Evaluation of low cost, high sensitivity GNSS receivers based on the ISO RTK standards

The emergence of single-frequency, navigation-type receivers capable to provide carrier phase data (the so-called high sensitivity carrier phase positioning) has been steadily growing over the recent years. The level of positioning accuracy obtained with navigation-type receivers has raised interest to various communities that use positioning information. Over the last years, various researchers have investigated the potential of high-sensitivity navigation-type receivers and antennas with analysis on their positioning performance in post-processing and RTK modes. Although the above efforts express valuable guidelines for the practical use of navigation-type receivers, they lack standardized test procedures. In addition, these procedures are not always easily tractable and the time and effort required to perform these are not insignificant. The main purpose of this study is evaluate the positioning performance of high-sensitivity carrier phase-based navigation receivers based on the official International Standards Organisation (ISO) specifications for real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS geodetic receivers. A number of standardised experiments are described using as rover receiver the u-blox NEO-7P XXL bundle package that contains the NEO-7P module and the low-cost antenna Tallysman TW2410. Based on the ISO 17123 part 8 GNSS RTK standards, the experiments include a number of simplified and full test procedures in different observation periods and under varying satellite geometry. The results demonstrate the suitability of the u-blox NEO-7P XXL bundle package with the NEO-7P module for different accuracy levels of RTK positioning applications.