Application of GNSS Precise Point Positioning to Low-Cost Hardware for cm-level Positioning

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) offers high-precision GNSS positioning solutions. The advent of low-cost hardware provides an affordable alternative to costly geodetic-grade hardware, broadening the accessibility of high-precision positioning across many applications. However, this hardware produces measurements with higher noise levels, reduced multipath suppression, and lower carrier-to-noise density ratios (C/N0), restricting its ability to achieve cm-level accuracy. This study addresses these limitations by developing a novel C/N0-based empirical observation weighting model to accompany the signal characteristics of low-cost hardware. This model enhances positioning accuracy by emphasizing high-quality signals above a nominal C/N0 threshold and down-weighting observations below it. The proposed model reduces float to carrier-phase integer ambiguity resolution (fixed) convergence time by 71% for 5 cm and 38% for 2.5 cm horizontal error thresholds for the static dataset tested, demonstrating the potential of low-cost GNSS devices as viable, high-precision positioning solutions.