Robert Odolinski, Associate Professor in Geodesy/GNSS at the School of Surveying, University of Otago, New Zealand presented “Precise GNSS positioning with Android smartphones and on the use of the best integer equivariant estimator” [download here]
Abstract: The recent development of smartphone Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) chipsets makes instantaneous and cm level real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning possible with Android-based smartphones. In this contribution, we investigate the instantaneous single-baseline RTK performance of Samsung Galaxy S20 and Google Pixel 4 (GP4) smartphones with such chipsets in Dunedin, New Zealand. The effects of locating the smartphones in an upright and lying down position were evaluated, and we show that the choice of smartphone configuration can affect the positioning performance even in a zero-baseline setup. We also found that the two assessed smartphones have different antenna gain pattern and antenna sensitivity to interferences. In this contribution, we demonstrate, a near hundred percent instantaneous RTK integer least-squares success rate for one of the smartphone models and cm level positioning precision while using short-baseline experiments with internal and external antennas, respectively. Finally, for the first time, we employ the best integer equivariant (BIE) estimator for short-baseline smartphone RTK positioning, which gives a superior positioning performance to that of other commonly used estimators (e.g. integer least squares and float counterparts).
Bio: Robert Odolinski is currently holding a position as an Associate Professor in Geodesy/GNSS at the School of Surveying, University of Otago, New Zealand, and is a ‘Visiting Researcher’ with Google since 2022. In 2020 he won the ‘Per Enge Early Achievement Award’ by the US Institute of Navigation. Robert is a member of the Joint Study Group in Multi-GNSS theory and algorithms of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG).