Evaluation of the Galileo High Accuracy Service with Open-Source Software for Android Smartphone Positioning

P. Zoccarato, C. Gioia, I. Fernández Hernández

Abstract:	The Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS), introduced on January 24, 2023, is an open-access global service designed to boost navigation accuracy. It achieves this by delivering Precise Point Positioning (PPP) corrections, specifically for precise orbit and clock adjustments. Galileo HAS is specified to achieve an accuracy below 20 centimeters and vertical accuracy below 40 centimeters (at 95%), although limitations in smartphone antennas often reduce this performance. This work presents the result of several test campaigns of Galileo HAS on smartphones performed over the last years, by both the EC and Google, the first ones using the so-called Galileo HAS Reference User Algorithm (HAS-UA), and the second ones using Galileo HAS corrections in Google’s positioning engine. HAS-UA's performance is assessed using smartphone GNSS data from the Smartphone Decimeter Challenge. HAS-UA Results show that highly noisy measurements can cause a biased initialization of the ionosphere and ambiguity parameters within the EKF. The second part of this work summarizes the evaluation by Google of Galileo HAS corrections in the Android location engine, including the performance of Galileo HAS in comparison with standalone positioning and differential positioning. For these tests Galileo HAS corrections are received from the IDD (Internet Data Distribution) channel and applied to Android phones in different static and road tests, for different Android phones, mostly in the Bay area in California, US. The combined work, involving results from both Galileo HAS and android location service providers, presents an overview on how Galileo HAS can improve smartphone location accuracy, and what are the remaining challenges.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 38th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2025) September 8 - 12, 2025 Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor Baltimore, Maryland
Pages:	1366 - 1376
Cite this article:	Zoccarato, P., Gioia, C., Hernández, I. Fernández, "Evaluation of the Galileo High Accuracy Service with Open-Source Software for Android Smartphone Positioning," Proceedings of the 38th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2025), Baltimore, Maryland, September 2025, pp. 1366-1376. https://doi.org/10.33012/2025.20439
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