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AbstractThe market for Global Navigation Satellite System ments, the most accurate measurements provided by a GNSS
(GNSS) based applications requiring accurate positioning infor- system. Although carrier phase measurements are indirect and
mation has been steadily growing over the recent years. As ambiguous, they are very precise because of their resolution.
a consequence of technological advances in GNSS technology,
single-frequency, navigation-grade receivers capable to provide For example, the wavelength of L1 carrier is around 20 cm.
carrier phase data can be a cost-effective alternative to the high- In addition, the fraction part of a given wavelength can be
professional, geodetic-grade receivers. Navigation-grade receivers measured with a precision of 1% of a wavelength (i.e., 2 mm).
are mainly attractive as their cost ranges around of few hundred Because of the high resolution, the carrier phase measurements
euros. In addition, the carrier phase measurements are the most enable relative positioning with respect to a known point with
accurate observables collected from a GNSS system. As a result,
the positioning accuracy obtained with navigation-grade receivers cm level accuracy or even mm-level if the measurement period
can reach levels that may raise interest various communities that lasts a few hours. This level of accuracy can be achieved either
use positioning information. in post-processing mode or real-time mode only after correct
The main purpose of this study is to analyze the performance of determination of the integer ambiguities [3]. Although survey-
high-sensitivity carrier phase-based positioning using navigation- grade receivers meet the needs of the surveyor, the hardware
grade equipment. A few static tests covering different time inter-
vals and various baselines with different lengths are investigated. cost is still high, i.e. few thousand euros.
In addition, several kinematic tests are also conducted. The ob- Over the last years, various researchers have investigated
tained positioning solutions and baseline lengths are compared to the potential of GNSS receivers and antennas that are less
the corresponding ones derived from observations collected with expensive than the geodetic- or survey-grade equipment.
professional equipment. The test results demonstrate that cm- One less expensive solution uses the original equipment
level accuracy can be achieved with navigation-grade equipment
when it can output carrier phase data. This level of accuracy manufacturer OEM-boards. [4] proposed a low-cost single-
may be attractive to various applications, such as land, marine or frequency Real-Time Kinematic (RTK)-capable OEM-sensor
aerial surveying, structural monitoring or early warning systems. that can obtain nominal accuracies of 20 cm or better under
any given dynamics. Based on a similar OEM receiver, [5]
described a carrier phase-based GPS positioning system based
I. I NTRODUCTION on a low-cost hardware configuration. The system integrates
Precise positioning has been obtained traditionally using the receiver with an embedded PC card. The results indicate
high-quality, geodetic-grade GNSS receivers and antennas. that the occupation time for each baseline in the rapid static
Geodetic-grade means the receivers are usually dual frequency positioning mode is of the order of 10 minutes, although it
in order to mitigate the ionosphere influence and obtain varies for different antenna environments. In addition, GPS
faster ambiguity resolution, while the antennas are precisely kinematic positioning with centimetre accuracy using on-the-
calibrated to reduce phase center variations and antenna phase fly ambiguity resolution is not reliable enough, though the
center offset, and designed to minimize multipath. Although system is capable of delivering 1 to 2 decimetre accuracy.
geodetic quality equipment allows users to obtain high ac- Using a different OEM-sensor (i.e., iTrax03), [6] demonstrated
curacy positioning solutions down to millimeter level, its short baseline vectors with centimeter level accuracy.
financial cost is still high, ranging between 10000 to 30000 Another less-expensive solution involves small GNSS/GPS
C [1]. As a result, precise positioning solutions have been modules. [7] showed float solutions with the Garmin carrier
constrained to areas and applications that can justify the cost phase can achieve better than 20 cm in 15 minutes, and
of the measuring instruments. However, the market for GNSS approximately 5 cm with 30 minutes in a post-processing
precise positioning applications requiring better than 10 cm mode. Using a similar decoding software, [8] analyzed Garmin
accuracy has been steadily growing over recent years. eTrex Vista handheld GPS receiver for precise positioning. The
As a consequence of technological advances in the GNSS study demonstrates that precise positioning could be reached
technology, the GNSS precise positioning has been achieved only for static case. If obstructed sites as well as multipath
also with survey-grade, single-frequency receivers if the base- and diffraction effects are avoided, accuracies below 10 cm
line length is below 10 km to 15 km [2]. The main requirement are attainable using the phase signal for post-processing. A
for this type of receiver is to output carrier phase measure- receiver from the Garmin-family (Garmin GPS25) was also
Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.
investigated in [9]. The researcher examined the usability of
a low-cost carrier-phase-based GPS positioning system for
surveying applications. The results showed position accuracy
at a few centimeter-level is possible for the short baselines
(i.e, 6 km) when the occupation time of 60 minutes or more
is used.
A further less-expensive solution employs the navigation-
grade receivers. These receivers are attractive because they
are significantly cheaper (starting from 100 to 500 C) than
the geodetic- or survey-grade receivers. Additionally, the
navigation-grade receivers are up to 30 dB more sensitive [10],
[11] and thus they enable higher GNSS signal availability
in places such as urban canyons or even indoor environ-
ments. Similar to survey-grade receivers, the main requirement
for a navigation-grade receiver is to output carrier phase
measurements. Sub-decimetre level coordinate determination
in differential post-processing mode using low-cost single- Fig. 1. Navigation-grade equipment used during field operation: USB
frequency receiver was reported in [12], [13]. interface cable (a), installation CD (b), navigation-grade receiver (c), and low-
Despite these results, there are few such type of receivers cost patch antenna (d).
Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.
