Low-cost versus high-grade global navigation satellite system receivers: kinematic global positioning system–BeiDou navigation satellite system single-point positioning performance evaluation for vehicular urban navigation

Abstract

Low-cost receivers have already entered the mass market over the past few years. The high-precision real-time kinematic and precise-point positioning evaluation based on low-cost receivers has been analyzed and verified by many other studies in the past. With the integration of the multiglobal navigation satellite system (GNSS) and advances in technology, low-cost GNSS receivers are expected to be widely used in vehicle navigation. To investigate the kinematic single-point positioning (SPP) performance of low-cost receivers, we first assembled a low-cost receiver that can receive both American global positioning system (GPS) L1 and Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) B1 signals simultaneously. Then, a vehicle-positioning experiment is conducted in Fuzhou, China. For comparison purposes, the assembled low-cost receiver and a higher-grade receiver are connected to a survey-grade antenna via a power divider. The positioning accuracy and position dilution of the precision of GPS, BDS, and GPD/BDS SPP with both receivers are compared and analyzed. The results indicate that the low-cost receiver can achieve horizontal precision better than 1 m in the combined GPS/BDS case, when the car is positioned in the urban main road and expressway. This result is competitive and similar to that of the higher-grade receiver. Moreover, although the positioning precision of the low-cost receiver is worse than that of the higher-grade receiver in the GPS-only and BDS-only SPP case, it outperforms the higher-grade receiver in terms of satellite tracking, especially for tracking GPS satellite.