Ambiguity resolution for smartphone GNSS precise positioning: effect factors and performance

With the availability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems raw measurements in smartphones, high-precision positioning using smartphones has become possible in recent years. Integer ambiguity resolution (IAR) is critical for smartphone precise positioning, which would be more difficult in smartphones and affected by various factors. In this paper, we will numerically study the effect factors for integer property of phase ambiguities, data quality, IAR efficiency and positioning accuracy for the smartphone. The results show that integer property of phase ambiguities and data quality are governed not only by the smartphone brands and embedded antennas, but also by the mobile operating system and smartphone attitudes. In general, the different constant offsets exist for the different frequency ambiguities, and the ambiguities are fixable once the corresponding offsets are calibrated. With the operating system of EMUI 9.0, the ambiguities are fixable for Xiaomi Mi8 but not for Huawei Mate20. However, with the updated operating system of EMUI 9.0.1, the ambiguities of Huawei Mate20 become fixable. Besides the smartphone brands and embedded antennas, the smartphone attitudes significantly affect the data quality, such as carrier-to-noise density ratio (C/N0) values, data availability and observation precisions, thus affecting the ambiguity fixing rate and positioning accuracy. The ambiguity fixing rates differ from attitudes by 17%, and generally, the upward attitude has the best performance. Finally, the kinematic positioning results indicate that only the meter-level accuracy is obtained with an embedded antenna, while the centimeter to decimeter-level accuracy is achievable with the external antenna.