Fig. 2. Equipment set-up at the various locations in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area
external applications that offer precision positioning, real-time ment) method [18]. This study exploits RTKLIB version 2.4.1
kinematics (RTK) and attitude sensing [11]. [19].
In addition to the low-cost equipment, high-professional III. TESTS AND RESULTS
equipment was used for data collection. A pair of high-
end, dual-frequency receivers with fully integrated GNSS Various field tests were conducted in the Helsinki
receiver/antenna (i.e, Topcon HiPer Pro) were used to assess, Metropolitan Area (HMA), in order to investigate the posi-
compare, and validate the positioning performance of the tioning performance and accuracy of the u-blox 6T system.
LEA-6T system (i.e., receiver and antenna). These receivers Two LEA-6T receivers were deployed at several locations
provide code and phase observations on both L1 and L2 through HMA to measure baselines with various lengths.
frequencies that allow to compute high accurate positioning The same baselines were measured with geodetic-grade, dual-
solutions. frequency GNSS receivers in order to generate the reference
baselines and coordinates at all occupied points. Additionally,
2) Software: Many of the open-source, commercial or two Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) were
scientific GNSS processing software programs allow to work integrated in the post-processing analysis. Furthermore, to
with either proprietary formats or the standard Receiver IN- demonstrate the feasibility of using navigation-grade equip-
dependent EXchange (RINEX) format. As mentioned, LEA- ment within a CORS network, network-based observation
6T outputs both code and phase data in a binary format data were generated using virtual reference station (VRS)
(i.e., ubx proprietary format). The resulted ubx file can technique. All the observation data were collected/generated
be converted into RINEX format using, for example, TEQC at a recording rate of 1 Hz, with an elevation cut-off angle of 5
freeware software developed and maintained by UNAVCO degrees. All the observations were stored on a PC. Although
[14], [15]. TEQC utility (i.e., version 2011Oct11) can be the tests were static, the data were processed in kinematic
downloaded freely from the Internet and is an excellent tool mode, which means that the solutions were generated on a
for format translation, data editing and quality-check before epoch-to-epoch basis.
post-processing.
After RINEX conversion, the data collection is imported A. Professional vs. cost-effective baseline
into a processing software. Over the last decade, many orga- Five baselines with lengths ranging from 0.5 to 22.8
nizations have developed various processing packages. These km were measured using the cost-effective, navigation-grade,
packages are mainly used to process GNSS data from small single-frequency receiver and antenna. Four stations (FGI0,
or large networks and very often pricy. In this research, we TIIL, SMOK and OTA9) were set up on a tripod, while one
use two software packages. One package, Topcon Tools 8, station (KAIV) was mounted on a concrete pillar. Figure 2
is a powerful post-processing solution, network analysis and illustrates the equipment set-up in all these stations. The time
adjustment of GNSS data provided by the manufacturer of interval of the observation session was determined depending
the geodetic quality equipment. The other package is the on the length of the baseline using the empirical formula:
RTKLIB open-source program library for GNSS standard 20min+ 2min/km. The collected binary data were converted
and precise positioning [12], [16]. RTKLIB is a compact into RINEX format and introduced for analysis in the Topcon
and portable program library to provide several application Tools 8 processing software. The baseline vector components
programs for RTK-GNSS applications, such as RTKPOST were determined using GPS+ post-processing module. Table
(post-processing analysis) or RTKNAVI (real-time position- I gives an overview of the measured cost-effective baselines,
ing). The library implements fundamental navigation functions the observation session lengths and the processing statistical
and carrier-based relative positioning algorithms [17]. The indicators.
integer double-difference ambiguities are determined by the Figure 3 depicts the error ellipses together with their ori-
LAMBDA (Least-squares AMBiguity Decorrelation Adjust- entation for all low-cost baselines. They are derived from the
Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.
Fig. 3. Cost-effective baseline ellipses and their orientation
TABLE I
covariance matrix, and provide a graphical means of viewing P OST- PROCESSING STATISTICAL INDICATORS FOR THE COST- EFFECTIVE
the post-processing results. BASELINE VECTORS
Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.
Fig. 5. General view of the surrounding environment for the kinematic
pedestrian walking test.
10
Round 1
0
North [m]
-10
Round 2
-20
-30
-40
-50
-60
-50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
East [m]
Fig. 6. Ground trajectory for the two-round pedestrian walking test. For
illustration purposes, the 2nd round is shifted in North and East direction
with -10 and -10 m, respectively.
Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.
documented proprietary format. Several static and kinematic [5] C. Rizos, S. Han, and X. Han, The RT-STAR: Features and Perfor-
tests are conducted to analyze the precision and accuracy mance of a Low-Cost RTK OEM Sensor, in Proceedings of the 11th
International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute
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Low Cost Receivers, in Proceedings of the 18th International Technical
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the accuracy decreases in challenging environments and, thus, GNSS 2005), Long Beach, CA, Sep. 1316, 2005, pp. 427435.
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This level of performance together with the economically ing, in Proceedings of the 2nd FIG Regional Conference, Marrakech,
Morocco, Dec. 25, 2003.
affordable devices utilized in this paper support the current [9] R. M. Alkan, Development of a Low-cost Positioning System Using
trend towards cost-effective solutions for accurate or precise OEM GPS Receivers and Usability in Surveying Applications, in
positioning determination. As a result, new market areas may Proceedings of the XXIV FIG International Congress 2010, Sydney,
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[14] L. H. Estey and C. M. Meertens, TEQC: The Multi-Purpose Toolkit for
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Paper presented at the 2012 International Conference on Localization and GNSS (ICL-GNSS 2012), Starnberg,
Germany, June 25-27, 2012.