COORDINATE CONVERSIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS

Mirel Marinescu*
Tiberius Tomoiagă**

In this paper is described a software product realized by authors in order to compute

coordinate conversions and transformations from/to coordinate systems and projection used
in our country. This software can be used by both military and civilian specialists to work out
dedicated problems.

1. Introduction

The problem of coordinate conversions and transformations has continued to be one of

the most important preoccupations of worldwide geodetic specialists.
In the past, the positioning specific problems were solved at regional or local level.
This fact leaded to the existence of many coordinate and projection systems. Recent studies
prove, from geodetic point of view, that the globalization phenomenon leaded to some
discontinuities of geographic data at the boundary of certain countries.
Nowadays, taking into account the huge complexity of the problems revealed after our
country acceptance in NATO and its future joining to European Union, we consider very
important to be respected by Romanian specialists the existent standards elaborated by both
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) from USA and EuroGeographics from
Germany. In this way we could eliminate the matters mentioned above.
To work out all the problems revealed at coordinate conversion/transformation from/to
coordinate systems and projections used in our country, the authors of this paper come to
support military and civilian specialists by realizing a software structured on two modules.

2. Software description

The first module realizes the transformation parameters computation (Fig. 1) between
different datums in the following cases:
• 4 parameters (with/ without baricenter);
• 7 and 12 parameters (with/ without baricenter) in the following situations:
– without weights;
– with individual weights;
– with global weights.
 Fig. 1: The interface of the first module (computation of transformation parameters).

The models used to compute the coordinate transformations with 7 and 12 parameters
are fully described in [1], [2] and [3].
The difference between transformation with and without baricenter is given by
rotation matrix conformation.
In case of transformation without baricenter [3], this is given by relation:
 1 dγ − dβ 
 
R =  − dγ 1 dα  . (1)
 dβ − dα 1 

In case of transformation with baricenter [1], the rotation matrix is expressed like a
function of Hamilton normats quaternions:
R = ( I 3 + S)( I 3 − S) −1 ,
(2)
where:
  0 c −b
 
S = − c 0 a .
 b −a 0 
 
(3)
The second module is designed to coordinate conversion (Fig. 2) respectively
transformation and allows realizing:
• coordinate conversion between:
– usual projections used in our country: UTM, Gauss-Kruger and Stereo70;
– geocentric coordinates;

• coordinate transformation between:

– S-42 and WGS84 datums using the projection mentioned above;
– ETRSYY and ETRS89.
Both modules uses like reference surfaces the ellipsoid, the European Gravimetric
(Quasi)geoid EGG97, the geoid computed from Global Geopotential Model EGM96 and the
Romanian quasigeoid.

Fig. 2: The interface of the second module (coordinate conversions).

 Fig. 3: The interface of the second module (coordinate transformations).
3. Conclusions

The described software is still under development. Upon request, the finished modules
can be added with supplementary coordinate systems and projections.
Particularities of this software, by modules, are:
• module 1:
- global and individual weighting;
• module 2:
- residual mean square error calculation for transformed points;
- transformation distortions (module and direction for error bias of
transformed point).
 Besides perfecting the already finished module, authors wishes to add some new ones.
In the near future it is planned to realize 2 more module: one for geodetic networks
compensation (triangulation, trilateration, leveling and gravity) in all variants (free and with
constraints), and one for geodetic data interpolation (altitude, gravity, magnetic).

Acknowledgements

Authors are gratefully to prof. eng. Dumitru Ghiţău (Ph.D.), for his guiding on
mathematical basis definition for this software.

Bibliography

GHIŢĂU, D. (1995) – Transformări de coordonate în spaţii tridimensionale cu modele liniare.

In Revista de Geodezie, Cartografie şi Cadastru, vol. 4, no. 2, September, Bucharest, pp. 43-
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GHIŢĂU, D. (1998) – Beitrage der Geodäsie zur Beschreinburg der Zustandsänderung eines
deformierbaren Körpers im Nahbereich. In Allgemeine Vermessungs-Nachrichten, no. 7,
Stuttgart, pp. 239-245
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION (2002) – Geographic
information – Spatial referencing by coordinates. ISO 19111, 50 p.
VANICEK, P., NOVAK, P., CRAYMER, M. and PAGIATAKIS, S. (2002) – On the Correct
Determination of Transformation Parameters of a Horizontal Geodetic Datum. In Geomatica,
vol. 56, no. 4, Ottawa, pp. 329-340

*eng. Mirel Marinescu, Ph.D., scientific researcher, Military Equipment and Technologies
Research Agency, Clinceni, Ilfov, 16th Aeroportului Street, zip 077070, tel. 0040 21 42 30 58,
fax 0040 42 10 30, email: mirelm@pcnet.ro.
**eng. Tiberius Tomoiagă, doctoral candidate, scientific researcher, Military Equipment and
Technologies Research Agency, Clinceni, Ilfov, 16th Aeroportului Street, zip 077070, tel.
0040 21 42 30 58, fax 0040 42 10 30, email: tiberius.tomoiaga@acttm.ro.