2.926	108.827710	34.098130	4.717	411.204
22	11.332	0.332	178.411	1.589	108.827735	34.098135	3.958	415.548
24	11.534	0.534	176.466	3.534	108.827697	34.098118	3.518	407.194
26	11.631	0.631	177.724	2.276	108.827716	34.098181	4.120	416.653
28	11.517	0.517	175.148	4.852	108.827734	34.098174	4.356	407.903
30	11.673	0.673	183.964	3.964	108.827747	34.098168	5.170	416.767

Antenna Mechanical Pose Measurement Based on Structure from Motion

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