scholarly journals DGNSS Cooperative Positioning in Mobile Smart Devices: a Proof of Concept

Author(s):  
Alex Minetto ◽  
Maria Chiara Bello ◽  
Fabio Dovis

<div>In recent years positioning and navigation capabilities in mobile devices have become essential to the evergrowing number of position-related smart applications. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constitutes the provider for geo-localization, therefore consumer-grade, embedded GNSS receivers have become ubiquitous in mobile smart devices. Among these, smartphones play a dominant role in enabling such modern services based on position information. However, GNSS positioning shows several weaknesses in urban contexts where mobile smart devices are massively diffused. Indeed, the limited sky visibility and multipath scattering induced by buildings severely threat the quality of the final solution. Two main ingredients can enable innovative collaborative strategies capable to increase the robustness of GNSS navigation: The availability of raw GNSS measurements which have been recently disclosed in ultra-low cost smartphone chipsets and the ubiquitous connectivity provided by modern low-latency, network infrastructures allowing for near-real-time exchange of data. This work presents the architecture of a Proof Of Concept designed to demonstrate the feasibility of a GNSS-only Cooperative Positioning among networked smartphones equipped with GNSS receivers. The test campaign presented in this work assessed the feasibility of the approach over 4G/LTE network connectivity and an average accuracy improvement over the 40%.</div>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Minetto ◽  
Maria Chiara Bello ◽  
Fabio Dovis

<div>In recent years positioning and navigation capabilities in mobile devices have become essential to the evergrowing number of position-related smart applications. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) constitutes the provider for geo-localization, therefore consumer-grade, embedded GNSS receivers have become ubiquitous in mobile smart devices. Among these, smartphones play a dominant role in enabling such modern services based on position information. However, GNSS positioning shows several weaknesses in urban contexts where mobile smart devices are massively diffused. Indeed, the limited sky visibility and multipath scattering induced by buildings severely threat the quality of the final solution. Two main ingredients can enable innovative collaborative strategies capable to increase the robustness of GNSS navigation: The availability of raw GNSS measurements which have been recently disclosed in ultra-low cost smartphone chipsets and the ubiquitous connectivity provided by modern low-latency, network infrastructures allowing for near-real-time exchange of data. This work presents the architecture of a Proof Of Concept designed to demonstrate the feasibility of a GNSS-only Cooperative Positioning among networked smartphones equipped with GNSS receivers. The test campaign presented in this work assessed the feasibility of the approach over 4G/LTE network connectivity and an average accuracy improvement over the 40%.</div>


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 4302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Dabove ◽  
Vincenzo Di Pietra

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning is currently a common practice thanks to the development of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The possibility to obtain raw GNSS measurements, such as pseudoranges and carrier-phase, from these instruments has opened new windows towards precise positioning using smart devices. This work aims to demonstrate the positioning performances in the case of a typical single-base Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning while considering two different kinds of multi-frequency and multi-constellation master stations: a typical geodetic receiver and a smartphone device. The results have shown impressive performances in terms of precision in both cases: with a geodetic receiver as the master station, the reachable precisions are several mm for all 3D components while if a smartphone is used as the master station, the best results can be obtained considering the GPS+Galileo constellations, with a precision of about 2 cm both for 2D and Up components in the case of L1+L5 frequencies, or 3 cm for 2D components and 2 cm for the Up, in the case of an L1 frequency. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that it is not feasible to reach the phase ambiguities fixing: despite this, the precisions are still good and also the obtained 3D accuracies of positioning solutions are less than 1 m. So, it is possible to affirm that these results are very promising in the direction of cooperative positioning using smartphone devices.


Smart Cities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1219-1241
Author(s):  
Alex Minetto ◽  
Fabio Dovis ◽  
Andrea Vesco ◽  
Miquel Garcia-Fernandez ◽  
Àlex López-Cruces ◽  
...  

