The application of Beidou satellite to monitor the deformation of transmission tower

Power transmission lines are vital to national energy infrastructure, and transmission tower safety is essential for grid reliability. Current monitoring relies heavily on manual inspections, which are labor-intensive, discontinuous, and impractical in remote or complex terrains. This study presents an intelligent deformation monitoring system for transmission towers using BeiDou-3 (BDS-3) and multi-GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP), enhanced with Kalman filtering and a hybrid PPP – RTK strategy. Short-term tests across five terrain types – plain, mountainous, urban, forest, and under high-voltage lines – show positioning errors within ±25 mm, with no significant terrain-related variation. A 13-day stability test with antenna shifts of 20–100 mm confirms reliable detection of step changes, with residuals generally below 10 mm. In a 90-day field trial on four 110 kV towers in a mining subsidence area, GNSS results agree with total station measurements within ±20 mm, and outperform the commercial Trimble CenterPoint RTX service, showing smaller errors (±10 mm vs. ±15 mm). The system achieves consistent centimetre-level accuracy in both controlled and real-world conditions, enables automated early warning of excessive displacement, and supports scalable deployment for power infrastructure monitoring.