Precision Farming
Sub-centimeter GNSS positioning for autosteer tractor GPS, variable rate application, drone crop monitoring, and field management systems -- with offline PPK correction when RTK coverage drops in remote rural areas.
Talk to an ExpertWhy AlgoNav for Agriculture?
Reliable centimeter-level positioning in challenging rural environments where RTK correction services are unavailable, unstable, or temporarily offline.
Autonomous Guidance
Enable cm-level autosteer and tractor GPS performance for tractors, combines, and sprayers. Maintain pass-to-pass repeatability in the 2-3 cm range to prevent skips, reduce overlap, and optimize input costs across every hectare. AlgoNav's PPK and PPP processing pipelines deliver the positioning precision that modern auto-steering systems demand, including offline recovery when RTK links drop.
Variable Rate Application
Precise variable rate application positioning for site-specific seeding, fertilization, and pesticide application. Accurate georeferencing ensures that prescription maps align perfectly with field conditions, reducing chemical waste and maximizing crop yield per input unit while producing auditable as-applied mapping outputs.
Field Mapping
Accurate boundary mapping and yield monitoring with high-resolution georeferencing. Create reliable field records, support season-to-season repeatability of guidance lines, and generate precise area calculations for regulatory reporting and subsidy applications.
Fleet Tracking
Real-time and post-processed positioning and telemetry for agricultural machine fleets. Monitor operations across multiple fields, optimize logistics, and standardize GNSS records from mixed tractor GPS ecosystems for fleet management and cost analysis.
Applications
Precision agriculture GNSS solutions across the entire crop cycle, from soil preparation to harvest analysis.
Auto-Steering Systems
RTK-level accuracy for autonomous tractor guidance and pass-to-pass repeatability, ensuring consistent row spacing, overlap reduction, and cleaner section control performance across large fields.
Drone Crop Monitoring
Precise georeferencing for aerial NDVI analysis using agricultural drone GNSS with PPK-corrected flight trajectories for vegetation health mapping.
Yield Mapping
High-accuracy combine harvester positioning for yield-per-area calculations, plus alignment of yield and as-applied mapping layers for data-driven decisions about seed selection and soil treatment.
Irrigation Management
Precision positioning for variable rate irrigation systems, matching water application to field topography and soil moisture zones.
Challenges We Solve
Agricultural GNSS positioning faces unique obstacles that conventional RTK services struggle to address. AlgoNav's post-processing algorithms are built to overcome them.
Large Baseline Distances
In rural farming regions, the nearest RTK reference station is often 50 km or more away -- far beyond the range where real-time corrections remain reliable. AlgoNav's PPK and PPP processing delivers centimeter-level accuracy regardless of baseline length, using precise satellite orbit and clock products to resolve carrier-phase ambiguities without proximity to a reference station. This directly addresses RTK coverage issues in remote areas where correction infrastructure is sparse.
Pass-to-Pass Consistency
Repeatable positioning across multiple passes of the same field is essential to avoid costly overlap and reduce chemical waste from double-application. AlgoNav's forward-backward smoothing algorithms ensure that each pass aligns precisely with the previous one, even when satellite geometry changes throughout the day. This pass-to-pass repeatability directly translates to lower input costs, more uniform crop treatment, and tighter tractor guidance lines.
Seasonal Variations
Throughout the growing season, satellite visibility changes due to vegetation growth, terrain effects, and varying weather conditions. Tall crops can partially obstruct low-elevation satellites, while atmospheric conditions shift with temperature and humidity. AlgoNav's robust processing handles these seasonal variations with advanced atmospheric modeling and adaptive outlier detection, maintaining reliable positioning from spring planting through autumn harvest and supporting season-to-season repeatability for next year's passes.
RTK Coverage Dropouts
Traditional RTK workflows fail when radio links break or cellular coverage disappears behind hills, tree lines, or distant field blocks. AlgoNav provides an offline correction path: store raw observations, then run PPK fallback processing after the operation to recover centimeter-level tracks and coverage records. This prevents mis-georeferenced work logs and keeps mapping quality high even when live corrections are interrupted.
