Performance Assessment of Positioning Solutions of Different Mobile Devices Using Kalman Filtering

Abstract

In this study, the performance of two different smart mobile devices is analysed and compared. These devices are either singlefrequency or dual-frequency GNSS carrier frequency-enabled smartphones. Both selected devices are from the same manufacturer. They are the Pixel 3 and Pixel 4 from Google. The smartphones were positioned on six control points in an open sky environment for which ground truth was determined with high-precision geodetic GNSS equipment serving as a reference. For the evaluation, a Kalman filter solution is derived and applied to be able to determine position information epoch-wise. In the first step, the position solution variations on the control points are determined and analyzed. It is seen that high variations may occur, especially in the single-frequency Pixel 3 where high variations were shown. As expected, these deviations are significantly smaller for the dualfrequency Pixel 4. Using the Kalman filter it is then proven that positioning of the few decimeter to meter level is achievable for the dual frequency smartphone. Thus, it has been shown that dual-frequency smartphones have already reached a good level of performance which opens up their use for some applications in surveying and especially in Location-based Services (LBS).