Performance Evaluation of Low-Cost Multi-Frequency GNSS Receivers and Antennas for Displacement Detection

Abstract

Low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers are currently used in various engineering applications. These low-cost devices are regarded as suitable sensors for applications in areas with a high risk of instrument damage. The main objectives of this research were to identify the size of displacements that can be detected in relative and absolute positioning modes by low-cost GNSS instruments and to compare the results of selected antennas. Additionally, geodetic and low-cost GNSS instruments were compared in the level of observations. For this study, low-cost SimpleRTK2B V1 boards, which house ZED-F9P GNSS chips, and three low-cost antennas, namely, Survey, Tallysman TW3882, and Survey Calibrated, were selected. While antenna calibration parameters are known for the last antenna, this is not the case for the first two. For testing purposes, a geodetic network consisting of four points was established; horizontal and vertical movements were imposed by a special mechanism with high accuracy. In relative positioning mode, the results indicate that the Survey Calibrated antenna can detect horizontal and vertical displacements with sizes of 4 mm, and 6 mm, respectively. In the detection of horizontal displacements, the performance of the Survey antenna was not as good as that of Tallysman, and the sizes of detected displacements were 6 mm and 4 mm for the first, and second antennas, respectively. Vertical displacements of 9 mm were detected using both Survey and Tallysman antennas. In absolute positioning mode, Survey Calibrated also had better performance than the Tallysman antenna, and spatial displacements of 20 mm or greater were detected by low-cost GNSS instruments. The observations made with low-cost and geodetic GNSS instruments were compared, and the latter showed better performance. However, the differences in cycle slips and the noise of phase observations were inferior. Considering their cost and proven performance, it can be concluded that such sensors can be considered for setting up a highly accurate but low-cost geodetic monitoring system.

A Cost-Effective GNSS Solution for Continuous Monitoring of Landslides

“…Geodetic GNSS devices have advantages over classical geodetic sensors when used in geodetic monitoring, as they can provide high-quality positioning solutions continuously in all weather conditions and with less effort. However, the use of geodetic GNSS devices in monitoring natural hazards such as landslides is not an optimal solution since those devices come with high costs; additionally, the possibility of instrument damage in such unstable areas is high [5][6][7].…”

“…Based on the obtained results, it was found that horizontal and spatial displacements of 4 and 6 mm can be detected in static relative positioning even through using low-cost GNSS antennas. The magnitude of the detected spatial displacements increased to 20 mm in PPP [7]. In the case of [5], u-blox patch antennas were considered while a geodetic GNSS instrument was used as a reference station.…”

Evaluation of L6 augmentation signal reception characteristics and positioning accuracy of compact and lightweight GNSS antennas

“…Moreover, the performance of small, lightweight, and low-cost GNSS antennas has rarely been evaluated. Hamza et al (2021) 13 and Krietemeyer et al (2020) 14 evaluated the accuracy of GNSS observations and the positioning accuracy of low-cost dual-frequency GNSS receivers, survey GNSS antennas, and small patch antennas. Hamza et al 15 , Poluzzi et al (2020) 16 compared the RTK-GNSS accuracies of three low-cost antennas.…”

A Combination of Low-cost, Dual-frequency, Multi-GNSS Receiver and CORS Network for Precise Positioning Applications in Vietnam

“…Recently, with the introduction of low-cost, dual-frequency, multi-constellation receivers, the RTK technique is becoming more and more popular and used in various applications such as precision agriculture, intelligent transportation, construction machine control, ground mapping, port automation, structure monitoring [3][4][5][6][7].…”