scholarly journals An Approach to Improving GNSS Positioning Accuracy Using Several GNSS Devices

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 1149
Author(s):  
María Jesús Jiménez-Martínez ◽  
Mercedes Farjas-Abadia ◽  
Nieves Quesada-Olmo

Single point positioning (SPP) mode, related to pseudorange measurements, limits the level of accuracy to several meters in open sky and to several dozens of meters in urban canyons. This paper explores the effect of using a large number of SPP observations from low-cost global navigation system (GNSS) receivers, smartphones, and handheld GNSS units. Data segmentation and bootstrapping statistical methods were used to obtain the deviation, which can describe the accuracy of the large sample. The empirical test recording data showed that the error may achieve a sub-meter horizontal accuracy by the simple process of increasing the measurements of smartphones and handheld GNSS units. However, the drawback is the long period of time required. To reduce the satellite tracking time, a least squares solution network was applied over all the recorded data, assisted by the external geometric conditions. The final goal was to obtain the absolute positioning and associated deviations of one vertex from three or five GNSS receivers positioned on a network. The process was tested in three geodetic network examples. The results indicated that the enhanced SPP mode was able to improve its accuracy. Errors of several meters were reduced to values close to 50 cm in 25–37 min periods.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2029
Author(s):  
Veton Hamza ◽  
Bojan Stopar ◽  
Oskar Sterle

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) low-cost multi-frequency receivers are argued as an alternative to geodetic receivers for many applications. Calibrated low-cost antennas recently became available on the market making low-cost instruments more comparable with geodetic ones. The main goal of this research was to evaluate the noise of low-cost GNSS receivers, to compare the positioning quality from different types of low-cost antennas, and to analyze the positioning differences between low-cost and geodetic instruments. The results from a zero baseline test indicated that the u-blox multi-frequency receiver, namely, ZED-F9P, had low noise that was at the sub-millimeter level. To analyze the impact of the antennas in the obtained coordinates, a short baseline test was applied. Both tested uncalibrated antennas (Tallysman TW3882 and Survey) demonstrated satisfactory positioning performance. The Tallysman antenna was more accurate in the horizontal position determination, and the difference from the true value was only 0.1 mm; while, for the Survey antenna, the difference was 1.0 mm. For the ellipsoid height, the differences were 0.3 and 0.6 mm for the Survey and Tallysman antennas, respectively. The comparison of low-cost receivers with calibrated low-cost antennas (Survey Calibrated) and geodetic instruments proved better performance for the latter. The geodetic GNSS instruments were more accurate than the low-cost instruments, and the precision of the estimated coordinates from the geodetic network was also greater. Low-cost GNSS instruments were not at the same level as the geodetic ones; however, considering their cost, they demonstrated excellent performance that is sufficiently appropriate for various geodetic applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (14) ◽  
pp. 6666
Author(s):  
Veton Hamza ◽  
Bojan Stopar ◽  
Tomaž Ambrožič ◽  
Oskar Sterle

Low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers are currently used in various engineering applications. These low-cost devices are regarded as suitable sensors for applications in areas with a high risk of instrument damage. The main objectives of this research were to identify the size of displacements that can be detected in relative and absolute positioning modes by low-cost GNSS instruments and to compare the results of selected antennas. Additionally, geodetic and low-cost GNSS instruments were compared in the level of observations. For this study, low-cost SimpleRTK2B V1 boards, which house ZED-F9P GNSS chips, and three low-cost antennas, namely, Survey, Tallysman TW3882, and Survey Calibrated, were selected. While antenna calibration parameters are known for the last antenna, this is not the case for the first two. For testing purposes, a geodetic network consisting of four points was established; horizontal and vertical movements were imposed by a special mechanism with high accuracy. In relative positioning mode, the results indicate that the Survey Calibrated antenna can detect horizontal and vertical displacements with sizes of 4 mm, and 6 mm, respectively. In the detection of horizontal displacements, the performance of the Survey antenna was not as good as that of Tallysman, and the sizes of detected displacements were 6 mm and 4 mm for the first, and second antennas, respectively. Vertical displacements of 9 mm were detected using both Survey and Tallysman antennas. In absolute positioning mode, Survey Calibrated also had better performance than the Tallysman antenna, and spatial displacements of 20 mm or greater were detected by low-cost GNSS instruments. The observations made with low-cost and geodetic GNSS instruments were compared, and the latter showed better performance. However, the differences in cycle slips and the noise of phase observations were inferior. Considering their cost and proven performance, it can be concluded that such sensors can be considered for setting up a highly accurate but low-cost geodetic monitoring system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-175
Author(s):  
Li Zhang ◽  
Volker Schwieger