RTK vs. PPK for Agriculture
Understanding when real-time corrections are necessary and when post-processing delivers better results at lower cost.
Real-Time Kinematic (RTK)
RTK provides centimeter-level corrections in real time by receiving differential data from a nearby base station via cellular network or radio link. The receiver applies these corrections on-the-fly, enabling immediate positioning output. For auto-steering GNSS accuracy in real-time guidance scenarios, RTK remains the standard approach -- the tractor needs to know its position now, not after the field pass is complete.
- Requires continuous cellular or radio data link to base station
- Accuracy degrades beyond 20-30 km baseline distance
- Subscription costs for network RTK services (e.g., SAPOS, SmartNet)
- Outages occur when cellular coverage drops in rural areas or radio links are blocked
Post-Processed Kinematic (PPK)
PPK farming workflows record raw GNSS observations during field operations and process them afterward using precise satellite orbit and clock data. Because corrections are applied in post-processing, there is no need for a real-time data link, and forward-backward smoothing yields higher accuracy than real-time filtering alone. PPK is ideal for mapping, soil sampling, yield analysis, as-applied mapping, and agricultural drone GNSS surveys where results are analyzed after data collection.
- No cellular or radio link required during field operations
- Works reliably at any distance from reference stations
- Offline correction and PPK fallback after RTK outages using logged raw data/RINEX
- No subscription costs -- uses freely available precise products
- Higher accuracy through bidirectional smoothing algorithms
Use RTK for real-time auto-steering where the machine must react instantly to position updates. Use PPK for everything else: soil sampling, drone surveys, yield and as-applied mapping, boundary delineation, and any task where data is analyzed after collection. Many operations combine both -- RTK for in-field guidance and PPK as an offline fallback plus post-mission quality assurance.
Precision Agriculture Workflow
From soil analysis to harvest data, high-accuracy GNSS positioning supports every stage of the modern precision agriculture pipeline.
Soil Sampling and Analysis
Georeferenced soil samples form the foundation of variable rate prescription maps. AlgoNav's PPK processing ensures each sample location is recorded with centimeter accuracy, so nutrient maps and pH profiles align precisely with field positions. This spatial accuracy is essential for creating reliable fertilization and liming prescriptions that respond to actual soil variability rather than averaged zones.
Drone Crop Monitoring
Agricultural drone GNSS with PPK-processed flight trajectories delivers precise vegetation mapping through NDVI and multispectral analysis. By correcting the drone's position in post-processing rather than relying on onboard RTK, operators achieve consistent georeferencing accuracy across entire fields -- critical for detecting crop stress patterns, disease hotspots, and growth variability that inform targeted intervention decisions.
Yield Mapping
Combine harvester positioning with centimeter-level accuracy enables precise yield-per-area calculations. AlgoNav processes the GNSS data recorded by the harvester's receiver to produce clean, accurately georeferenced yield maps. These maps reveal within-field productivity patterns and align with as-applied data layers to guide seed selection, drainage investment, and soil improvement decisions for subsequent seasons.
Variable Rate Application
Site-specific seeding, fertilization, and spraying depend on precisely georeferenced prescription maps that align with the applicator's real-time position. AlgoNav ensures the underlying spatial data -- soil maps, yield maps, and vegetation indices -- is positioned accurately, so variable rate controllers apply the right amount of input at the right location. This closes the loop between data collection and field action, producing high-confidence as-applied maps, reducing waste, and improving return on every hectare.
Grow with Precision
Let us help you implement high-accuracy GNSS positioning for your agricultural operations. Whether you need PPK processing for drone surveys, post-processed yield analysis, or consulting on precision agriculture GNSS infrastructure -- we deliver centimeter accuracy without the overhead of RTK subscriptions.