Real-Time Kinematic Positioning Using Multi-Frequency Smartphone Measurements

Nowadays, several smartphones on the market provide multi-frequency multi-constellations GNSS measurements, including carrier phase ones, allowing the achievement of high-accuracy positioning by exploiting Real Time Kinematic (RTK) or Precise Point Positioning (PPP) techniques. This paper will showcase the effectiveness of using smartphone measurements for RTK under different scenarios and for different applications using baselines of different lengths. The impact of the smartphone’s antenna on the solution will also be analysed. The assessment will be performed by evaluating different key performance indicators, including the time to first fix and the horizontal/vertical accuracy. This paper shows that around a 99% fix position can be achieved even using the smartphones’ antennas for the static case under open sky conditions. Moreover, high percentages of fix solutions can also be achieved in kinematic mode by ad hoc tuning of the RTK algorithm.