In urban contexts, the increasing density of electronic devices equipped with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers and complementary positioning technologies is attracting research and development efforts devoted to an improvement of the quality of life towards the smart city paradigm. Vehicular and pedestrian positioning and navigation capabilities are among the major drivers for innovation in this process. Ultra-low-cost electronics such as smartphones and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors aim at providing accurate and reliable positioning solutions through a set of promising solutions. Among these, snapshot positioning allows to remotely perform the post-processing of GNSS signals in IoT sensor networks while Wi-Fi™ ranging and cooperative positioning provide auxiliary anchors of opportunity to enhance indoor/outdoor positioning capabilities. This paper presents an innovative platform to perform a centralised testing and assessment of such positioning and navigation technologies along with a set of results obtained in the context of the European project HANSEL, by relying on current network technologies and infrastructures (i.e., Wi-Fi™ and cellular connectivity).


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (16) ◽  
pp. 4375
Author(s):  
Veton Hamza ◽  
Bojan Stopar ◽  
Tomaž Ambrožič ◽  
Goran Turk ◽  
Oskar Sterle

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology is widely used for geodetic monitoring purposes. However, in cases where a higher risk of receiver damage is expected, geodetic GNSS receivers may be considered too expensive to be used. As an alternative, low-cost GNSS receivers that are cheap, light, and prove to be of adequate quality over short baselines, are considered. The main goal of this research is to evaluate the positional precision of a multi-frequency low-cost instrument, namely, ZED-F9P with u-blox ANN-MB-00 antenna, and to investigate its potential for displacement detection. We determined the positional precision within static survey, and the displacement detection within dynamic survey. In both cases, two baselines were set, with the same rover point equipped with a low-cost GNSS instrument. The base point of the first baseline was observed with a geodetic GNSS instrument, whereas the second baseline was observed with a low-cost GNSS instrument. The results from static survey for both baselines showed comparable results for horizontal components; the precision was on a level of 2 mm or better. For the height component, the results show a better performance of low-cost instruments. This may be a consequence of unknown antenna calibration parameters for low-cost GNSS antenna, while statistically significant coordinates of rover points were obtained from both baselines. The difference was again more significant in the height component. For the displacement detection, a device was used that imposes controlled movements with sub-millimeter accuracy. Results, obtained on a basis of 30-min sessions, show that low-cost GNSS instruments can detect displacements from 10 mm upwards with a high level of reliability. On the other hand, low-cost instruments performed slightly worse as far as accuracy is concerned.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Pepe

In recent years, the use of low cost GNSS receivers is becoming widespread due to their increasing performance in the spatial positioning, flexibility, ease of use and really interesting price. In addition, a recent technique of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) survey, called Network Real Time Kinematic (NRTK), allows to obtain to rapid and accurate positioning measurements. The main feature of this approach is to use the raw measurements obtained and stored from a network of Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) in order to generate more reliable error models that can mitigate the distance-dependent errors within the area covered by the CORS. Also, considering the huge potential of this GNSS positioning system, the purpose of this paper is to analyze and investigate the performance of the NTRK approach using a low cost GNSS receiver, in stop-and-go kinematic technique. By several case studies it was shown that, using a low cost RTK board for Arduino environment, a smartphone with open source application for Android and the availability of data correction from CORS service, a quick and accurate positioning can be obtained. Because the measures obtained in this way are quite noisy and, more in general, increasing with the baseline, by a simple and suitable statistic treatment, it was possible to increase the quality of the measure. In this way, this low cost architecture could be applied in many geomatics fields. In addition to presenting the main aspects of the NTRK infrastructure and a review of several types of correction, a general workflow in order to obtain quality data in NRTK mode, regardless of the type of GNSS receiver (multi constellations, single or many frequencies, etc.) is discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 341-342 ◽  
pp. 614-620
Author(s):  
Qiang Chang ◽  
Qun Li ◽  
Hong Tao Hou ◽  
Xiang Hui Zeng

Global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-like the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the future Chinese Beidou system-can deliver very good position estimates under optimum conditions. However, especially in critical positioning scenarios like urban canyons or indoor environments the performance loss would be very high or GNSS based positioning is even not possible. Based on the concept of Cooperative Positioning in acquiring real-time positioning information of mobile robots, GNSS Peer-to-Peer Cooperative Positioning (P2P-CP) technology is proposed to overcome the shortage of GNSS positioning. Terrestrial ranging and communication modular are equipped with GNSS receivers to construct real-time CP network. The terrestrial ranging and communication modular respectively used for distance measurement and communication between nearby GNSS receivers, distributed algorithms are applied to fuse pseudorange and neighbors nodes distance to calculate the nodes position. Current research results of GNSS CP show that this new positioning strategy gets equal or better precision with less time cost compared with Assisted GNSS (AGNSS).


