RTK Coastal Survey

An RTK coastal survey is a topographic or bathymetric survey using real-time kinematic GNSS, where a base station broadcasts carrier-phase corrections to a roving receiver to fix positions to about 1 to 2 cm horizontally and 2 to 3 cm vertically in real time. On the coast it captures beach profiles, berm and dune crests, structure crest levels, and, mounted on a boat or jet-ski with an echosounder, the wading-depth nearshore profile, all tied to the ITRF-based ellipsoid and then to a vertical datum via a geoid model. It replaces level-and-staff lines with dense, datum-referenced point clouds for erosion monitoring and nourishment design.