AbstractThe investigations on low-cost single frequency GNSS receivers at the Institute of Engineering Geodesy (IIGS) show that u-blox GNSS receivers combined with low-cost antennas and self-constructed L1-optimized choke rings can reach an accuracy which almost meets the requirements of geodetic applications (see Zhang and Schwieger [25]). However, the quality (accuracy and reliability) of low-cost GNSS receiver data should still be improved, particularly in environments with obstructions. The multipath effects are a major error source for the short baselines. The ground plate or the choke ring ground plane can reduce the multipath signals from the horizontal reflector (e. g. ground). However, the shieldings cannot reduce the multipath signals from the vertical reflectors (e. g. walls).Because multipath effects are spatially and temporally correlated, an algorithm is developed for reducing the multipath effect by considering the spatial correlations of the adjoined stations (see Zhang and Schwieger [24]). In this paper, an algorithm based on the temporal correlations will be introduced. The developed algorithm is based on the periodic behavior of the estimated coordinates and not on carrier phase raw data, which is easy to use. Because, for the users, coordinates are more accessible than the raw data. The multipath effect can cause periodic oscillations but the periods change over time. Besides this, the multipath effect’s influence on the coordinates is a mixture of different multipath signals from different satellites and different reflectors. These two properties will be used to reduce the multipath effect. The algorithm runs in two steps and iteratively. Test measurements were carried out in a multipath intensive environment; the accuracies of the measurements are improved by about 50 % and the results can be delivered in near-real-time (in ca. 30 minutes), therefore the algorithm is suitable for structural health monitoring applications.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5257
Author(s):  
Franc Dimc ◽  
Polona Pavlovčič-Prešeren ◽  
Matej Bažec

Robust autonomous driving, as long as it relies on satellite-based positioning, requires carrier-phase-based algorithms, among other types of data sources, to obtain precise and true positions, which is also primarily true for the use of GNSS geodetic receivers, but also increasingly true for mass-market devices. The experiment was conducted under line-of-sight conditions on a straight road during a period of no traffic. The receivers were positioned on the roof of a car travelling at low speed in the presence of a static jammer, while kinematic relative positioning was performed with the static reference base receiver. Interference mitigation techniques in the GNSS receivers used, which were unknown to the authors, were compared using (a) the observed carrier-to-noise power spectral density ratio as an indication of the receivers’ ability to improve signal quality, and (b) the post-processed position solutions based on RINEX-formatted data. The observed carrier-to-noise density generally exerts the expected dependencies and leaves space for comparisons of applied processing abilities in the receivers, while conclusions on the output data results comparison are limited due to the non-synchronized clocks of the receivers. According to our current and previous results, none of the GNSS receivers used in the experiments employs an effective type of complete mitigation technique adapted to the chirp jammer.


1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (8) ◽  
pp. 1106-1112 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Weidner ◽  
R. E. Peale

A low-cost method of adding time-resolving capability to commercial Fourier transform spectrometers with a continuously scanning Michelson interferometer has been developed. This method is specifically designed to eliminate noise and artifacts caused by mirror-speed variations in the interferometer. The method exists of two parts: (1) a novel timing scheme for synchronizing the transient events under study and the digitizing of the interferogram and (2) a mathematical algorithm for extracting the spectral information from the recorded data. The novel timing scheme is a modification of the well-known interleaved, or stroboscopic, method. It achieves the same timing accuracy, signal-to-noise ratio, and freedom from artifacts as step-scan time-resolving Fourier spectrometers by locking the sampling of the interferogram to a stable time base rather than to the occurrences of the HeNe fringes. The necessary pathlength-difference information at which samples are taken is obtained from a record of the mirror speed. The resulting interferograms with uneven pathlength-difference spacings are transformed into wavenumber space by least-squares fits of periodic functions. Spectra from the far-infrared to the upper visible at resolutions up to 0.2 cm−1 are used to demonstrate the utility of this method.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Hadas ◽  
Grzegorz Marut ◽  
Jan Kapłon ◽  
Witold Rohm

