Static and kinematic positioning performance of a low-cost real-time kinematic navigation system module

Abstract To investigate the static and kinematic positioning performance with the low-cost multiple Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers is vital for the GNSS community owing to their wide civil applications. In this contribution, we developed the real-time kinematic (RTK) algorithms for low-cost GNSS receiving module to fulfil the task of the integrated RTK positioning with US Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). The RTK positioning performance of a low-cost module named STA8090 and a state-of-the-art module named Novatel OEM6 was compared. In our study, the virtual reference station (VRS) data stream from QianXun SI was utilized. First, one 12-h static test was performed, achieving the centimeter-level horizontal accuracy with an RMS (Root Mean Square) of less than 1 cm. Afterwards, some kinematic experiments were conducted under four different environmental scenarios, of which positioning accuracy of approximately 20 cm was obtained. The experimental results demonstrated that the RTK positioning performance with low-cost multi-GNSS module can fulfil the current navigation capability well.