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On the feasibility of resolving Android GNSS carrier-phase ambiguities

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Abstract

High-precision navigation using low-cost handsets has profound potential for mass-market applications, which has been being boosted by the release of raw GNSS data from Google Android smart devices. However, integer ambiguity fixing for centimeter-level GNSS positioning is prevented by the unaligned chipset initial phase biases (IPBs) found within Android carrier-phase data. In this study, we thus investigate the temporal behaviors of those chipset IPBs using zero baselines where smart devices are linked to external survey-grade antennas, and find that the IPBs are generally stable over time as the mean standard deviation of single-epoch IPB estimates derived from continuous carrier-phase data is as low as 0.04 cycles for all satellites. Unfortunately, these chipset IPBs differ randomly among satellites and change unpredictably if carrier-phase signals are re-tracked, discouragingly suggesting that the chipset IPBs cannot be pre-calibrated or even calibrated on the fly. We therefore have to presumably correct for them in a post-processing manner with the goal of inspecting the potential of Android GNSS ambiguity resolution if hopefully the IPBs can be gone. For a vehicle-borne Nexus 9 tablet with respect to a survey-grade receiver located 100–2000 m away, we achieve the first ambiguity-fixed solution within 321 s and finally 51.6% of all epochs are resolved; the ambiguity-fixed epochs can achieve a positioning accuracy of 1.4, 2.2 and 3.6 cm for the east, north and up components, respectively, showing an improvement of 30–80% compared to the ambiguity-float solutions. While all smart devices above are connected to external survey-grade antennas, we find that a Xiaomi 8 smartphone can be coupled effectively with a miniaturized portable patch antenna, and then achieve commensurate carrier-phase tracking and ambiguity-fixing performance to those of a commercial μ-blox receiver with its dedicated patch antenna. This is encouraging since a compact and inexpensive patch antenna paired with smart devices can promote the democratization of high-precision GNSS.

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Data availability statement

All data collected for the study are available from the authors by request.

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFC1504002) and National Science Foundation of China (No. 41674033). We used Google GnssLogger apps and Geo ++ RINEX Logger apps to obtain raw GNSS data from smart devices. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Jianghui Geng & Guangcai Li

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  1. Jianghui Geng
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  2. Guangcai Li
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Contributions

JG conceived the project and the main conceptual ideas. JG and GL worked out almost all of the technical details and performed the numerical calculations for the suggested experiments; GL analyzed the data; JG and GL wrote the paper. All authors provided critical feedback and helped to shape the research, analysis and manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianghui Geng.

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Geng, J., Li, G. On the feasibility of resolving Android GNSS carrier-phase ambiguities. J Geod 93, 2621–2635 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-019-01323-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00190-019-01323-0

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