Precise positioning utilizing smartphone GNSS/IMU integration with the combination of Galileo high accuracy service (HAS) corrections and broadcast ephemerides
Published in GPS Solutions, 2024
Abstract
The Galileo High Accuracy Service (HAS) has undergone substantial development in recent years, offering users free access to GPS and Galileo satellite orbit, clock, and code bias corrections for Precise Point Positioning (PPP) on a global scale. This paper explores the use of the currently available HAS corrections for smartphone positioning. Due to hardware disparities and limited tracking capabilities, smartphone processing with only two GNSS constellations struggles to ensure satisfactory satellite geometry and sufficient observations in realistic user environments. To fully harness all observed measurements and the orbit and clock information directly disseminated from satellites, this study introduces a new PPP algorithm combing HAS corrections and broadcast ephemerides (HAS and BRDC PPP) for smartphone processing. Through four vehicle experiments in urban environments, the proposed HASandBRDC PPP solutions demonstrated a notable reduction in positioning errors. Specifically, the horizontal rms and 95th percentile error decreased from 2.0 and 3.3 m to 1.6 and 2.4 m, respectively, when compared to the HAS PPP solutions. These results are highly comparable to four-constellation PPP solutions utilizing Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) ultra-rapid products, which can achieve a horizontal rms of 1.4 m. Additionally, the inclusion of smartphone inertial measurement unit (IMU) measurements results in a notable 59% average reduction in PPP gross errors. This study provides an original comparison of the 2022 and 2023 HAS corrections, demonstrating the feasibility of real-time lane-level navigation with smart devices even in remote areas without Internet connectivity, which has not been previously explored.