Hybridization of Smartphone GNSS PPP/RTK with Native IMU in Realistic Driving Scenarios

Ding Yi and Sihan Yang

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The proliferation of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-enabled smartphones has increased the demands for Location-Based Services (LBS) and applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), property monitoring, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), etc. With the deployment of multi-constellation, dual-frequency chipsets and the availability of GNSS raw measurements from the Android operating system, it is now possible to utilize advanced GNSS positioning techniques such as RTK and PPP for smart devices, which brings low-cost mobile positioning accuracy to the next level. However, smartphone GNSS observations are vulnerable to multipath effects and poor signal reception. Consequently, GNSS-only smartphone positioning performance tends to degrade significantly in harsh environments. To tackle these issues, this study comprehensively analyzes the performance improvements by integrating the inertial measurement unit (IMU) measurements retrieved from smartphones. Additionally, this study proposes a novel RTK/PPP hybridization algorithm, combined with the single- and dual-frequency optimization strategy for smartphone processing. Verified with three vehicle experiments, the results show that smartphone PPP can provide comparable positioning accuracy as smartphone RTK, and these GNSS-only solutions can be further enhanced with the inclusion of smartphone IMU measurements which provide continuous and consistent horizontal positioning accuracy of <2 m rms through multiple multipath profiles. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the proposed RTK/PPP hybrid tight-coupled solution can achieve optimal positioning accuracy with 2.2 m 95th percentile error and 1.4 m overall rms throughout, indicating a significant improvement from the existing literature using low-cost hardware in realistic driving environments.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 36th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2023) September 11 - 15, 2023 Hyatt Regency Denver Denver, Colorado
Pages:	2227 - 2241
Cite this article:	Yi, Ding, Yang, Sihan, "Hybridization of Smartphone GNSS PPP/RTK with Native IMU in Realistic Driving Scenarios," Proceedings of the 36th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2023), Denver, Colorado, September 2023, pp. 2227-2241. https://doi.org/10.33012/2023.19449
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