Method and apparatus for determining and storing the position and orientation of antenna structures

Abstract

Determining the position and orientation of base station antennas in mobile radio is highly important for optimizing the transmission parameters. It requires time-consuming and costly effort, since measurements need to be taken directly at the antenna. Furthermore, it is often impossible to access the antennas. This has a very disadvantageous effect on the precision of the data, which means that the optimizing results suffer greatly from this. The method according to the invention and the presented apparatus allow the position and orientation of the transmission antenna to be found quickly, precisely and inexpensively without needing to take measurements close to the antenna. This involves the absolute position of the antenna being determined by means of automatic determination of the coordinates of the reference point, measurement of distance to the target antenna, measurement of the angle of inclination and measurement of the orientation of the measuring equipment. Photogrammetric measurement methods, knowledge about the absolute dimensions of the antenna, and mathematical methods of conformal coordinate transformation are used to determine the orientation of the base station antenna to be measured from an image taken from the point of measurement.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.