Is there a way to convert between latitude/longitude and Military Grid Reference System coordinates in MATLAB?

I have a project where I would like to convert Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) coordinates to latitude/longitude coordinates and vice versa. I haven't found any helpful web resources that explain how this is done. Is there a way to do this in MATLAB, or could I get some help writing some custom functions that handle this?

Answer 1

[Pratyush]

Hi Mike. Acording to my understanding, you have MGRS coordinates and you want to convert them to latitudes and longitudes. For achieving it, you can use a C++ library called GeographicLib. With the help of this library you can achieve the above conversions in any direction. Here is an example in C++.

// Example of using the GeographicLib::MGRS class
 
#include <iostream>
#include <exception>
#include <string>
#include <GeographicLib/UTMUPS.hpp>
#include <GeographicLib/MGRS.hpp>
 
using namespace std;
using namespace GeographicLib;
 
int main() {
  try {
    // See also example-GeoCoords.cpp
    {
      // Sample forward calculation
      double lat = 33.3, lon = 44.4; // Baghdad
      int zone;
      bool northp;
      double x, y;
      UTMUPS::Forward(lat, lon, zone, northp, x, y);
      string mgrs;
      MGRS::Forward(zone, northp, x, y, lat, 5, mgrs);
      cout << mgrs << "\n";
    }
    {
      // Sample reverse calculation
      string mgrs = "38SMB4488";
      int zone, prec;
      bool northp;
      double x, y;
      MGRS::Reverse(mgrs, zone, northp, x, y, prec);
      double lat, lon;
      UTMUPS::Reverse(zone, northp, x, y, lat, lon);
      cout << prec << " " << lat << " " << lon << "\n";
    }
  }
  catch (const exception& e) {
    cerr << "Caught exception: " << e.what() << "\n";
    return 1;
  }
}

You may refer to the below MGRS documentation on GeographicLib for more information.

GeographicLib: GeographicLib::MGRS Class Reference (sourceforge.io)