Antenna Mechanical Pose Measurement Based on Structure from Motion

[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.

[Keywords] antenna mechanical pose measurement; SfM; photogrammetry; smartphone