INVESTIGATING THE ACCURACY OF THREE GEODETIC DATUM TRANSFORMATION SOFTWARE FOR APPLICATION BETWEEN WGS84 AND MINNA DATUMS

It is well-known that positions are processed on the local ellipsoids adopted for geodetic computation in a country. In Nigeria, some of the geographic coordinates of the control stations were determined on the WGS 84 ellipsoid. The connection of new works to these control stations requires their transformation to the local ellipsoid, Clarke 1880 coordinates using suitable datum transformation software to make them fit into existing local geodetic networks. Consequently, this paper has comparatively analyzed the accuracy of some geodetic datum transformation software to determine the most suitable one for transformation between WGS 84 and Minna Datums. The positions of five points were obtained from the processing of GNSS observations using Compass post-processing software. The WGS 84 geographic coordinates of the points were transformed and converted to rectangular coordinates in the Minna datum using Columbus, AllTrans and GeoCalc software. The transformed and converted coordinates of the points were compared with the rectangular coordinates of the points obtained with Compass software to determine the most suitable software for application between WGS 84 and Minna Datums. The comparison results show that Columbus and AllTrans software are more appropriate for the exercise.