Investigating the Error Sources in Reflectorless EDM

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to investigate error sources and their influence on measured distance in reflectorless electronic distance measurement (EDM) surveys. The results of field surveys previously performed by many authors does not give the full answer to this problem. Therefore this paper presents theoretical analysis augmented with field survey data obtained by other authors. The following error sources are described: impact of target color and material, atmospheric correction, EDM centering error, beam divergence, and instrumental errors. The results of theoretical analysis resolve the question about the source of errors in reflectorless EDM surveys. These results are broadly consistent with the results of field tests.