Differential Positioning

Abstract

This chapter describes the concepts of differential global navigation satellite system (DGNSSdifferential GNSS (DGNSS)) positioning focusing on practical details given that the fundamental concepts have been covered in prior chapters. The chapter starts with a review of the general concepts of DGNSS, including a quantitative discussion on the biases in DGNSS measurements. The next section focusses on code-based DGNSS positioning, presenting an overview of DGNSS services as well as a brief discussion on the format and latency of DGNSS corrections. A significant part of this chapter is devoted to carrier-phase dominated DGNSS, or real-time kinematic (RTKreal-time kinematic (RTK)) positioning. Besides a theoretical consideration that includes the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASSGlobal’naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikova Sistema (Russian Global Navigation Satellite System) (GLONASS)) and multi-GNSS RTK, the section provides examples of RTK positioning performance that are obtained in practice. The last section details on network RTK, which is an extension of the standard RTK technique to cover longer distances.