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tae-Suk Bae ◽  
Minho Kim

Recently, an accurate positioning has become the kernel of autonomous navigation with the rapid growth of drones including mapping purpose. The Network-based Real-time Kinematic (NRTK) system was predominantly used for precision positioning in many fields such as surveying and agriculture, mostly in static mode or low-speed operation. The NRTK positioning, in general, shows much better performance with the fixed integer ambiguities. However, the success rate of the ambiguity resolution is highly dependent on the ionospheric condition and the surrounding environment of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning, which particularly corresponds to the low-cost GNSS receivers. We analyzed the effects of the ionospheric conditions on the GNSS NRTK, as well as the possibility of applying the mobile NRTK to drone navigation for mapping. Two NRTK systems in operation were analyzed during a period of high ionospheric conditions, and the accuracy and the performance were compared for several operational cases. The test results show that a submeter accuracy is available even with float ambiguity under a favorable condition (i.e., visibility of the satellites as well as stable ionosphere). We still need to consider how to deal with ionospheric disturbances which may prevent NRTK positioning.


Agriculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Heiß ◽  
Dimitrios Paraforos ◽  
Hans Griepentrog

Easily available and detailed area-related information is very valuable for the optimization of crop production processes in terms of, e.g., documentation and invoicing or detection of inefficiencies. The present study dealt with the development of algorithms to gain sophisticated information about different area-related parameters in a preferably automated way. Rear hitch position and wheel-based machine speed were recorded from ISO 11783 communication data during plowing with a mounted reversible moldboard plow. The data were georeferenced using the position information from a low-cost differential global navigation satellite system (D-GNSS) receiver. After the exclusion of non-work sequences from continuous data logs, single cultivated tracks were reconstructed, which represented as a whole the cultivated area of a field. Based on that, the boundary of the field and the included area were automatically detected with a slight overestimation of 1.4%. Different field parts were distinguished and single overlaps between the cultivated tracks were detected, which allowed a distinct assessment of the lateral and headland overlapping (2.05% and 3.96%, respectively). Incomplete information about the work state of the implement was identified as the main challenge to get precise results. With a few adaptions, the used methodology could be transferred to a wide range of mounted implements.


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 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Khai PHAM ◽  
Gia Trong NGUYEN ◽  
Van Hai NGUYEN ◽  
Trong Xuan TRAN

In recent years, the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has been widely applied insurveying and mapping. Currently, in Vietnam, dual-frequency GNSS receivers are quite extensivelyapplied with the real-time kinematic (RTK) measurement technique using a continuously operatingreference station network. However, high-accuracy GNSS receivers are often expensive, sometimes notmeeting the needs of users for specific applications. This research develops two types of low-cost highprecisionGNSS receivers for RTK positioning for different purposes. First, the millimeter precisionGNSS receiver used in real-time displacement monitoring is based on Trimble's BD970 mainboardtechnology and some other modules. These components are interconnected according to a standarddesign scheme and assembled in an enclosure to form a GNSS receiver. In addition, a GNSS datatransmission in the National Marine Electronics Association standard format by Networked Transport ofRadio Technical Commission for Maritime Services via Internet Protocol (NTRIP) has beendesigned and developed. The GNSS receiver after development is loaded with program code written inthe C# programming language, using the Arduino programming tool. Second, the GNSS receivers havethe centimeter accuracy for RTK positioning used in surveying and mapping based on U-blox'smainboard technology and some other modules. These modules are also connected together according toa standard design scheme and assembled in an enclosure to form a complete GNSS receiver. Theevaluation results show that the designed and developed GNSS receivers completely meet therequirements of surveying and mapping in coal mines in Vietnam, such as real-time monitoring oflandslides, surveying and topographical mapping and other surveying works to serve the mining process.


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