Behavior of Low-Cost Receivers in Base-Rover Configuration with Geodetic-Grade Antennas

Abstract

The main goal of this research was to evaluate the performances of the ZED-F9P-Ublox low-cost GNSS receiver in a base-rover real configuration. We realized a base configuration with two permanent stations based on the ZED-F9P and two geodetic antennas and the rover configuration based on another ZED-F9P and an ANN-MB-00-00 Multi-band (L1, L2/E5b/B2I) active GNSS u-blox antenna. In the calculation of the reference stations, we compared the solutions with the ZED-F9P receiver and a professional receiver. Comparison showed greater variability in the solutions, but the coordinate values were in very good agreement. Standard deviations were in the order of a few millimeters. On the rover side, two car tests were performed in two different environments, one in an extra-urban environment with a long baseline of approximately 30 km in an open sky area with varying visibility and shielded locations, the other one in an urban area around a circle approximately 10 km in diameter with the presence of buildings and open sectors. The results of the measurements were very good, with more than 95% of fixed solutions in real-time and a time to fix on reacquisition of 1 or 2 s. Moreover, real-time kinematic solutions were in good agreement with the post-processed ones, showing that less than 5% of differences were above 30 mm in the horizontal component and 100 mm in the vertical component.