<p>The dynamics of water vapor distribution in the troposphere, measured with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), is a subject of weather research and climate studies. With GNSS, remote sensing of the troposphere in Europe is performed continuously and operationally under the E-GVAP (http://egvap.dmi.dk/) program with more than 2000 permanent stations. These data are one of the assimilation system component of mesoscale weather prediction models (10 km scale) for many nations across Europe. However, advancing precise local forecasts for severe weather requires high resolution models and observing system.   Further densification of the tracking network, e.g. in urban or mountain areas, will be costly when considering geodetic-grade equipment. However, the rapid development of GNSS-based applications results in a dynamic release of mass-market GNSS receivers. It has been demonstrated that post-processing of GPS-data from a dual-frequency low-cost receiver allows retrieving ZTD with high accuracy. Although low-cost receivers are a promising solution to the problem of densifying GNSS networks for water vapor monitoring, there are still some technological limitations and they require further development and calibration.</p><p>We have developed a low-cost GNSS station, dedicated to real-time GNSS meteorology, which provides GPS, GLONASS and Galileo dual-frequency observations either in RINEX v3.04 format or via RTCM v3.3 stream, with either Ethernet or GSM data transmission. The first two units are deployed in a close vicinity of permanent station WROC, which belongs to the International GNSS Service (IGS) network. Therefore, we compare results from real-time and near real-time processing of GNSS observations from a low-cost unit with IGS Final products. We also investigate the impact of replacing a standard patch antenna with an inexpensive survey-grade antenna. Finally, we deploy a local network of low-cost receivers in and around the city of Wroclaw, Poland, in order to analyze the dynamics of troposphere delay at a very high spatial resolution.</p><p>As a measure of accuracy, we use the standard deviation of ZTD differences between estimated ZTD and IGS Final product. For the near real-time mode, that accuracy is 5 mm and 6 mm, for single- (L1) and dual-frequency (L1/L5,E5b) solution, respectively. Lower accuracy of the dual-frequency relative solution we justify by the missing antenna phase center correction model for L5 and E5b frequencies. With the real-time Precise Point Positioning technique, we estimate ZTD with the accuracy of 7.5 – 8.6 mm. After antenna replacement, the accuracy is improved almost by a factor of 2 (to 4.1 mm), which is close to the 3.1 mm accuracy which we obtain in real-time using data from the WROC station.</p>


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 2982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bongjae Kim ◽  
Hong Min ◽  
Junyoung Heo ◽  
Jinman Jung

Recently, various technologies for utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles have been studied. Drones are a kind of unmanned aerial vehicle. Drone-based mobile surveillance systems can be applied for various purposes such as object recognition or object tracking. In this paper, we propose a mobility-aware dynamic computation offloading scheme, which can be used for tracking and recognizing a moving object on the drone. The purpose of the proposed scheme is to reduce the time required for recognizing and tracking a moving target object. Reducing recognition and tracking time is a very important issue because it is a very time critical job. Our dynamic computation offloading scheme considers both the dwell time of the moving target object and the network failure rate to estimate the response time accurately. Based on the simulation results, our dynamic computation offloading scheme can reduce the response time required for tracking the moving target object efficiently.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
P. Morais Pessôa ◽  
A.G. Barbosa de Lima ◽  
R. Swarnakar ◽  
J.P. Gomes ◽  
W.M.P. Barbosa de Lima

Cooling has been used for the preservation of fresh produce such as fruit and vegetables due to its low cost and high effectiveness in maintaining the product quality. Recently, several researchers have conducted theoretical and experimental studies for obtaining the kinetics of cooling and cooling time for fruits with different geometries. Present work, therefore, aims to simulate the cooling of fruits with particular reference to banana, orange, strawberry and Tahiti lemon. The transient heat conduction equation and its analytical solution using Galerkin based integral method are presented. It has been found that the strawberry has lower dimensionless cooling time compared with time required to cool other fruits, which is due to its higher surface area/volume ratio value. In orange and lemon the temperature distribution was found to be homogeneous in the angular direction, while in banana and strawberry it was two-dimensional due to shape of the fruits.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 10642
Author(s):  
Rosendo Romero-Andrade ◽  
Manuel E. Trejo-Soto ◽  
Alejandro Vega-Ayala ◽  
Daniel Hernández-Andrade ◽  
Jesús R. Vázquez-Ontiveros ◽  
...  

A positional accuracy obtained by the Precise Point Positioning and static relative methods was compared and analyzed. Test data was collected using low-cost GNSS receivers of single- and dual-frequency in urban areas. The data was analyzed for quality using the TEQC program to determine the degree of affectation of the signal in the urban area. Low-cost GNSS receivers were found to be sensitive to the multipath effect, which impacts positioning. The horizontal and vertical accuracy was evaluated with respect to Mexican regulations for the GNSS establishment criteria. Probable Error Circle (CEP) and Vertical Positioning Accuracy (EPV) were performed on low cost GNSS receiver observation data. The results show that low-cost dual-frequency GNSS receivers can be used in urban areas. The precision was obtained in the order of 0.013 m in the static relative method. The results obtained are comparable to a geodetic receiver in a geodetic baseline of <20 km. The study does not recommend using single and dual frequencies low cost GNSS receivers based on results obtained by the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) method in urban areas. The inclusion of the GGM10 model reduces the vertical precision obtained by using low cost GNSS receivers in both methods, conforming to the regulations only in the horizontal component.


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