Single Frequency RTK Technology for Handheld GPS

Traditional GPS RTK system requires at least two receivers one of which serves as base station with known coordinates. Assuming separation between base and rover receivers is not too long, for example 10 km, spatial correlations for GPS observation errors are pretty significant. Base station can be used to correct rover observations. As a result, 2 cm horizontal and 5 cm vertical positioning accuracy within less than 5 minutes initialization time is available at rover.

However, at least two dual-frequency receivers are required in this mode. For some applications concerning economical cost more than high accuracy, traditional dual-frequency RTK is not always the optimum choice. Therefore, we propose to design a single-frequency GPS RTK system which can still provide 5~10 cm positioning accuracy within 5 minutes initialization time. The proposed work can at least reduce user receiver costs by half. What’s more, this system can even save costs for base station installment if network RTK is already set up around the field of interest.

In a word, our work is to design a low-cost single-frequency GPS RTK system with at most half price but comparable performance compared to traditional double-frequency GPS RTK.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Xin Wang

Student:

Junbo Shi

Partner:

Nexteq Navigation Corp.

Discipline:

Engineering - other

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of Calgary