Evaluation of the Multi-GNSS, Dual-Frequency RTK Positioning Performance for Recent Android Smartphone Models in a Phone-to-Phone Setup
Robert Odolinski, Hongzhou Yang, Li‐Ta Hsu, Mohammed Khider, Guoyu Fu, Damien Dusha
Abstract
The recent development of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) chipsets, makes cm-level real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning possible with Android-based smartphones. In this contribution we investigate the single-baseline RTK performance when using a baseline consisting of two smartphones, i.e. no geodetic base station infrastructure is necessary. We will evaluate the performance of some of the recent smartphone models, including Google Pixel5, Pixel6 Pro, Pixel7 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S22, respectively. The assessments are conducted in Mountain View, California (USA), and some of the smartphones can track dual-frequency code division multiple access (CDMA) signals of L1 + L5 Global Positioning System (GPS), E1 + E5a Galileo, L1 + L5 Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) and B1 + B2 BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) code and carrier-phase observations. We will demonstrate that one can now achieve cm-level positioning and near hundred percent RTK integer least-squares success rates for some of the smartphone models, while stationary, even with the use of the internal smartphone antennas. This will be shown true for both the ’single-epoch’ model whereby all the estimated parameters are unlinked in time, as well as for the ’multi-epoch’ model where the ambiguities are treated as time-constant parameters through a dynamic model in a Kalman filter.