Application of RTK-GPS Technology in Vibration Characteristics Test of High Pylon

With the development of global positioning system (GPS) receiver technology for high recording rate, it allows reliable monitoring of engineering structures, such as bridges, towers and tall buildings. A structural monitoring system based on the technology of real-time kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS) is devised for the high pylon of a cable-stayed bridge. The vibration data are collected and processed by using the difference technique and the wavelet multi-resolution analysis (WMRA), to mitigate some error sources such as distance-dependent biases and multipath. Effective vibration signals are extracted, and the first mode natural frequency of the high pylon is availably obtained by using the power spectral density (PSD) analysis. The measuring results are very identical to the theoretical designed values.