Cloud-Based Single-Frequency Snapshot RTK Positioning

With great potential for being applied to Internet of Things (IoT) applications, the concept of cloud-based Snapshot Real Time Kinematics (SRTK) was proposed and its feasibility under zero-baseline configuration was confirmed recently by the authors. This article first introduces the general workflow of the SRTK engine, as well as a discussion on the challenges of achieving an SRTK fix using actual snapshot data. This work also describes a novel solution to ensure a nanosecond level absolute timing accuracy in order to compute highly precise satellite coordinates, which is required for SRTK. Parameters such as signal bandwidth, integration time and baseline distances have an impact on the SRTK performance. To characterize this impact, different combinations of these settings are analyzed through experimental tests. The results show that the use of higher signal bandwidths and longer integration times result in higher SRTK fix rates, while the more significant impact on the performance comes from the baseline distance. The results also show that the SRTK fix rate can reach more than 93% by using snapshots with a data size as small as 255 kB. The positioning accuracy is at centimeter level when phase ambiguities are resolved at a baseline distance less or equal to 15 km.