GPS & GLONASS Mass-Market Receivers: Positioning Performances and Peculiarities

Over the last twenty years, positioning with low cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors have rapidly developed around the world at both a commercial and academic research level. For many years these instruments have only acquired the GPS constellation but are now able to track the Global’naja Navigacionnaja Sputnikovaja Sistema (GLONASS) constellation. This characteristic is very interesting, especially if used in hard-urban environments or in hard conditions where satellite visibility is low. The goal of this research is to investigate the contribution of the GLONASS constellation for mass-market receivers in order to analyse the performance in real time (Network Real Time Kinematic—NRTK positioning) with post-processing approaches. Under these conditions, it is possible to confirm that mass-market sensors could be a valid alternative to a more expensive receiver for a large number of surveying applications, but with low cost hardware the contribution of the GLONASS constellation for fixing ambiguities is useless, if not dangerous.