A PPP-RTK APPROACH TO MASS-MARKET APPLICATIONS

Abstract. PPP-RTK has been widely investigated to take the advantages of both real-time kinematic (RTK) and precise point positioning (PPP) techniques. Prior to PPP-RTK, the conventional RTK based on the use of a single base station, on the one hand, has been extended to work within a regional network of multiple base stations, known as network RTK (NRTK). The RTK and NRTK enable fast ambiguity resolution over a short baseline or a local region. PPP, on the other hand, eliminates the need to establish any local network like NRTK, which is able to work in a single receiver mode but it suffers long convergence time in ambiguity resolution. PPP-RTK therefore can provide fast ambiguity resolution capability like RTK and NRTK. Current PPP-RTK techniques however still face challenges in supporting mass-market applications such as mobile devices and autonomous vehicles. Although PPP-RTK system (a combination of RTK and PPP technologies) can help expand the coverage of RTK and speed up the ambiguity resolution in PPP, the deployment and maintenance of a dense network of permanent base stations and a central data processing infrastructure for generation of SSR corrections increases not only the system cost but also the system complexity. This is particularly an obstacle for mass-market applications. In this paper, a new RTK approach is described. First it is based on a single base station state-space-representation (SSR) correction generation strategy to support fast ambiguity resolved PPP. Further it presents a new peer-to-peer propagation strategy to form a real-time dynamically generated network of base stations to support mass-market application users with unbounded coverage. As a result, the new approach eliminates the need to deploy and maintain a dense network of permanent base stations and central data processing infrastructure as required in a conventional PP-RTK system.