Professional Performance with Consumer GPS: Where and How it is Possible?

Alexey Boriskin, Dmitry Ivanov, Evgeny Sunitskiy

Abstract:	These last years, we have observed an obvious penetration of consumer and professional GNSS technologies into the same markets. Consumer-grade devices are seeking better accuracy at the lowest price. Professional-grade solutions are seeking price/size /consumption reduction keeping ultimate positioning performance. At the moment, the battle is on to achieve sub-meter positioning performance for post-processed and real-time GIS. The present paper describes a compromise solution. Using consumer-grade hardware and signal tracking algorithms (e.g. SiRF or Ublox based), but applying a professional-grade positioning engine (Ashtech based). The paper demonstrates the concept of this approach. We explain what the Ashtech BLADE™ engine is, and how it can be run on different targets and operating systems. BLADE is a position engine designed to process professional-grade GNSS raw [and differential] data. That is why its usage for consumer-grade observations acquired with cheap GPS antennas requires a lot of parameter tuning. The paper enumerates the specific of raw data BLADE engine is to process and challenges we had to deal with, which finally resulted in a system that we called “Si-BLADE”. We provide different field results (static occupation, stop and go). We show the conditions in which meter/sub-meter performance can be expected for RTK and post-processing when using such a consumer-grade handheld fitted with an internal antenna.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 24th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2011) September 20 - 23, 2011 Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon Portland, OR
Pages:	3281 - 3287
Cite this article:	Boriskin, Alexey, Ivanov, Dmitry, Sunitskiy, Evgeny, "Professional Performance with Consumer GPS: Where and How it is Possible?," Proceedings of the 24th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2011), Portland, OR, September 2011, pp. 3281-3287.
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